Posts Tagged With: beef

Mexican Pizza

Posted on February 13, 2023 by pauldelancey

Mexican Entree

MEXICAN PIZZA

INGREDIENTS

PIZZA CRUST (If you have a bread maker or buy at store)

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup water
2 ½ tablespoons vegetable oil
¾ teaspoon sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
2 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast
no-stick cooking spray

TOPPING

1 cup or ½ pound ground beef
1 teaspoon cumin
½ small onion
⅓ green bell pepper
½ cup diced green chile
1 cup diced tomatoes in sauce
1 cup grated Four Mexican cheeses.
Pasta sauce (½ cup or more)

SPECIAL UTENSIL

pizza pan

PREPARATION OF PIZZA CRUST
Measure out the flour and set aside. Pour the water into the bread maker. If you measure the water before the flour, the flour will stick to the sides of the measuring cup. Egads!

Add oil, sugar, salt, and yeast to the bread maker. Do not put the yeast directly on top of the salt. Salt is bad for yeast and yeast makes the dough rise.

Set the timer or the menu on the bread maker to “Dough.” Wait the required time, probably a bit more than an hour. In the meantime, organize your tax-receipts, preheat the oven to 400 degrees and liberally spray the pizza pan with no-stick spray. This will prevent the crust from forming a glue-like bond with the pan.

Take the dough out of the bread maker and roll it out until the dough covers the pizza pan. If you do not possess a rolling pin, any food can will do as long as it is at least 6 inches tall. It is best to spray the can or coat it with a thin layer of flour before spreading the dough.

After rolling, let the dough sit and rise for 30-to-60 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

PREPARATION OF TOPPING

While the bread maker is making the dough, dice the onion (Does anyone juggle onions professionally?) and green pepper. Don’t liquefy them. The green and white of these ingredients along with the red of the tomatoes will give you the colors of the Mexican flag. Olé.

Cook the ground beef on medium-high heat until it is no longer pink. Taste and see if you want to add more spice.

Apply tomatoes in sauce to pizza crust slowly and spread evenly until you have a thin layer of sauce over the whole pizza. Remove any excess as too much sauce will make your pizza soggy.

Spoon ground beef, onion, bell pepper, chile, tomatoes, and cheeses evenly over the pizza.

Bake pizza for about 20 minutes or until cheese is golden brown. Depending on the efficiency of your oven you will probably want to check your pizza after 12 minutes and every few minutes after that.

Arriba. Arriba.

TIDBITS

1) The ancient Greeks covered their bread with oil, herbs, and cheese.

2) The first time I saw Mexican pizza was about ten years ago at a Taco Bell(tm).

3) Cinco de Mayo, May 5, celebrates a Mexican victory over a French army. It is a minor holiday in Mexico. However, in America, it has become a major “Drink Mexican Beer” day.

4) My birthday is May 5. When I was little, I was always quite grateful to Mexicans everywhere for celebrating my birthday. One of the greatest illusions of my life. I still hang onto this one, a little.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Beef on Spiced Potatoes From Belize

Posted on December 17, 2022 by pauldelancey

Belizean Entree

BEEF ON SPICED POTATOES

INGREDIENTS

2 large unpeeled baking potatoes

BEEF MIXTURE
3 garlic cloves
1 pound lean ground beef
1 14.5 ounce can Mexican, or spicy, diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon Jamaican Jerk spice
½ teaspoon red recado (This Belizean spice is found online.)

POTATO SPICES
1 teaspoon Jamaican Jerk spice
1 teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon black pepper

TOPPING
½ cup plain yogurt
½ teaspoon Jamaican Jerk spice
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 tablespoon diced tomatoes

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Cut potatoes lengthwise into ¼-inch thick slices. Well, this is the ideal. You might end up with ½-inch thick slices. Whatever you do, don’t rush this part or use too big a knife or cleaver. (One big mistake and you won’t be able to use the expression, “I’m all thumbs” anymore.) Use fork to pierce each potato slice multiple times. Mince garlic cloves.

Cook ground beef in skillet on medium-high temperature until beef is no longer pink. Reserve 1 tablespoon of diced tomatoes. Add remaining diced tomatoes, minced garlic, Jerk seasoning and red recado to beef. Stir. Bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 12 to 15 minutes. Stir this beef mixture occasionally.(I won’t be responsible for the burning of the mixture or the rending of the time-space continuum if you don’t stir at all.)

Meanwhile, back at the spuds. Dip potato slices in cold water. Sprinkle lightly with Jerk spice, sea salt, and black pepper. Place slices in a single layer on no-stick baking pan. Bake for 6 minutes then turn. Redo this baking for 6 minutes and turn until the slices are soft and lightly browned.

(There can be a huge variance in cooking time for this step due to the size and efficiency of your oven and the thickness of your potato slices.)

Mix yogurt, Jerk spice, garlic salt, and remaining diced tomatoes in bowl.

Spoon beef mixture over potato slices. Then add topping.

TIDBITS

1) Potatoes, or spuds, contain lots of calories.

2) So does beer.

3) Budweiser(tm) once used a dog named “Spuds McKenzie” to sell its beer.

4) The New York Yankees had a pitcher during the 1940s called Spud Chandler.

5) Other great baseball names are: Art “What A Man” Shires, Mike “The Human Rain Delay” Hargrove, Luke “Old Aches and Pains” Appling, Bob “Death to All Flying Things” Ferguson, Walter “Boom Boom” Beck, The Only Nolan, Walt “No Neck” Williams, Dave “Swish” Nicholson, and Harry “Suitcase” Simpson.

6) Even more great baseball names include: Bombo Rivera, Clarence “Choo Choo” Coleman, Dick “Dr. Strangeglove” Stuart, Al “The Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky, “Blue Moon” Odom, Mick “Killer” Kelleher, Dave “King Kong” Kingman, Wilmer “Vinegar Bend” Mizell, Van Lingle Mungo, “Boileryard” Clarke, and perhaps my favorite, Bristol “The Human Eyeball” Lord.

7) And who can ever forget Joe Shlabotnik?

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Beef Ravioli

Posted on December 14, 2022 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

BEEF RAVIOLI

INGREDIENTS

PASTA

3 cups or more of flour (¼ cup more later)
2 eggs (1 more egg used later)
¾ cup water or more

FILLING

2 garlic cloves (2 more cloves used later)
½ pound ground beef
1½ teaspoons parsley
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
½ teaspoon salt (Used 3 times for a total of 2 teaspoons)
1 egg

MARINARA SAUCE

6 Roma tomatoes
½ large white onion
2 garlic cloves
2 teaspoons basil
½ teaspoon marjoram
1 teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon thyme
1 6 ounce can tomato sauce

FINAL PREPARATION

water
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
¼ cup flour

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.

PREPARATION OF PASTA

Combine 3 cups flour, eggs, and water. Mix with hands. Make a ball of the mixture. It should just be able to come off your hand. If some of the ball sticks to your hand, then add a bit more flour, mix again, and try the new flour. If the flour ball is powdery, it is too dry. Add a bit more water, mix again, and try the consistency of the next ball. There may be a number of these iterations but it must be done. (You don’t want to let all the Italianos and Italianas in the world down, do you?)

Sprinkle a generous amount of flour on your cutting board and rolling pin. Roll flour ball out until it is 1/16″ or NO THICKER than ⅛”. Frequently sprinkle the rolling pin to keep the dough from sticking. Let rolled-out flour sit for AT LEAST 4 hours. It should be nearly dry.

PREPARATION OF FILLING

While rolled out flour dries, peel and mince 2 garlic cloves. Put garlic, ground beef, Parmesan cheese, parsley, and ½ teaspoon salt in frying pan. Cook on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes or until beef is no longer red. Put contents of frying pan into bowl. Add egg to bowl. Mix and put beef filling in fridge. (Time to sneak a nice, cold root beer or maybe something even stronger.)

PREPARATION OF MARINARA SAUCE

Mince Roma tomatoes. Peel and mince onion and 2 garlic cloves. Add tomato, onion, garlic, basil, marjoram, oregano, ½ teaspoon salt, thyme, and tomato sauce to sauce pot. Cook ingredients on medium-high heat until it boils, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 20 minutes with the lid on. (Although the Republic will stand if you chose to cook with it off, you wild child you.) Stir occasionally.

FINAL PREPARATION

Dust cutting board with ¼ cup flour. Use knife to cut 1½”- wide strips in the flour. Cut these strips into rectangles every 3 inches. Dust strips with flour. Put a ½ teaspoon or so of the filling on the right side of the 1½-inch by 3-inch flour rectangle. Fold the left side over the filling. Push down on the open sides with the tines of the fork to seal the ravioli.

Fill pot with enough water to cover ravioli. Add 1 teaspoon salt and olive oil. Boil water. Add ravioli and cook for 20 to 30 minutes. Ravioli should float to the top and the dough should be completely soft. (Pure gold is soft as well. However, it’s not a great ravioli ingredient. Gold’s extreme lethality in a molten state make using it an expensive culinary faux pas.)

Meanwhile back at the range, cook pasta sauce in pot on medium heat until it is warm. Put ravioli in bowl and add pasta sauce.

TIDBITS

1) This tidbit was traded for a second-round and a third-round tidbit in a future cookbook.

2) Flour is extremely flammable. You might want to sweep up spilled flour instead of vacuuming it. Flour mills make strong efforts to prevent flour dust from getting into the air and onto the floors. Metallic and coal dust are also quite flammable.

3) Indeed, the Germans in World War II tried to make thermobaric bombs by releasing coal dust in the air just before the Allied Air Force would make its bombing runs. The Germans planned to ignite the coal dust, but could never do so satisfactorily due to problems in getting the dust to disperse.

4) But if you had tons of coal dust and thousands of giant fans on the ground, I mean really huge, you could ignite the air around the enemy bombers with a powerful flare.

5) It might be hard to smuggle thousands of giant fans into an enemy city, though. Maybe if you did it at night.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Shaiyah, Pan Fried Meat From South Sudan

Posted on December 8, 2022 by pauldelancey

South Sudanese Entree

SHAIYAH
(Pan fried meat)

INGREDIENTS

2½ pounds lamb, beef, or goat
2 cups water.
¾ red onion (¼ red onion more later)
2 stalks celery
4 garlic cloves
1 jalapeno pepper or red chile pepper
1 bay leaf
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ tablespoon coriander
½ tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon pepper

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
¼ red onion
1 tablespoon lime juice
¼ cup arugula (aka rocket leaves)

SPECIAL UTENSIL

mandoline (optional)

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 15 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cut meat into 1″ cubes. Add to large pot, enough water to cover meat with 1″ to spare. Bring water to boil at high heat. While water comes to boil, cut ¾ red onion into ¼”-thick slices. (A mandoline helps.) Cut each celery into 4 pieces along its length. Dice garlic cloves. Dice jalapeno pepper. (Seed it first, if you want this dish to be milder.)

Add all but the last 4 ingredients to pot. Cover and cook at medium-high heat for 35 minutes or until water has evaporated, but meat is not yet falling apart. (Stir enough to prevent burning.) Remove bay leaf.

Add oil and ingredients from pot to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 15 minutes or until meat browns all over and becomes crispy. Stir frequently enough to prevent meat from burning and sticking to pan.

Add meat to serving plate. Cut ¼ red onion into ¼”-thick slices. Drizzle lime juice over meat. Garnish with red-onion slices and arugula.

TIDBITS

1) I suspect that many readers of this recipe buy their lamb, beef, or goat at the supermarket. This meat comes in nice, little plastic wrapped packages.

2) All we have to do to hunt the meat for our Shaiyah is to sally forth in our little FitTM, BMWTM, or F-150, armed only with a credit card or cash.

3) There’s no danger in that at all. Especially we if remain properly vigilant for stupid oafs running red lights at busy intersections.

4) Hunting safaris are one step closer to getting our own food than moving our carts to the butchers or to the frozen meet section at our supermarket.

5) But not by much, is it? Such hunters arm themselves with high-velocity rifles, equipped with telescopic lenses.

6) It would be something if these safaris had our prey armed with heat-seeking missiles that fired at us whenever we came with 100 yards, or even meters, of them.

7) I mean fair is fair. It’d make hunting safaris unambiguously more exciting as well.

8) But as of press time, this adrenaline-pumping idea remains unlikely to be occur anytime soon.

9) So we don’t know what is was like to say, hunt a mastodon for our meal. How did cavemen bring down their meals on feet or hooves? Sad to say, I don’t know if mastodons have toes or hooves. There aren’t any mastodons in my fair city of Poway.

10) Anyway, Ogg, tried to eat a mastodon by the simple expedient of gnawing on its leg. The mastodon took offense at Ogg’s faux pas and removed him from the human gene pool.

11) Ogg Junior, played a lethal game of rock, stick, stomp with his mastodon. He lost as well.

12) Ogg III, his synapses firing, grabbed a mastodon’s tail. He had hoped to hurl the critter at a fatal speed into a rock cliff. Ogg III did not.

13) Ogg IV tried to frighten a mastodon to death by making scary faces. Another frustrating failure.

14) Indeed Ogg IV to Ogg XIII all met their ends from the mastodon’s tremendously sharp and long tusks or from their massive feet.

15) “What if we turned ourselves into massive feet by letting mud dry on ourselves?” asked the nearly clever Ogg XIV. Many agreed with him. And so Ogg XIV to Ogg XIX would have passed into history had history had only existed back then.

16) Finally Ogg XX postulated making spears out of sticks and sharp flints. OMG, the idea worked! We could have any meat we wanted, including lamb, beef, or goat for our Shaiyah. We all owe a debt of thanks to Ogg XX. Well done, sir.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D. (but not with cell phones)

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

 

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Mincemeat Pie

Posted on September 7, 2022 by pauldelancey

British Dessert

MINCEMEAT PIE

INGREDIENTS – DOUGH

3¼ cups flour (2 tablespoons more later)
1¾ cups confectioners’ sugar (1 tablespoon more later)
1¼ cups butter, cubed
1 egg
ice water, 1 teaspoon at a time, as necessary
2 tablespoons flour

INGREDIENTS – FINAL

1 28-ounce jar mincemeat
1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar

SPECIAL UTENSILS

round pastry cutter, glass cup, or muffin tray
sonic obliterator

Makes 12 small pies. Takes 2 hours 30 minutes.

PREPARATION – DOUGH

Add 3¼ cups flour and confectioners’ sugar to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Use cold hands to fold butter and egg into flour. Add ice water 1 teaspoon at a time, if necessary, until dough starts to form a ball without being sticky. (Don’t over do it.) Cover pastry and let chill in refrigerator for 15 minutes. (You might to re-roll the dough so you can make more circles.)

Dust flat surface with 2 tablespoons flour. Place about ¼ of the dough at a time on flat surface.. Leave the rest in the refrigerator until needed. (You really do want to work with cold dough.) Roll out dough until it is 1/6″ thick. Use round pastry cutter to make a large circle sufficiently wide to fill the bottom and side of muffin cups, about 5″ wide. Re-roll the dough as needed to make more circles.

Line muffin cups with 5″ dough circles. Now make 12 small circles wide enough to cover the top of the muffin, about 3″ wide. Use ¼ of the remaining dough, left over from making the 5″ circles, Leaving the rest in the refrigerator until needed.

PREPARATION – FINAL

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Fill the pastry-lined muffin cups ¾ full with mincemeat. Cover with 3″ dough circles. These lids should overlap the mincemeat-filled pastry cups. (But not go over onto the rest of the muffin tin.) Gently push down on lid edges to form seals. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool on wire racks then sprinkle mincemeat pies with 1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar. Or serve right away. Zap any guest who doesn’t fully appreciate the care you took in making this dish.

TIDBITS

1) Mincemeat pies don’t have mincemeat in them.

2) But way back in the 16th century, in Tudor times, they did.

3) Because meat was cheaper than fruit in those days. The meats of choice were: beef, venison, and lamb. There was even a Tudor poem about this.

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep.
But where did they go?
Into a neighbor’s pie they weeped.
Ho, ho. Ho, ho. Ho, ho.

In real life, the next-door neighbor was usually a rapacious, unfettered lord, who supported King Henry VIII. So many sheep were stolen by the greedy nobility that the peasantry became increasingly disgruntled.  It didn’t help that space aliens kidnaped the remaining sheep in 1535. Since the extraterrestrial sheep abductions occurred at night, no one saw them happen. The poor people naturally blamed the barons, lords, and earls.

A surly mob of peasants gathered at the Duke of York’s castle demanding the return of all their sheep. We are lucky to have the following exchange in writing as the historian John Haggis was just happened to be present. Here it is:

Surly Peasant Leader: We want our sheep back!
Duke of York: There are no sheep. I have no sheep. No one has sheep.
Surly Peasant 1: We don’t believe you.
Duke of York: I don’t care.
Surly Peasant 2: But how can we make mincemeat pies without sheep?
Duke of York: Eat mincemeat pie made from giraffes.
Surly Peasant Leader: C’mon lads, lets throw Duke Greedypants from off the castle walls.

They stormed the castle and they him down into the moat. This act precipitated a rather serious revolt with the rather mild title of The Pilgrimage of Grace. Eventually, King Henry VIII had this revolt put down.

But the king had seen the writing on the wall. King Henry proclaimed in The Great Ingredient Decree of 1538 that no matter the prevailing conditions of the realm, every peasant would had a right to find all she needed to make a proper mincemeat pie. Since, the sheep were all gone, pie makers switched to beef. Centuries later, the price of fruit began to fall compared to that of beef. So the beef in the pies began to be phased out in favor of dried fruits. Nowadays, mincemeat pies have no meat in them at all. Now you know. Oh, the sheep found their way back to Earth and England in 1567,

 

Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

 

 

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Smoked Beef Brisket

Posted on June 5, 2022 by pauldelancey

American Entree

SMOKED BEEF BRISKET

INGREDIENTS

1½ tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon chili powder
¼ cup garlic salt
½ tablespoon paprika
9 pounds beef brisket
½ cup beef broth
1 12-ounce can beer

SPECIAL UTENSILS

wood chips (apple or oak)
smoker
electric thermometer
baking pan
tin foil
sonic obliterator

Serves 10. Takes at least 10 hours, perhaps up to many more. Smokers vary, the marbling of the fat in the brisket varies. Perhaps the Incan monkey god is angry with you. In this case, your brisket will take a long time. Perhaps eleventy hours is the most accurate. I strongly suggest putting that brisket in the smoker at the crack of dawn. If you’re up to it, start it at midnight and monitor periodically through the night. Will this make you lose sleep? Yes. Also, a small brisket will take less time.

PREPARATION

Get up at dawn, 6 a.m., or even earlier. Add wood chips to smoker. Preheat smoker to 235 degrees. Start cooking after getting up in the morning. Add brown sugar, chili powder, garlic salt, and paprika to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Rub mixture all over brisket.

When temperature of smoker reaches 235 degrees, place brisket on grill with the fatty side closest to the heating coil. Put thermometer in the thickest part of the meat. Smoke until brisket’s internal temperature reaches 165 degrees. This should take about 6 hours, varying greatly depending on your smoker and whether or not you have led a virtuous life. I hope you have. ☺

Pause and reflect, pause and reflect until the temperature of the brisket reaches 165 degrees. Using cooking gloves carefully remove the brisket and put it in the baking pan. (Close door quickly as possible to minimize loss of heat and smoke. Pour beef broth and beer evenly over brisket. Cover brisket with tin foil. Put covered brisket back in smoker. Put thermometer back in the thickest part of the brisket. Cook until internal temperature reaches 205 degrees.

Remove brisket and let sit for 40 minutes. Cut meat across the grain to ¼” thick slices. This is large and lengthy meal. Use sonic obliterator on any guest making even the slightest complaint.

TIDBITS

1) Our spaceships have visited every planet and all the big asteroids in the Solar System.

2) We’ve even sent our spacecraft past the Oort Cloud and into outer space.

3) It seems as if our spaceships have nothing left to explore.

4) This page has a lot of space left. Let’s explore the rest of this page.

 

 

 

 

 

Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Beef With Chestnuts

Posted on January 5, 2022 by pauldelancey

Croatian Entree

BEEF WITH CHESTNUTS

INGREDIENTS

1 pound chestnuts
6 cups water
1 large onion
1½ pounds sirloin, tenderloin, or rump
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
½ tablespoon paprika
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup water

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cut an 1″ wide “x” on both sides of each chestnut. Make the cut deep enough to cut through the shell. (This keeps the chestnut from exploding. This really can happen if you omit this step.) Add chestnuts and 6 cups water to pot. Boil on medium-high heat for 45 minutes or until chestnuts become tender, the chestnut shells start to open and become easy to peel. (This is important. A shell that isn’t easy to peel will take forever.) Remove from heat. Cover with kitchen towel. Let cool for 5 minutes. Peel chestnuts. Discard shells.

While chestnuts cook, dice onion. Cut sirloin into 1″ cubes. Add onion and oil to 2ndt pot. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add sirloin cubes, paprika, pepper, and salt. Sauté for 5 minutes or until sirloin cubes brown on all sides. Stir frequently. Add 1 cup water. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until sirloin cubes become tender. Use slotted spoon to add chestnuts to pot with sirloin cubes. Add enough water to cover. Simmer at medium heat for 15 minutes or until chestnuts soften. Stir occasionally.

TIDBITS

1) Beef and chestnuts can only be placed next to each after both get cooked, because they tend to fight each other when they are alive. This hostility stems from the one and only beef/chestnut drive. It started in 1898 in Bend, Oregon and was to have ended in the port of New Orleans. Beef and chestnuts were ferociously desired by American troops fighting the Spanish in Cuba. But from the start, the beeves taunted the chestnut trees for their extreme slowness. This was harsh as chestnuts trees were the fasted trees around, due to their tiny feet.

2) Anyway, the chestnut trees took offense at this verbal onslaught and proclaimed they’d go no further. To show their resolve, they evolved their feet to become roots. Nowadays, you need to look for chestnuts in the stationary-nut-tree section of your supermarket. Oh, and there are no more chestnut drives. The days of the chestnutboys are long gone except in movies.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Atlanta Brisket

Posted on January 9, 2018 by pauldelancey

American Entree

ATLANTA BRISKET

INGREDIENTS

3½ pounds beef brisket
½ teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
1¼ cups ketchup or bottled chili sauce
1 packet instant onion soup mix
4 cups Coca ColaTM
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

SPECIAL UTENSILS

9″ x 13″ casserole dish
tin foil, if your casserole dish doesn’t have a lid
particle accelerator (Costs billions. Start saving.)

Serves 6. Takes 4 hours 30 minutes plus at least 6 hours to marinate.

PREPARATION

Add brisket to casserole dish. Use fork to poke holes in brisket. Rub garlic powder, paprika, salt, and pepper onto brisket. Add ketchup, onion soup mix, and Coca Cola. Cover and marinate in refrigerator for at least 6 hours or overnight. Turn every 2 hours, if possible.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove brisket from casserole dish and add to pan. (Keep marinade in casserole dish.) Add vegetable oil. Sauté for 10 minutes on medium-high heat or until brisket browns. Turn over once. Return brisket to casserole dish. Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 4 hours or until meat is tender to the fork. Add Coca Cola, if necessary, to keep brisket from drying out. Goes well with sides or desserts prepared by someone else. ☺

TIDBITS

1) Instant onion soup mix transforms soup instantly into cold onion soup with the addition of water.

2) Of course, onion soup is much tastier warm. As we know, there are three ways to heat onion soup: the stove top, the microwave, and the particle accelerator.

3) For the last method, simply put your bowl in the particle accelerator. Press the start button and whoosh, piping hot soup. Before you do though, and I cannot stress this strongly enough, make sure your bowl is particle-accelerator safe. If not, you might melt down an entire town, which your surviving neighbors will hold against you for a long time.

Leave a message. I’d like to hear from you.

Chef Paul

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with 180 wonderful recipes is available on amazon.com. My newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, is also available on amazon.com

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Danish Millionbøf

Posted on July 23, 2016 by pauldelancey

Danish Entree

MILLIONBØF

INGREDIENTSMillionBof-

1 pound potatoes
1 large onion
2 teaspoons butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 pound ground beef (85% lean is best)
2 tablespoons flour
1¾ cups beef stock
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons gravy browning or dark gravy

Makes 4 bowls. Takes 50 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel potatoes. Cut potatoes into fourths. Put potato fourths in large pot. Boil on high heat for 20 minutes.

While potatoes are boiling, dice onion. Add onion, butter, and vegetable oil to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until it starts to brown or BEGINS TO SOFTEN. Stir frequently. Add ground beef. Reduce heat to medium. Cook for 3-to-5 minutes or until beef starts to brown. Stir occasionally.

After potatoes have been boiled for 20 minutes, remove them from pot. Put potatoes in large mixing bowl. Mash them. Add flour to pan with ground beef. Stir until well blended. Add beef stock, pepper, and salt.. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 20 minutes or until less than half of the liquid is left. Stir occasionally. Add gravy browning. Stir until well blended. Serve over mashed potatoes.

TIDBITS

1) Bøf is Danish for beef. Bøf is also a palindrome for føb. Føb isn’t Danish for anything, although the Danes do have a word for everything that exists. Føb is just a reserve word the Danes have just in case something really new is discovered, such as a carnivorous, ambulatory fig looking tree on Mars. (CAMFLTOM)

2) The Danish Official Word Naming Association (DOWNA) would then look down their list of approved new words. If føb were at the top of the list, then the CAMFTOM would be called “føb.”

3) There’s more. Take the first letter away from føb and you get øf, the Danish word for oink. Now you know both of Denmark’s really necessary words. Remember the song, “If I could talk to the Danes?” Well, now you can. Go visit Denmark. Visit today, before you lose your vocabulary.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

 

Categories: cuisine, humor, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Boeuf Bourguignon

Posted on April 28, 2016 by pauldelancey

French Entree

BOEUF BOURGUIGNON

INGREDIENTSBoeufBourguignon-

2½ pounds beef chuck
2 garlic cloves
1 large onion
1 shallot
1 bay leaf*
5 peppercorns*
3 sprigs fresh parsley*
1 sprig fresh thyme*
2⅓ cups red Burgundy or Pinot Noir
2 tablespoons olive oil (1½ tablespoons more later)
3 slices bacon
2 carrots
12 pearl onions
1½ tablespoons olive oil.
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons flour
1½ tablespoons parsley flakes
⅓ cup brandy
2 cups beef stock
12 new (young, small) potatoes
1½ tablespoons (optional garnish)

* = bouquet garni

SPECIAL UTENSILS

kitchen string.
Dutch oven
colander
sonic obliterator

Makes 8 bowls. Takes 8 hours.

PREPARATION

Cut beef into 1½” cubes. Mince garlic cloves. Dice onion and shallot. Crush peppercorns with kitchen mallet. Tie parsley sprigs and thyme with kitchen string. Insert bay leaf and peppercorns into bundle of parsley and thyme. This bundle is called bouquet garni.

Add beef cubes, garlic, onion, shallot, bouquet garni, Burgundy, and 2 tablespoons olive oil to large mixing bowl. Stir with spoon until well blended and beef is completely coated. Cover and let marinate for 3½ hours.

While beef marinates, cut bacon into ½” by 1″ strips. Slice carrots into ½” cubes. Peel pearl onions. Peel potatoes. (This is easier if you boil them for one minute and let cool.) Add bacon and 1½ tablespoons olive oil to Dutch oven. Heat oil using medium-high heat. It will be hot enough when a bacon strip will sizzle when added to Dutch oven. Carefully add bacon strips to oven. Sauté at medium-high heat or until bacon starts to brown. Stir frequently. Remove bacon to plate with a paper towel on it. Keep bacon grease and oil in Dutch oven.

Add pearl onions to Dutch oven. Sauté at low heat for 5 minutes or until they are completely brown. Gently and occasionally stir onions with spoon to ensure even cooking. Remove pearl onions and set aside.

Remove beef cubes from mixing bowl. Keep the remaining marinade. Pat beef cubes dry with paper towel. Discard bouquet garni. Strain marinade through colander. Keep the marinade. Discard the solids left in the colander

Add ¼th of the beef cubes to Dutch oven. Sauté at medium-high heat for 4 minutes or until beef is completely browned. Stir frequently. Sauté the rest of the beef in batches. This gives them enough room for even browning.) Add all sautéed beef cubes to Dutch oven. Add pepper, salt, and flour. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes or until flour blends completely with marinade. Stir gently and frequently.

Add brandy to Dutch oven. Simmer on low heat for 5 minutes or until brandy evaporates. Occasionally scrape brown bits from the bottom and ladle them over the beef cubes. Add marinade from mixing bowl and beef stock. Cover. Simmer on low heat for 2 hour or until beef cubes start to become tender.

Add potatoes and enough water to cover them to a separate pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Reduce heat to medium-high and boil for 15 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Drain.

Add reserved pearl onions, carrot, and bacon strips. Cover Dutch oven again. Simmer at low heat for 35 minutes or until beef cubes are tender. Skim off any fat from surface of stew. Bring stew to boil using medium-high heat. Serve immediately with potatoes. This dish is also great the next day.

TIDBITS

1) This is a truly tasty dish. It also takes a lot of time. So, if your sweethearts complain about this dish in any way or for any length of time be it only a muttered, “Bah,” zap them with your sonic obliterator. The relationships weren’t meant to be.

2) However, if they say your boeuf bourguignon is the best dish ever or if they say it is even tastier than you are good looking which they thought wasn’t possible, then you have keepers.

3) However, if a sweetheart makes this dish for you and it is good, real good, then you have met an angel on Earth. Propose marriage immediately.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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