Angry Man #4
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.
Would you climb a giant bamboo tower for these?
Lovers of bamboo and buns will not want to miss Hong Kong’s Cheung Chau Ben Festival . The festival takes place on or around Buddhas Birthday, near the end of April or May. in Hong Kong. Contestants climb a giant bamboo tower covered in Chinese steamed buns. Um, okay, it’s not entirely clear from that whether the tower is covered in Chinese steamed buns or the climbers are covered in them. Either way, it’s pretty darn exciting. Anyway, buns picked from the top of the bamboo tower or taken on the backs of the contestants to the top are consider luckier than ones at the bottom. People there go vegetarian during this festival. It’s not clear why. Maybe I would too if I had to climb a tall tower with steamed buns all over me.
The festival’s star attraction are the huge bamboo towers covered with handmade buns. Legends says the island was plagued by an epidemic that killed thousands. Resourceful Cheung Chau locals brought in the god Pak Tai and built it a temple. Pak Tai then shooed the plague and evil spirits away.
In this festival, the inhabitants honor Pak Tai with the Bun Grabbing contest. (Naughty, mind your thoughts.) Contests clamber up a 60-foot tower that’s covered with steam buns. Climbers try to grab as many lucky buns as they can in three minutes. Hard to reach buns give extra points. Or you could simply go for the prestigious Full Pockets of Lucky Buns award. This is won by the climber who grabs the most buns in three minutes. There is also a rather exciting team-relay event.
It’s not at all clear to me how grabbing buns of a bamboo tower shows gratitude to a god who stopped a plague or why these buns are lucky. But there you go. The locals love the event. Tourists from all over the globe come to see it. And you should too. So make your flight plans. Book your hotel and by all means see the Bun Grabbing contest. It’s on the last day of the festival.
But there’s more to this festival than grabbing buns. The week-long festivities includes incense, prayers for prosperity and health, and offerings to festival’s god. Pay a respectful visit to Pak Tai’s altars.
Then wander around the grounds and sample the incredible variety of steamed buns sold by the many food vendors. Heavens, those steamed buns are tasty. And be sure to bring home souvenirs of the event.
Don’t get so distracted by the yummy buns that you miss the festival’s spectacular parade. See elaborate lion dances (No, no ravenous, wild lions are used), and marching bands. Be entranced by the martial arts demonstrations. Biff, biff. Don’t miss the “Floating Children” parade where children dress as Chinese deities. They sit on stands so high that they appear to be floating.
But wait, there’s more. See unicorn dances. Does your town have anything like that? No, I didn’t think so.
It’s well worth arriving in Hong Kong the weekend before the festival for the preliminary Bun Carnival. Watch instructions teach you how to climb the Bun Tower. Climb it for fun. Practice on it. If you find you’re good enough, why not enter the event itself? Go for it. Do it for yourself. Do it for me. Do it for all us who aren’t able to attend.
Oh my gosh, this sounds like such a fun festival.
– 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.
Uruguayan Entree
PANCHO
(hot dog)
INGREDIENTS
1 small onion
1½ tablespoons vegetable oil (additional 2 tablespoons later)
2½ tablespoons ketchup
2½ tablespoons mayonnaise
2 corn cobs
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 quarter pound hot dogs
4 pan de Vienna or hot dog buns (should be smaller than the hot dog)
⅓ cup mozzarella
1½ tablespoons yellow mustard
PREPARATION
Dice onion. Add onion and 1½ tablespoons oil to pan. Sauté on medium-high heat or until onion softens. Removed sautéed onion and set aside. Add ketchup and mayonnaise to small bowl. Mix with fork until well blended. (This ketchup/mayonnaise mix is called “salsa golf.”)
Use brush to coat corn cobs with 2 tablespoons vegetable oil. Grill corn cobs on barbecue grill on high or 475 degrees for about 10 minutes or until corn starts to char. Turn cobs occasionally. Remove corn cobs and place on plate. Put hot dogs in pot and add water until it covers the hot dogs. Boil water on high heat for 4 minutes. While hot dogs boil, slice kernels from corn cobs. Assemble panchos by putting hot dogs in buns, followed by onion, mozzarella, corn kernels, mustard, and salsa golf.
TIDBITS
1) Pancho is a name. It is also a Uruguayan hot dog. Poncho is something you wear to keep rain off of you if your outside for a long time.
4) Don’t get the two words mixed up. You’ll get weird looks from the staff from even the seediest of restaurants if you order a poncho. Oh sure, they’ll try their best, sautéing the raincoat, but rubber clothin is never tasty. You won’t want to eat it.
5) Nor should you try to wear a pancho while bicycling in the rain. The Uruguayan hot dog simply isn’t big enough to protect you from the downpour. Even wearing dozens of panchos won’t work. The buns will disintegrate from the rain, letting the ketchup, mayonnaise, and mustard stream down all over you. Besides, dogs from miles around will pick up the scent of the hot dogs and chase you until you crash. Vocabulary is important.
– 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.
American Entree
TUNA MELT
INGREDIENTS
2 5-ounce cans albacore tuna
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup diced celery
2, tablespoons minced yellow, brown, or red onon
1 teaspoon dill weed
1/8,teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup shredded cheddar or mozzarella cheese
1 medium, ripe avocado (optional)
2 hamburger buns on 4 bread slices
PREPARATION
Drain water from tuna cans. Preheat broiler to 375 degrees. Toast bread for 2 minutes. While bread toasts, become a whirlwind and add tuna, mayonnaise, celery, onion, dill weed, pepper, and salt to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk.
Top the bread slices equally with tuna/mayonnaise mix. Put slices in broiler and broil at 375 for 2 to 3 minutes. Remove tuna/mayonnaise/bread slices from broiler and top equally with shredded cheese. Return slices to broiler and broil at 375 degrees for about 2 minutes or until cheese melts. Remove from oven. Carefully combine two slices together. (You might wish to use a spatula.)
TIDBITS
1) “December 7, 1941–a date which will live in infamy…” – President Roosevelt on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
2) “December 23, 1941, a date which will live in culinary glory…” – me, today. For this is the date of the first recorded sighting of the word, “cheeseburger.” This wondrous event happened at a small restaurant in Burbank, California.
3) The first six months of the war in the Pacific went poorly for America. Some culinary historians speculate that the invention of the cheeseburger was the only thing that prevented defeatism spreading throughout America.
4) Moreover, the humble cheeseburger provided American soldiers, marines, and sailors the energy to keep up the good fight when their Japanese counterparts flagged from a want of calories. Now, Japan and America are friends, because we both eat cheeseburgers. May I suggest a Japanese cheeseburger with wasabi ketchup?
– 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.
Irish Entree
INGREDIENTS
1 4-to-5 pound ready-to-cook corned beef brisket
6 russet potatoes
3 large carrots
1 large white onion
1/2 head cabbage
water
6 hamburger buns
SPECIALTY UTENSIL
crock pot
PREPARATION
At the crock pot’s low setting, the brisket can take 10-to-14 hours to become tender. The high setting will cut this time by about half.
Put ready-to-cook corned beef brisket in crock pot. Add water to crock pot until it covers the brisket. You may need to cut the brisket into smaller pieces depending on the size of your crock pot. Cook for 10-to-14, possibly overnight, or until brisket is tender.
Clean potatoes and carrots. Cut potatoes carrots, onions, and cabbages in slices no thicker than 1/2″ inch and add them to the crock pot. and vegetables. Add water until it covers the brisket and vegetables. Cook on low setting for about 2 hours or until vegetables are tender.
So far, this has been a simplified, but still traditional meal of corned beef. But new culinary horizons beckon. Beef burgers beget beguilingly Irish burgers, beggorah.
Put a slice of corned beef from crock pot on bun. Top that with a slice of onion and cabbage also from the crock pot. Add a squiggle of mustard and complete with top bun. A Irish burger to be sure.
Use remaining ingredients in crock pot as a traditional corned beef meal or as in the next recipe, corned-beef soup.
TIDBITS
1) This recipe uses carrots. The world famous cartoon character Bugs Bunny loved carrots.
2) Bugs Bunny was named after one of his creators at Warner Bros. studio, Buggsy Hardaway.
3) Bugs Bunny was officially born on July 27, 1940 in a rabbit warren under Ebbets Field, home of the Dodgers, in Brooklyn. Although previous incarnations occurred in the late 1930s, his official cartoon debut occurred on that date in a cartoon feature called a “Wild Hare.”
4) Bugs went on to have a illustrious cartoon career starring in several beloved shorts and even a few movies. This patriotic bunny also squared off successfully against the nefarious German and Japanese leaders of World War II. Bugs even appeared in two-minute films designed to get Americans to buy war bonds.
5) It’s possible without Bugs Bunny’s buy-war bonds films America would not have had enough funds to prosecute the war against the Axis powers.
6) And indeed, America’s fighting men were grateful. Bugs Bunny was the official mascot of at least one air training school and two air squadrons.
7) Bugsy Siegel’s story is somewhat different. Born into the real world, Bugsy rose to prominence as a bootlegger and notorious co-founder of Murder, Inc. Switching to gambling, Bugsy founded the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was gunned down in 1947.
8) There you have it. One Bugsy has made the world laugh for decades and won a world war. The other Bugsy not so much.
– 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.
St. Martin Entree
ST. MARTIN HAMBURGER
INGREDIENTS
1 medium yellow onion
1/2 teaspoon bird pepper (St. Martin spice)
1 teaspoon nigelle (St. Martin spice)
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
6 hamburger buns
SPECIAL APPLIANCES
spice grinder
time machine
PREPARATION
Mince yellow onion. Use spice grinder to grind bird pepper. Use hands to combine onion, bird pepper, nigelle, and ground beef in large mixing bowl. Make 6 patties.
Your hands will be messy. Use time machine to go back to a moment when your hands were clean. Be sure to come back to the present moment. Those patties need to be fried and you don’t want to cause a time paradox, do you?
Cook patties in frying pan until meat browns. Flip patties over at least once to keep moisture from exiting the top. Toast hamburger buns. Put patties in buns. Enjoy.
TIDBITS
1) St. Martin is the French side of an island in the Caribbeain. St. Maarten is the Dutch side. Both countries valued the island for its vast salt deposits.
2) Packing meat and fish in salt was one of the few ways to preserve meat and fish way back when. Nations in those days often waged war over lands rich in salt.
3) Indeed, global wars raged constantly in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The number of such bloody conflicts plummeted in the twentieth century and in our very own, the twenty-first.
4) Why? The development of the refrigerator made it unnecessary for chefs worldwide to use salt to preserve their perishable beef and fish.
5) Well preserved food results in happy contented chefs. Happy chefs cook for happy eaters. Happy eaters comprise happy nations. Happy nations are agreeable nations. Agreeable nations don’t fight each other. No wars, no nuclear Armageddon.
6) So think about that when considering to send back that overcooked steak to the chef.
– 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.
American Entrée-Basic
INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 pounds of ground turkey meat
1 onion
1/4 green bell peppers
2 green onion stalks
2 tablespoons garlic salt
1/2 tablespoons cumin
8 potato hamburger buns – top and bottom
1/4 head of lettuce, washed
1 cup of grated four-cheese blend
1 ketchup bottle
water
extra virgin olive oil
SPECIALTY UTENSILS
Sonic obliterator
Four-slice toaster
TOASTING THE BUNS
You really need a four-slice toaster. You simply cannot feed turkey burgers to a hungry horde with a two-hole toaster. Don=t do four bun halves, two whole buns, and rest on your laurels.
(You say you need more immediate motivation? Pretend the members of your brood have become ravenous cannibals ready to sink their razor sharp canines into your haunches unless they get their turkey burgers.) Keep on toasting.
(And DON’T, DON’T, microwave anything while toasting. You’ll trip your circuit breaker and you’ll have to dash outside and flip the circuits. This is one reason against cooking in the nude. The other being that grease splatters.)
PREPARING THE ONION
Remove the skin. It adds nothing to the taste, is papery, and gets stuck between your teeth. (How can you concentrate on your boss’s story about mango harvesting in Tahiti when you have onion skin between your first and second molars annoying the heck out of you? Remove the skin, now.)
Also cut off the root part at the bottom. It’s edible ,I suppose, but hardly tasty. If the onion has a big, green sprout in the middle, it’s because you bought it when Nixon was in office and is no longer edible.
PREPARING THE GREEN BELL PEPPERS
It really helps if you have a prepared green bell pepper left over from last night’s culinary extravaganza, made from the chapter on stuffed green peppers, for example.
If not, cut the top off the green bell pepper and discard, or at least discard the stem. Scoop out the innards of the pepper seeds and those four vertical, soft whitish columns and throw them away.
Chop up the pepper and put it in a pan. Coat the pieces with olive oil. Use extra-virgin olive oil. (That’s the most virgin you can get, unless you went through school studying economics.)
Cook the green bell pepper. This process is called sauteeing.
(See, you’re picking up the vocabulary. Mais oui. C’est magnifique, n’est ce pas? Ho, ho, ho.)
CHOPPING UP THE VEGGIES
You really must get yourself a food processor, big or small, one with two little whirling blades. This little gizmo will make chopping up or mincing the veggies so much faster than cutting them up with a knife. If your knife is blunt, this task takes forever. And a sharp knife is just too tempting for a spouse sulking over your latest big purchase.
Get a food processor. Mince the green onions. Mince the onions. Onions are big. (Don’t let that intimidate you. You’re bigger than they and have opposable thumbs.) Be sure to cut it up into at least four sections before putting it into the processor. Chop up the bell peppers.
SPICING
The above list of spices assumes you like the same amount of spices as I do. So experiment. Once you become adept at cooking, you=ll be able to smell the correct amount of spice to add as you mix.
PREPARING THE BURGER
Get a big bowl. Put the ingredients you’ve prepared so far. Mix. Mix with your hands until everything is thoroughly mixed. Your hands will get extremely messy.
(Midway through the mixing is, of course, the time someone will knock on your front door to ask you if you want your trees trimmed, even if you don’t have any. In the meantime you have dropped turkey meat all over that hard-to-justify-buying Persian carpet and of course, on the front doorknob.
This is the time to say, “Excuse me, I’ll just be a moment.” Go back to the kitchen table, pick up the sonic obliterator, and annihilate the would-be tree trimmer. Wipe up and pick up all bits of turkey meat on the way back to the kitchen. Cleanliness is a virtue.)
THE TURKEY-BURGER PATTIES
Make four patties and put them in your pan. The patties should not be much bigger than your spatula or they might fall apart when turned over.
Turn the heat to high to get things going and gradually turn it down to medium or medium high. The higher you set the temperature, the more closely you’ll need to watch the patties and turn them over.
Turkey meat turns white when cooked. The outside turns white before the inside does. So how do you know when it’s done? It’s perfectly acceptable for a chef, particularly one that’s starting out, to cut a small piece near the edge and look at it and taste it. If the inside of the piece is white, then it is done. Remember, if no one saw you taste the burger, then it didn’t happen.
(By the way, it is a matter between you and your God about what to do if you should drop an entire patty on the floor. Consider the cleanliness of your floor and the likability of your guests in making your decision.)
You must flip the burgers repeatedly with your spatula. If you do not do so, the water will rise to the top of the burger and evaporate, making the burger too dry to eat. Flipping puts the water that has almost escaped on the bottom of the burger again.
Consider occasionally sprinkling water on top of the patty and pouring a thin layer of water into the pan. This adds moisture to the burger and a moist burger is a yummy burger.
ASSEMBLING THE TURKEY BURGER
Put the bottom bun–it’s flat–on the plate. Put the cooked patty on the bun and the lettuce atop the patty. (There are some heretics who put the lettuce on first, but they are being hunted down without mercy.) Sprinkle the cheese on next. If you are adventurous, pour on some ketchup. Place the top bun–it’s dome shaped–on next.
You are now a culinary hero to your guests.
TIDBITS
1) A Hamburger is someone from Hamburg, Germany. The term a hamburger derives from this city. A Berliner is someone from Berlin. Berliner is also the name of a jelly doughnut. Some people think when President Kennedy said in that famous Cold War speech, Ich bin ein Berliner, he was actually saying, “I am a jelly doughnut.”
2) The first official listing of a hamburger on a menu occurred at Delmonico’s in New York in 1826.
3) Cheeseburger In Paradise is a great song.
4) A turkey is not someone from Turkey. It is a bowling term.
5) The turkey was one of the first animals in North America to be domesticated.
6) Turkeys were called turkeys in the 1500s by English merchants because they thought turkeys came from India and that Turkey owned India. Bozos.
– 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.
Cajun Entree
INGREDIENTS
6 turkey hot dogs
6 hot dog buns
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon Poultry MagicTM spice
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon thyme
No-stick cooking spray
PREPARATION
Preheat skillet to 350 degrees. Completely defrost turkey dogs. Mix paprika, salt, cayenne, poultry spice, cumin, and thyme on large plate. Coat all sides of the turkey dogs with spray.
Place the turkey dogs on plate and roll them until they are coated with spices. Place turkey dogs in skillet and cook for 8 to 12 minutes making a quarter turn every 1 to 2 minutes, or until spices blacken.
Toast buns. (Why do hot dogs and hot-dog buns come in different amounts? Why has no president done anything about it?) Put turkey dogs in buns. If you like Cajun cooking, you should need no condiments, such as ketchup. But as the French say, “Chaque à son gout.”
TIDBITS
1) I have never seen blackened hot dogs anywhere. This dish is a product of my feverish imagination. It’s good, though.
2) In 1755 and 1758, the British exiled French Canadians from Acadia. Many moved to Louisiana where they became known as Cajuns.
3) Cajun food is spicy. Canadian food is not. Nor is Eskimo cuisine. Eskimos do not have hot sauce.
4) I mostly grew up in Arcadia, California.
5) Cayenne is the capital of French Guiana. French Guiana is in South America. Why is this land not independent? Do the people love French cooking?
6) Cayenne is mostly grown in Mexico, Asia, Africa, New Mexico, and Louisiana. But apparently not much in a land that has a capital named Cayenne.
7) National Hot Dog Day is July 18.
8) Babe Ruth is believed to have consumed twelve hot dogs and drank eight sodas between games of a double header.
9) Americans eat about 150 million hot dogs on the Fourth of July.
10) Humphrey Bogart was a big fan of hot dogs. Coincidentally, he won an Oscar for his performance in The African Queen.
11) Mustard is the favorite hot-dog topping among adult Americans. Kids, however, prefer ketchup.
12) Maybe this recipe will change that.
– 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.
Hawaiian Entree
INGREDIENTS
6 frankfurters
1 white onion
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 cups crushed pineapple with juice
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon Meat MagicTM spice
1 cup brown sugar
3 slices bacon
6 hot dog buns
PREPARATION
Put franks in pot. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook for about 15 minutes. Cut bacon slices in half. Fry bacon on medium-high until it starts to become crispy or golden brown. Toast buns. (This does not mean to sit down on a hot pad.)
Mince onion. Melt butter in saucepan. Saute onions in butter until soft. Add cornstarch, pineapple with juice, cider vinegar, turmeric, cumin, meat spice, and sugar.
Put frank in hot dog bun. Put a half slice of bacon alongside the frank. Put a big spoonful of onion/pineapple/sugar mixture on top of everything.
TIDBITS
1) And to those who think government studies don’t reek of excitement . . .
“There were a number of significant items from the USDA Frankfurter Study. Notably, the USDA-ARS package rinse method, developed to facilitate this study, was six times more effective at recovering Listeria from frankfurter packages than the currently approved USDA-FSIS method.”
2) Take a deep breath. Drink some ice-cold root beer and sit down until your heart stops beating like a jackhammer. Okay?
“Using the ARS method, analyses of the 32,800 one-pound packages indicated 543 or 1.6% (range = 0 to 16% for the 12 plants) tested positive for L monocytogenes.” And so on.
– USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Eastern Regional Research Center (ERRC) Spring 2003. “Microbial Food Safety Research Unit: Special Projects Team at ERRC.”
3) Even the attribution to this article is sexy.
4) I found this article by Googling “fun facts about hot dogs.”
– 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.
Paul De Lancey's Blog 