I write a lot of fiction but sometimes I have to take my hat off to life. Click on http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/south/10010615198552/police-assault-prompted-by-too-many-pickles/
to see more about the woman who went beserk over pickles in her sandwich. She’s gonna be famous.
Colombian Entree
PAPAS CHORREADAS
(Potatoes with cheese and tomato sauce)
INGREDIENTS
5 red potatoes
1 small white onion
5 Roma tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon cilantro
1/2 tablespoon flour
1 cup heavy cream
6 ounces mozzarella
PREPARATION
Heat water on high temperature in large pot. While water comes to boil: wash potatoes, mince onion, and dice tomatoes. Put potatoes in boiling water. Cook on medium-high heat for about 30 minutes or until potatoes are soft to the fork. Remove potatoes.
While potatoes are cooking, add olive oil, onion, chili powder, cumin, and cilantro. Sauté on medium-high heat for about 5-to-10 minutes or until onions are tender. Stir frequently. Mix in flour. Add heavy cream and mozzarella. Cook for about 5 minutes until cheese melts and sauce boils. Stir frequently. Remove from heat. (Note, the culinary arts concern themselves exclusively with solid and melted or liquid cheese. I have yet to see a cookbook or recipe that calls for gaseous cheese. Imagine being able to breathe cheese. Warning! Cheese air is really hot.)
Cut potatoes in half. Pour sauce evenly over each potato.
What do you think of this recipe?
TIDBITS
1) In English, chorreadas means “to pour.”
2) And papa is Spanish for potato.
3) While papa is Latin for pope.
4) Don’t confuse your Latin with your Spanish. Pope Francis is not Potato Francis nor does Papas Chorreadas mean Pope To Pour.
5) Saint Francis showed the world how it was good to be poor.
6) I like to think Saint Francis would have liked this dish. He’s one of my favorite saints.
– 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.
All major American brands of ketchup now contain high-fructose corn syrup. Ugh. It is up to this great country’s citizens to rectify this horror. As I mentioned in my last post, I have pledged myself to develop a truly tasty ketchup recipe sans bad stuff. Here are photos of my first effort.
(Okay, I really wish I could add scratch-and-taste media to this post. Maybe in a few years.)
– 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.
Roma tomatoes – They gave their all Bacon-cheese hot dog with ketchup
Ketchup from new recipe with other fixings.
American Entree
INGREDIENTS
1 head iceberg lettuce
4 hard-boiled eggs
1 1/2 cups Four Mexican cheeses
1 cup ranch dressing
PREPARATION
Wash the head of lettuce. Peel off any wilted leaves.
Chop up the head of lettuce. (Can you “chop down” a head of lettuce?) This is one of the few times where chopping by hand is far preferred to a food processor. A salad shouldn’t have minuscule strips of lettuce.
Mash or dice the peeled hard-boiled eggs. Again, go for medium size bits. Add the egg bits to the lettuce while they are still warm. Mix in the cheese and dressing.
Simple and tasty.
TIDBITS
1) People from Wisconsin are called “cheese heads.”
2) Nowhere are folks known as “egg-salad heads.”
3) I used to bicycle from Madison, Wisconsin to the tiny town of Paoli to get fresh Swiss cheese.
4) Oh, and I bicycled back, too.
– 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.
Mexican Entree
INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
1/2 medium onion
2 garlic cloves
1/2 jalapeno pepper
4 ounces diced green chiles
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1/2 teaspoon cumin
3 ounces Cotija cheese
3 ounces grated Four Mexican cheeses
6 to 8 hamburger buns
lettuce
PREPARATION
Mince the onion, cloves, and jalapeno pepper. Make 6 to 8 thin strips of Cotija cheese.
Mix ground beef, onion, cloves, pepper, green chiles, coriander, and cumin by hand. Sorry, but this really is the best way to blend these ingredients. (And your dog will really appreciate you petting him immediately after this step. By the way, have you ever met a dog called Fido or Spot in real life?)
Make 6 to 8 patties. Cook in frying pan until meat browns. Put a strip of Cotija cheese and sprinkle grated Mexican cheese on each patty. Fry patties until cheese begins to melt. Don’t cook longer as cheese will seep onto pan and the grease in the cheese will begin to separate out.
Toast hamburger buns in toaster or in frying pan after patties are removed. You will need to be vigilant with the buns if you choose this latter method as the buns can burn quickly.
Serve with lettuce. Arriba!
1) “Arriba!” was the favorite word of Speedy Gonzalez, the cartoon mouse.
2) Speedy Gonzalez always defeated El Pussy Cato, who had a remarkably flat learning curve.
3) Mexicans drive fast. My wife learned to drive in Guadalajara. The drivers here don’t scare her a bit.
4) I learned to drive in the huge parking lot of the Santa Anita Racetrack.
5) We are always told to buckle up, but when I was growing up there were no seat belts in the back seat.
6) I have never driven in Mexico. Mexicans are grateful.
– 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.
Mexican Appetizer
INGREDIENTS (makes about 18 muffins)
1/2 cup grated Four Mexican cheeses
7 ounces diced green chiles
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup yellow corn meal
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups milk
2 eggs lightly beaten
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons butter
SPECIAL EQUIPMENT
baking cups
cupcake pan
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put all ingredients in large mixing bowl. Combine ingredients with blender set on “cake.” Put baking cups in cupcake pan. Pour mix into baking cups until each cup is 2/3 full.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until fork inserted in muffin comes out clean and easily. Remove baking cups filled with muffin and let cool for five minutes.
Spread butter on top of muffin if desired.
TIDBITS
1) I’ve always enjoyed the phrase, “eggs lightly beaten.” Are there recipes with the phrases, “eggs thoroughly defeated,” or “eggs humiliated and thirsting for revenge?”
2) My baking powder’s brand is Clabber GirlTM. My mother used this brand. My grandmother used it as well. Clabber GirlTM has been around since 1879. Their website boasts of a peanut-free facility. Why would there be peanuts in a baking-powder factory?
3) However, Southwest AirlinesTM informs us the peanuts in their tiny snack bags are made in a facility where peanuts are present.
– 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.
Mexican Entree
SAUCE INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh cilantro (4 tablespoons more later)
1 16 ounce can green chile enchilada sauce
1/2 tablespoon basil
4 tablespoons parsley
FILLING INGREDIENTS
1 fresh green chile
2 jalapeno peppers
1 green bell pepper
1 medium onion
3 garlic cloves
4 tablespoons fresh cilantro (1 1/2 tablespoon more earlier)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 cups grated Four Mexican cheeses
OTHER INGREDIENTS
12 corn tortillas (You might want more in case some fall apart)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
no-stick cooking spray
You might need two baking dishes
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Use no-stick cooking spray on baking dish.
SAUCE PREPARATION
Dice 1 1/2 tablespoons cilantro. Add cilantro, green enchilada sauce, basil, and parsley to first saucepan and bring to boil on high heat. Then simmer on warm heat for 5 to 10 minutes or until sauce thickens. Set aside.
FILLING PREPARATION
Remove seeds from green chile, jalapeno peppers, and green bell pepper. Dice green chile, jalapeno peppers, green bell pepper, onion, garlic, and 4 tablespoons cilantro. Use second saucepan to saute green chile, jalapeno pepper, green bell pepper, onion, garlic, cilantro, and cumin in vegetable oil for 5 minutes or until onion is soft.
TORTILLAS PREPARATION
Heat the tortillas for about 20 seconds in a microwave to make them easier to roll. Pour enough oil to cover the sauce pan. Dip one tortilla at a time in the hot oil. Cook for about 5 seconds.
USE TONGS TO DO THIS. You really don’t want your hands near searing oil. USE A BACK BURNER to heat the tortillas. Repeated dipping tortillas into hot oil can result in hot oil splattering on you. (While you scurry to the faucet for blessed cool relief, be thankful you live on a planet where 71 percent of the surface is water. You’d be out of luck on Mercury. No water utility companies there.)
Have a plate just a few inches away for your heated tortilla. It’s distressing to find out how quickly a hot, oil-dripping tortilla can fall apart.
Cover each heated tortilla with a paper towel to absorb oil.
FINAL PREPARATION
Dip tortilla in sauce. Add about 1/12 of the fillings’ ingredients plus grated Four Mexican cheeses on top of each tortilla. Roll each tortilla and put it against the side of the baking dish or as close to another rolled tortilla as possible. Hold the tortillas together with a toothpick if desired. (Be sure to have the toothpick as conspicuous as possible to avoid biting into it later.)
Pour the sauce evenly over the tortillas. Sprinkle any remaining ingredients on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until any cheese on top bubbles.
TIDBITS
1) Enchilada means “served with chile pepper.”
2) My aunts fled from their ranch before the forces of Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution. One of them made enchiladas from scratch. Pancho Villa was not after them for their enchiladas, only their ranchero.
3) Every year Las Cruces, New Mexico makes the world’s biggest enchilada.
4) The Nixon administration was fond of the expression, “the whole enchilada.”
5) “Enchiladas Suizas” means “Swiss enchiladas.” Swiss immigrants to Mexico topped their enchiladas with cream-based sauces. Swiss immigrants in Mexico, who knew?
– 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
INGREDIENTS
3 brown or russet potatoes
1 cup cooked ham
1/4 cup grated Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup grated Swiss cheese
1/4 cup grated Four-Mexican cheese
1/2 medium onion
1 cup sour cream
5 ounces condensed cream of celery soup (about 1/2 can)
1/2 green bell pepper
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Meat MagicTM spice
1/8 teaspoon thyme
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 tablespoon Parmesan cheese
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Boil 3 potatoes for about 30 minutes.
While potatoes are boiling, cut cooked ham into 1/4-inch cubes. Mince small onion. (If you wish to anthropomorphize the onion, call it, “Jim.”) Dice green bell pepper after scooping out its seeds.
In a large mixing bowl, combine ham, Cheddar cheese, Swiss cheese, Four-Mexican cheese, Jim (the minced onion), sour cream, condensed cream of celery soup, green bell pepper, flour, mayonnaise, butter, salt, meat spice, thyme, and black pepper. Mix by hand or masher.
Peel skin from potatoes. This should be easy after you let the taters sit for a few minutes. Cut potatoes into thin slices.
Add potatoes to ingredients already in mixing bowl. Mix again with fork. Transfer to 9″-round baking or casserole dish. Sprinkle top with Parmesan cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 60 minutes.
TIDBITS
1) It just doesn’t seem right that “mayonnaise” is spelled with two n’s.
2) French fries are called frites in Holland. When I lived there, you were given a choice of met or zonder, with or without mayonnaise. The mayonnaise was spicy and tasted quite good, the Dutch ketchup not so much.
3) You also couldn’t get root beer in Europe for love or money. Why? Why? Didn’t we save Europe in World War II?
4) And as far as I know, you can’t get European potato chips that aren’t dripping with oil.
5) And don’t even look for good chewing gum.
6) Of course, if you want steak au poivre vert or a good rijstaffel, I heartily recommend going there.
– 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.
Moroccan Entree
INGREDIENTS
1 medium yellow onion
1 tablespoon Berbere spices (See recipe for BERBERE SPICE MIX INGREDIENTS, if you can’t find the mix)
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon parsley flakes
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
8 buns or 16 multi-grain bread slices
1/2 head lettuce
1 cup grated Mozzarella cheese
no-stick spray
UTENSILS
Electric skillet
Spice grinder (If needed to make your own Berbere spice mix.)
PREPARATION
Peel and dice onion. Put Berbere spices, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, coriander, ginger, parsley, pepper, salt, and ground beef in mixing bowl. Pretend you’re making the mortar for the mighty Egyptian pyramids as you mix everything together with your hands. (Edible pyramids. What a concept.) Make 8 hamburger patties.
Use non-stick spray on skillet. Put 4 patties in pan. Heat patties at 350 degrees in skillet for 2 to 3 minutes. Flip patties over and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes. Don’t squash the patties with your spatula. This forces the juices out of the patties. (I also don’t recommend flattening oranges with your spatula for a similar if not more spectacular reason.) Patties should have no pink remaining. Repeat to make 8 patties.
Toast buns. While buns are toasting, tear lettuce into bun-size pieces by hand.
Put a patty on each bun bottom. Top with lettuce and cheese. Put bun top and, violà, you have a burger so tasty you’ll want to conquer all of North Africa just to bring this dish’s culinary greatness to all its peoples.
TIDBITS
1) Most world conquerors, such as Napoleon, Cortes, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and Julius Caesar didn’t bring much culinary enlightenment to their defeated nations.
2) Pretty much just death by the thousands and enslavement.
3) What would it have hurt them to give their newly enslaved peoples a wondrous culinary novelty in compensation?
4) Oh sure, there are such things as Napoleons and Caesar salad.
5) But those military geniuses didn’t come up with them.
6) The Caesar salad was invented last century at Caesar’s hotel in Tijuana Mexico.
7) Indeed, it is also verifiable that Julius Caesar and all of the Julian-Claudian Emperors had nothing to do with the comedic brilliance of Sid Caesar.
8) Frederick the Great did encourage potato production in his Kingdom of Prussia, the precursor to modern Germany. The mighty tuber enabled Prussia to feed all its people even though its lands were repeatedly invaded by its enemies.
9) To this day, one may still buy French Fries in Germany.
10) Well done, Frederick.
– 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.
Mexican Entree
INGREDIENTS
8 small flour tortillas
2 cups grated four Mexican cheeses
1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon melted butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
8 tablespoons salsa
4 tablespoons sour cream
PREPARATION
Dice red bell pepper, green bell pepper, and cilantro.
Mix melted butter and vegetable oil and coat one side of each tortilla. Put the oil sides face down. Sprinkle cheese, peppers, cilantro, salsa, and sour cream evenly over four tortillas.
Put the four remaining tortillas oil side face up on top of the ingredient-covered tortillas.
SPRAY ANY PAN OR COOKING DISH LIBERALLY WITH NO-STICK COOKING SPRAY. If not, your quesadilla may very well stick to the pan causing it to explode in an amazing spectrum of flying colors when you try to remove it or flip it over for even browning.
Use small tortillas until you have become quite adept at flipping hot foods. A quesadilla that is much bigger than your spatula may indeed result in the quesadilla falling apart or in melted cheese oozing down your wrist. (Your adoring children will learn new words as you plunge your burning hand under the blessed cold-water faucet. They’ll proudly repeat them at school. You’ll get a call from the principal.) Size matters.
Grill or fry the quesadillas until golden brown, or about 90 seconds per side. As always, pay careful attention as the browning period is swiftly followed by burning. You may also bake them in an oven at 400 degrees for 5 to 10 minutes. Baking, however, quickly uses up a lot of dishes.
1) The Spanish language considers “ll” to be a letter.
2) A meteorite striking Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula could very well have resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs.
3) Tidbits 1 and 2 are apparently unrelated.
4) Chocolate came from Mexico.
5) My wife said this was the best quesadilla she ever had. And she cleaned up the cyclone of dishes made by this recipe.
– 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 