My grandma took cooking and cleaning seriously.
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.
Using the oven can be daunting, if not downright terrifying.
“The oven is so confusing, ” I hear you say. “Won’t someone please tell us how to use it?”
I’m glad you asked. Yes, indeed the oven can be intimidating with all those dials.
However, you’ll bake an excellent dish everytime if follow these basic steps.
1) Preheat the oven.
2) Put the food to be baked in the oven. (This is a critical step or so a friend told me.)
3) Take the food out. (Also important, unless of course, you’re trying to make charcoal and black smoke.)
There you have it, you chef, you.
– 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.
My Grandma Anna was a fine lady, resilient, and a strong culinary influence.
– 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.
People keep asking me, for no apparent reason, how to win a woman’s heart.
This is an easy one. I can’t figure why there are so many books on the subject.
So, how would I a woo a woman?
Simple, cook for her. A well-cooked meal will make a woman’s heart flutter.
Continue to prepare her dinners fit for the gods. She will love you devotedly all your life.
And oh, as my Grandma Anna used to say, “An outstanding chef will leave the kitchen as clean at the end as when he started.”
So if you clean up as you go, your everlasting love will be the greatest of all time. Just like Romeo and Juliet.
But they both killed themselves. Oh well, maybe you should make a little mess. Or just eat out.
Bother.
– 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.
INGREDIENTS
½ cup milk
6 tablespoons semolina
3 eggs
3 tablespoons melted butter
5 tablespoons sugar
1 pound curds
¼ cup hard bread crumbs
SPECIAL UTENSILS
electric beater
8″ * 8″ casserole dish or casserole dish
PREPARATION
Serves 9. Takes 1 hour.
Add milk to medium mixing bowl. Add semolina. Set aside to let semolina swell. Separate eggs. Add butter and sugar to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until sugar dissolves. Add egg yolks. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Crumble curds, if necessary. Add curds. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended.
Preheat oven to 370 degrees. Add milk/semolina to curd mix in large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add egg whites to small bowl. Use electric beater set on high. Whip egg whites until they form stiff beaks.
Spread bread crumbs into baking dish. Carefully pour semolina/curd mix into baking dish. Gently shake baking dish, or smooth with spatula, until mix is level. Carefully spoon egg whites onto semolina/curd mix. Bake for 30 minutes or until mix rises, hardens, and turn golden brown, or stick a toothpick in the center of the curd mix. If nothing sticks, it is ready. Serve warm.
TIDBITS
1) The game of dominoes remains the world’s most relaxing game. Sure, a nap loosens you up like nothing else can. But suppose you want it all? Let’s say you want to stay awake AND chill out. This is why we play dominoes. Modern dominoes uses black, solid tiles with white dots on them.
2) But back in 1919, the Lithuanian chef, Andrius Balkus, noticed that a square of his Fluffy Curd Cake looked like a gaming tile. Also, the tops of some of the squares seemed similar to each other while different to the rest. His Fluffy Curd CakesTM used the same rules as modern dominoes, But problems arose right away. People argued constantly about what the tops of the squares looked like. Also, game after game ended when hungry players ate the curd squares. We now play dominoes.
– 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.
INGREDIENTS
2½ pounds tuna steaks
2 bay leaves
½ cup brown sugar
1 cup dry white wine
¼ cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon pepper
1 tablespoon soy sauce
vegetable oil
cherry or apple wood chips
*4 steaks of 10 ounces or 5 steaks of 8 ounces. Steaks should be about 1½” thick.
SPECIAL UTENSILS
smoker
meat thermometer
Serves 4. Takes 6 hours.
PREPARATION
Add bay leaves, brown sugar, dry white wine, lemon juice, pepper, and soy sauce to large
mixing bowl. Blend thoroughly with whisk. Add tuna. Make sure to add enough water to cover tuna steaks. Cover and put in refrigerator for 3 hours. 15 minutes before steaks have finished marinating, preheat smoker to 220 degrees.
Brush grills in smoker with vegetable oil. This prevents the fish from sticking. Remove tuna steaks from mixing bowl and pat dry with paper towels. Place tuna on wire rack. Put steaks and rack in refrigerator for 45 minutes.
When temperature of smoker reaches 220 degrees, place tuna steaks on grills. Smoke tuna until its internal temperature reaches your desired temperature. (Rare = 110 degrees, medium rare = 125 to 135, medium = 140 to 145, well done = 145 degrees, USDA minimum safe temperature = 145 degrees.) It should take 2 hours, depending on your smoker. The tuna steaks turn light brown and flake easily.
TIDBITS
1) This dish takes a long time punctuated by intermittent checking. May I suggest reading an engrossing novel, by a lake. Chill out, you magnificent chef.
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.
INGREDIENTS
2 celery stalks
3 dry red chiles or Thai chiles
3 scallions or green onions
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1½ tablespoons light soy sauce or soy sauce
½ teaspoon sugar
1 pound shrimp, pealed, deveined, 31-40 count
⅔ cup roasted cashews*
¼ cup water chestnuts, sliced
* = Roast plain cashews with 2 teaspoons vegetable oil in pan or air fryer, if you can’t find roasted cashews.
Serves 4. Takes 40 minutes.
PREPARATION
Dice celery,. Add enough water to cover celery to small pot. Bring water to boil using high heat. Add celery. Boil celery for 30 seconds. Drain and set aside.
Dice chiles, and scallions. Add vegetable oil to large pot. Heat at medium-high heat until a bit of scallion starts to dance. Add scallion, light soy sauce, and sugar. Sauté at medium-high heat for 2 minutes. Stir frequently.
Reduce heat to medium. Add shrimp, cashews, chile, and water chestnuts. and sauté for 3 minutes or until shrimp turns pink or orange. Stir frequently. Add celery. Simmer for 2 minutes. Stir frequently.
TIDBITS
1) I wrote this recipe assuming a person would be reading it, that a person would be making this dish come to life.
2) But there’s absolutely nothing in the recipe referring to a human chef.
3) There’s even no mention of the cook needing an opposable thumbs. So, if you’re quite the clever sheep, clever enough to read recipes in English, then go for it.
4) The title could also be interpreted as telling a shrimp to stir fry a cashew.
5) Or perhaps this stir fry is meant for a chef named Shrimp Cashew and no one else.
– 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.
INGREDIENTS
1⅓ cups sugar
¾ cup water
½ cup orange juice
1 pound cranberries
Makes 3¼ cups. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.
PREPARATION
Add sugar, orange juice, and water to pot. Simmer at low-medium heat for 5 minutes or until sugar dissolves completely. Stir frequently. Add cranberries. Cook at medium heat for 15 minutes or until cranberries crack open and sauce is dark and thick. Remove sauce from heat.(Sauce should thicken more as it cools.) Cool in refrigerator for 1 hour or until ready. Goes well on poultry, pork, beef, and fish.
TIDBITS
1) Cranberries are good for you in all sorts of ways. I forget some of them. Apparently, cranberries don’t help the memory much.
2) The Picts and Celts in Ancient Britain were fierce warriors. They got their energy and stamina from eating cranberries. If the these ancient fighters ate too many cranberries they got tummy aches. They also found oodles and oodles of excess energy coursing through their veins. They became too hot. The Picts and Celts had to let some of their escape or they’d collapse.
3) So the first Britons took off all their clothes to cool off. Being nude, they painted their bodies blue for modesty’s sake. Then they charged the opposing army with a ferocity that’s never again been equaled.
4) But they didn’t wear hats or paint their heads. The skin on their heads turned red under the hot unforgiving sun. The invading Romans their skulls, crania, looked as red as the cranberry that the natives ate. So, the Romans called this red berry, the cranberry.
5) I almost forgot, a Roman chef, Quintus Cato, looked at the cranberry sauce in his mason jar and thought, “The mason jar is much taller than it’s wide. Is it possible to build like that as well?” He wrote of this idea to his pal, Emperor Vespasian of Rome. The energetic Emperor immediately ordered construction of the Colosseum, so named because it’s colossal in size. Now you know
– 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.
Become a restaurant chef! Become a home cook! People love good food. People love people cooking for them. Yes, we all go wild for good cooks. A fancy, homemade, gourmet meal will forever impress your date. And chefs are the hotties of romance, as the picture below proves.
Win your true love. Learn to cook. Don’t delay.
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.
Here I am, ready to start the day in my work pajamas.
Here I am, being a chef.
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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