Posts Tagged With: cinnamon

Sumac Chicken (Musakhan) From Palestine

Posted on December 11, 2022 by pauldelancey

Palestinian Entree

SUMAC CHICKEN
(Musakhan)

INGREDIENTS

¾ teaspoon cardamom
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
¾ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sumac
1½ tablespoons lemon juice
3 pounds chicken breasts
4 medium red or yellow onions
2 tablespoons olive oil (2 more tablespoons later)
2 tablespoons olive oil
⅓ cup chicken stock
no-stick spray
12 ounces flatbread (taboun, lavash, or pita)
¼ cup slivered almonds

SPECIAL UTENSIL

9″ x 13″ casserole dish

Serves 6. Takes 2 hours 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and sumac to mixing bowl. Combine with fork. Add lemon juice. Mix with fork until well blended. Add chicken breasts. Mix with hands until chicken is well coated. Cover and marinate in refrigerator for 2 hours.

While chicken marinates, dice onions. Add onion and 2 tablespoons olive oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Remove and reserve onion. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil and marinated chicken to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until chicken breasts brown. Flip chicken breasts once. Add chicken stock and blend with spoon. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 15 minutes. Stir occasionally. Remove from heat.

Spray casserole dish with no-stick spray. Add flatbreads to casserole dish so that they overlap. Spoon the sautéed onion evenly over flatbread. Place chicken breasts on top of onion. Ladle pan juices over chicken. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Sprinkle slivered almonds over chicken. Bake at 350 degrees for another 5 minutes or until chicken is done and flatbread turns golden brown.

TIDBITS

1) Sumac Chicken backwards in Nekcihc Camus.

2) Amy Camus backwards is Yma Sumac.

3) Yma Sumac has a star on Hollywood Boulevard.

4) I’ve seen her star.

5) You might think that she herself put her star in the sidewalk of Hollywood Boulevard and through mystical powers led me to it. Years later, I wrote up this event in this blog and in a recipe in a cookbook. Now, you’ve read this.

6) Then a time machine showed up at my door. Ms. Sumac had set it to do this.

7) I got in. The time machine went back to the time when I saw her star on the Boulevard.

8) This sort of thing happens all the time.

9) It’s almost a cliche.

10) But wait! There’s more.

11) After I hopped out of the time machine, it went back to the 1950s when she showed this enthusiastic blog to band leaders.

12) Suitably impressed, she gained one singing gig after another, specializing in exotica music.

13) Heads of recording studios saw her and heard her as well. Whiz, bam, bing, she put out one fantastic album after another.

14) She had made it big.

15) Big enough to rate a star on Hollywood.

16) It just goes to show you what a little pluck and a time machine can do.

17) Of course, it didn’t hurt that she had a range over four octaves

18) In 1946, the Peruvian government formally recognized her claim to be descended

Palestinian Entree

SUMAC CHICKEN√
(Musakhan)

INGREDIENTS

¾ teaspoon cardamom
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
¾ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sumac
1½ tablespoons lemon juice
3 pounds chicken breasts
4 medium red or yellow onions
2 tablespoons olive oil (2 more tablespoons later)
2 tablespoons olive oil
⅓ cup chicken stock
no-stick spray
12 ounces flatbread (taboun, lavash, or pita)
¼ cup slivered almonds

SPECIAL UTENSIL

9″ x 13″ casserole dish

Serves 6. Takes 2 hours 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and sumac to mixing bowl. Combine with fork. Add lemon juice. Mix with fork until well blended. Add chicken breasts. Mix with hands until chicken is well coated. Cover and marinate in refrigerator for 2 hours.

While chicken marinates, dice onions. Add onion and 2 tablespoons olive oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Remove and reserve onion. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil and marinated chicken to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until chicken breasts brown. Flip chicken breasts once. Add chicken stock and blend with spoon. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 15 minutes. Stir occasionally. Remove from heat.

Spray casserole dish with no-stick spray. Add flatbreads to casserole dish so that they overlap. Spoon the sautéed onion evenly over flatbread. Place chicken breasts on top of onion. Ladle pan juices over chicken. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Sprinkle slivered almonds over chicken. Bake at 350 degrees for another 5 minutes or until chicken is done and flatbread turns golden brown.

TIDBITS

1) Sumac Chicken backwards in Nekcihc Camus.

2) Amy Camus backwards is Yma Sumac.

3) Yma Sumac has a star on Hollywood.Boulevard.

4) I’ve seen her star.

5) You might think that she herself put her star in the sidewalk of Hollywood Boulevard and through mystical powers led me to it. Years later, I wrote up this event in this blog and in a recipe in a cookbook. Now, you’ve read this.

6) Then a time machine showed up at my door. Ms. Sumac had set it to do this.

7) I got in. The time machine went back to the time when I saw her star on the Boulevard.

8) This sort of thing happens all the time.

9) It’s almost a cliche.

10) But wait! There’s more.

11) After I hopped out of the time machine, it went back to the 1950s when she showed this enthusiastic blog to band leaders.

12) Suitably impressed, she gained one singing gig after another, specializing in exotica music.

13) Heads of recording studios saw her and heard her as well. Whiz, bam, bing, she put out one fantastic album after another.

14) She had made it big.

15) Big enough to rate a star on Hollywood.

16) It just goes to show you what a little pluck and a time machine can do.

17) Of course, it didn’t hurt that she had a range over four octaves

18) In 1946, the Peruvian government formally recognized her claim to be descended Athualpa, the last Incan Emperor. You might think that her heritage propelled into stardom, But you’d be wrong; the influence yielded by the once mighty Incans had been negligible for over 400 years..

19) No, she had made it big from her drive, her voice, my blog, and a time machine. Proof you cannot deny.

20) Yma died in 2008, at the end of her life.

 

– 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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Egyptian Roz Bel Laban

Posted on February 24, 2022 by pauldelancey

Egyptian Dessert

ROZ BEL LABAN

INGREDIENTS

1 cup rice
2¼ cups water
3½ cups whole milk
¾ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon allspice
½ teaspoon orange blossom water or vanilla
½ teaspoon rose water, orange blossom water, or vanilla
½ teaspoon cinnamon

Serves 6. Takes 1 hours 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add rice and water to pot, Set heat to low-medium and simmer for 12 minutes. Stir frequently to prevent burning. (Always, in this recipe, add water or milk if the liquid in the pot dries up.)

While rice simmers, add milk and sugar to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add to pot. Simmer at medium heat for 12 minutes or until mixture starts to thicken. Stir constantly. Add allspice, orange blossom water, and rose water. Simmer at medium heat. Stir constantly until mixture has thickened and rices softens and becomes creamy. Gently spoon rice mixture into individual serving bowls. Chill in refrigerator for 1 hour or until pudding sets. Sprinkle cinnamon over each bowl.

TIDBITS

1) Roz Augureau’s sparkling eyes and beautiful face bedazzled men everywhere. So much so that men made rash decisions. In 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II and President Poincare attended a society ball at the same time as Roz. The German and French leaders both professed undying love for her. Neither ruler would clear the field for the belle Roz. Words were said. Poincare slapped Wilhelm. The Kaiser had the choice of weapons. If only he had picked pistols, instead of millions of soldiers as the duelllng weapons, the world would have been spared the horrors of the First World War.

2) But he didn’t and anyway, hindsight is 20/20. However, the French could forgive Roz Augureau for starting the War to End All Wars. Afier all, “L’amour, toujours l’amour.” They could not ignore, however, her effect on French cuisine. Every time the Belle Roz sashayed by restaurants, the besotted chefs made mistakes. It all came to a head in 1915 when the very sight of Roz so charmed the chef making this very dish, that he unwittingly substituted sardine water for vanilla. This atrocity outraged the French nation. What, if anything, was France fighting for if not for the purity of its cuisine? So, France passed a law banning the belle Roz from walking by any kitchen. In honor of this law, Le Monde called this dish, “Roz Belle La Ban.” Later this became, Roz Bel Laban.

 

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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Quinoa Api

Posted on December 2, 2021 by pauldelancey

Bolivian Breakfast

QUINOA API

INGREDIENTS

1¼ cups quinoa
2¾ cups milk
2⅔ cups water
1 cinnamon stick
1 tablespoon honey
2½ tablespoons sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

SPECIAL UTENSIL

fine-mesh colander

Serves 4. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Rinse quinoa in colander. Add quinoa and 2⅔ cups water to pot. Bring to boil using medium heat. Stir enough to keep quinoa from burning. Add milk. Bring to boil using medium heat. Stir constantly Reduce heat to low. Add cinnamon stick, honey, sugar, and vanilla extract. Simmer for 35 minutes or until mixture thickens and quinoa cracks open. Stir enough to keep milk and quinoa from burning. Remove cinnamon stick. Serves in bowls.

TIDBITS

1) According to Colombian culinary mythology, quinoa was given us 7,123.26 years ago by the condor god, Yclept.. Yclept also gave them the secret of planting and harvesting, thus freeing the Andean people from hunter gathering. Hunter gathering is much the same thing as driving around from one supermarket to another looking for mocha creamer for your coffee.

2) But with Ycelpt’s help, the Andeans always had quinoa, a great source of nutrition, right at home. This is like winning a refrigerator at a raffle. But there’s more. You open the fridge to see dozens of coffee mocha creamer bottles inside. You are freed, freed I tell you, from searching dispiritedly all over town for coffee mocha creamers.

3) So in gratitude, the Andeans switched from worshiping, Qi the god of hunter gathering to Yclept. Since quinoa looks like the stars, the Andeans worshiped them. This ticked off Qi, who tried to blot out the stars with milk. “Na, na, na, poo, poo,” said Yclept. “You didn’t throw enough milk. You only tossed enough to make the Milky Way.”

4) Yclept was right. We can still see the stars. Whew! We can still spot the Milky way. But we humans eventually got an immensely popular candy bar out of it. The Milky Way gave the Andeans the idea for this Quinoa Api. It just shows you how good things can come out of a god’s tantrum.

 

– 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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Xawaash Spice Mix

Posted on November 8, 2021 by pauldelancey

Somali Appetizer

XAWAASH SPICE MIX

INGREDIENTS

1½ inches cinnamon stick
3 cardamom pods
1 teaspoon cloves
4½ tablespoons coriander seeds
4½ tablespoons cumin seeds
1½ tablespoons peppercorns
3½ teaspoons turmeric

Makes ¾ cup. Takes 25 minutes

PREPARATION

Put cinnamon stick in plastic bag. Hit cinnamon with something hard. Put cinnamon pieces, cardamom pods, cloves, coriander seeds, cumin seeds in pan. Toast at medium heat for 3 minutes or until these ingredients become aromatic. Do not burn. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.

Add toasted ingredients to spice grinder. Grind until you get a completely fine powder.. Add powder and turmeric to small mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Store in airtight jar. Should keep for 4 months.

TIDBITS

1) In the 11th century an architect named Diotisalvi made plans for a tower in Pisa. Workers built his tower lying flat on the ground. It simply remained to put the tower upright. But Diotisalvi went home for lunch, suffered an attack of amnesia, and never came back. So the workers tried raising the tower with a catapult, a trebuchet, with their arms, and blowing underneath it. Nothing worked. Then they hooked up 1,000 horses with ropes and lifted the tower up. Hooray! But oh no, the workers let the horses go too far forward. The tower listed at a four-degree angle!

3) “It’s mighty hard to see if a tower hundreds of feet tall is at a 90-degree angle,” said the foreman. A surprisingly erudite peasant said, “He needed to compare the angle of the real tower with that of a miniature, 90-degree wax tower. It’s easy to see if a small wax tower is at 90-degrees.” After that, architects would check to see if he “has a wax tower.” This shortened to “has a wax.”

3) Pisan anagramists celebrated this discovery by naming the new Arabian spice, Xawaash. 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.

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Applesauce

Posted on April 6, 2021 by pauldelancey

American Appetizer

APPLESAUCE

INGREDIENTS

8 apples
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1¼ cups water
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
⅓ cup white or brown sugar

SPECIAL UTENSILS

food processor
2 mason or other airtight jars. (Enough for 4-to-6 cups.)

Makes 4-to-6 cups depending on the size of the apples.. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Core and peel apples. Cut each apple into 8 wedges. Put apple wedges, lemon juice, and water into large pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Reduce heat to low. Simmer for 20 minutes or until apple wedges soften and start to fall apart. Add cinnamon, ground cloves, and sugar. Stir with spoon until sugar melts completely.

Add contents of pot to food processor. Blend until you obtain you get applesauce with the consistency that you desire.

TIDBITS

1) You can see a swirl in the applesauce shown in the picture above. Doesn’t it look like a whirlpool? Can you imagine what applesauce would look like if it filled a bowl five miles wide? Poe knows.

2) For In 1841 an explosion rocked Thorvald Applesauce Factory. An avalanche of applesauce streaked down the hill in the nearby Maelström whirpool. The force of the raging applesauce combined with the centrifugal of the Maelström to combine the mother of all eddies, an out of control whirlpool that sucked all ships that came too close.

3) On of those ships was the SS Bunion. The Bunion shattered as it careened off the water walls of the eye of the massive vortex. Many died in the Maelström. Passenger Edgar Allan Poe did not. He survived by clutching to a wooden beam. Poe described his ordeal in his famous story, “Descent into the Maelström.” Poe did omit any mention of the applesauce tsunami, holding that nobody would believe it. However, the Norwegians believed and founded the prestigious Eplesaus Katastrofe Institutt to develop measures to forestall the enormous destructive power of unleashed applesauce.

– 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.

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Koeksisters

Posted on July 31, 2018 by pauldelancey

South African Dessert

KOEKSISTERS

INGREDIENTS – SYRUP

1⅔ cups water
1 cinnamon stick
1¼ teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon ginger
1 tablespoon lemon juice
4⅓ cups sugar

INGREDIENTS – DOUGH

2 tablespoons baking powder
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
3 tablespoons butter, softened
½ cup milk
6 cups vegetable oil

Makes 18 braided doughnuts. Takes 20 minutes plus 4 hours plus 1 hour 45 minutes.

PREPARATION – SYRUP

Add all syrup ingredients to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir enough to keep sugar from burning on the bottom. Reduce heat to warm and simmer for 10 minutes or until syrupy. Stir enough to keep sugar from burning on the bottom. Remove cinnamon stick. Cool in refrigerator for 4 hours or overnight.

PREPARATION – DOUGH

Add baking powder, flour, and salt to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Beat egg in cup. Add egg, butter, and milk to bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended. Let dough sit for 1 hour.

Roll out dough to ¼” thickness. Cut dough into strips that are 3″ long and 1½” wide. Cut each strips into 3 ribbons along its length almost all the way to the other end. Leave ribbons connected at one end. Braid the mostly-separated ribbons. Pinch the loose end of the ribbons together. These are your koeksisters.

Add oil to deep pan. The oil should be 1½” high. Turn heat to high. Add little bit of dough. Oil is hot enough when a bit of dough rises to the top. Carefully add koeksisters to pan. (Be careful of splattering oil.) Do not let koeksisters touch. You might have to cook in batches. Deep for 2 minutes or until bottom turns golden brown. Turn over koeksisters and deep fry for 2 more minutes or until new bottom is golden brown. Remove koeksisters and drain immediately on plates covered with paper towels.

While koeksisters drain, remove the pot of refrigerated syrup. Divide this syrup into 2 bowls. (This will prevent all of the syrup from heating up when dipped into by the hot koeksisters.) Immediately after draining the koeksisters, dip the koeksisters into a bowl of syrup. Dip the koeksisters again, this time in the 2nd bowl of syrup. The koeksisters should be slightly crispy on the outside.

TIDBITS

1) These braided doughnuts are crunchy on the outside, but deliciously soft on the inside.

2) However, if you leave koeksisters or any other dough out long enough, it will get hard, real hard.

3) Indeed, long doughnuts such as koeksisters or long Johns are favored by the US Army as these doughnuts’ cylindrical shape enable them to fit into all sorts of artillery pieces.

4) A fourteen-day-old koeksister will eliminate an enemy infantryman.*

5) A month-old long doughnut will knock down a brick building.*

6) A six-month old Long-John will tear a sizable hole into any tank found on the modern battlefield. You don’t want to contemplate what the rock hard doughnut fragments will do to the crew inside.*

7) A year-old koeksister will rip apart even the most hardened concrete bunker.*

8) * = As recorded in the US Army Top Secret* Film #107-223-4X. “Analysis of Doughnut Projectile Effectiveness in the Second Gulf War.”

9) Top Secret films really shouldn’t put on YouTubeTM.

10) A good way to soften a rock-hard doughnut is to place a damp paper towel over it and microwave for one minute.

11) America’s enemies know this. They are busy inventing SDDIs (Strategic Doughnut Defense Systems) to intercept and eliminate our lethal doughnuts.

12) SDDI consists of two different artillery pieces. The first piece fires open microwaves into the path of a flying doughnut. Once near the doughnut, the trajectories of the microwaves are controlled by controllers on the ground.

13) The second artillery piece fires gigantic rolls of damp paper towels. Air friction tears one paper towel after another from the paper roll. The sky becomes a blizzard of paper towels. By sheer force of numbers, every doughnut captured in the flying microwaves will be covered by damp paper towels. Once this happens, ground technicians will microwave the once hard doughnut to harmless softness.

14) There is even talk that the American Doughnut Corps has satellites that can take out incoming nuclear missiles. As of press time, there has been no official confirmation.

Chef Paul

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

Ginger Millet Porridge

Posted on April 29, 2017 by pauldelancey

Equatorial Guinean Breakfast

GINGER MILLET PORRIDGE

INGREDIENTS

1 cup millet flour
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon grated ginger (or ¼ teaspoon ginger powder)
1⅓ cups water
1⅓ cups milk
¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Makes 3 bowls. Takes 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add millet flour, sugar, and ginger to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended. Gradually add water. Stir with fork until well blended. Pour mixture into pot. Cook at medium heat. Gradually add in milk. Stir constantly to avoid lumps and to keep the porridge from sticking to sides of the pot. Cook for 10 minutes or until bubbles form and porridge thickens. Stir constantly with whisk.. Garnish with cinnamon.

TIDBITS

1) Ginger millet porridge is enormously popular wherever gravity exists, present-day Earth, for example.

2) Ginger millet porridge is not popular in space. Without gravity the porridge will simply not stay in the bowl. The authorities at the International Space Station fired their traditionally trained waters. They spent $1.3 billion dollars retraining waiters to carry bowls in weightless conditions without spilling porridge. There is, of course, gravity on Earth. So to simulate conditions of outer space, the waiters had to carry bowls of porridge while a transport plane nose dived. This was a frustrating experience for all involved. But after several thousand nose dives a staff of four waiters emerged who could serve porridge in weightless conditions.

3) Needless to say.

4) It was needless to say, so I didn’t say it.

5) Anyway, the waiters served porridge to the people on the space station. Without spilling! Hurrah!
But when the diners stirred their meal or raised their spoon to their mouth, ginger millet porridge went everywhere.

6) Some point to the $1.3 billion spent on the waiters as an example of government waste. Perhaps so, but that’s just water under the bridge or in this case, ginger millet in the ventilating system.

– 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.

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Bunny Chow

Posted on September 30, 2016 by pauldelancey

South African Entree

BUNNY CHOW

INGREDIENTSbunnychow

1 medium onion
3 medium potatoes
4 cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick
½ teaspoon fennel seeds
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tomatoes
2 pounds chicken breasts or lamb
3 fresh curry leaves
3 tablespoons Durban masala (See recipe)
⅓ cup chicken stock
2 1-lb whole white loaves
1 tablespoon fresh cilantro

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

Dutch oven

PREPARATION

Dice onion. Peel potatoes. Cut potatoes into 1″ cubes. Add onion, potato, cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, fennel seeds, and vegetable oil to Dutch oven. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir constantly. Remove from heat.

Dice tomatoes. Cut chicken into 1″ cubes. Add Durban masala, Add tomato, chicken, curry leaves, and Durban masala to Dutch oven. Cook using medium heat for 5 minutes. Stir frequently. Add chicken stock. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes or until potato is tender and chicken is no longer pink inside. Remove Dutch oven from heat. Discard cinnamon stick.

Slice bread loaf in half along its length. Use sharp knife to cut off most of the soft white bread from each half. Leave ½”-to-1″ of bread crust along the edges and bottoms. (The scooped out bread can be made into bread crumbs.) Ladle potato/tomato/chicken mixture into each hollowed-out loaf half. Garnish with coriander. Repeat for second bread loaf.

TIDBITS

1) Bunnies are naturally fierce fighters. Armies everywhere had them. Napoleon wouldn’t have dreamed of conquering Europe without his corps of bunny irregulars.

2) But you say, “Aha, Napoleon didn’t conquer Europe. See, you’re wrong. Bunnies aren’t so fierce.” Ho, ho, they are. Napoleon won victory after victory up until 1808 with his beserker bunnies.

3) Then, Napoleon invaded Spain. Spain had guerrilla fighters. More importantly, it had battle hardened bunnies. Conquistador bunnies. Bunnies that pushed Moors out of the Iberian positions during the centuries of La Reconquista. Bunnies that had accompanied Cortes to Mexico, Pizarro to Peru, and Albondigas to Greenland. Bunnies that terrified conquered peoples into quiet submission for centuries.

4) The French army never had been on the receiving end of a bunny charge. Never had seen those twitching noses and the unreasoning terror that engendered. Never had to see a sea of bunny tails popping up and down as they stamped toward them . . .

5) where they nibbled your shoes and your shoelaces and so you tripped and your comrades laughed and laughed at you and felt so ashamed that you deserted the army and ran home where you sold sprigs of cilantro which tastes like soap to some people which was okay because all life tasted like soap to you and you spent the rest of your life thinking in run-on sentences.

6) And even if you managed to man up and stand your ground after all that, the bunnies would bite your ankles repeatedly which often hurt, particularly so when their teeth actually broke your skin.

7) Suppose you were a stalwart sort, a man among and you were still fighting bunnies crazed beyond belief by sangria, you’d still have to deal with the bunnies’ powerful rear legs, legs that could kick a potato twenty feet.

8) Imagine. You’ve seen their twitching noses, their bobbing cottontails, had your shoelaces nibbled in two, had your ankles bitten, and now they’re hurting your shins and they won’t stop. And then, and then, they keep your potatoes twenty feet away where they get smooshed in the heat of battle.

9) You have no food. So, you confiscate some local food, some paella perhaps, but your body hasn’t faced Spanish food bacteria. So, now you’re a French soldier in Spain fighting for an emperor who only cares about himself and you have the mother of all stomach aches. You throw thrown your musket and flee.

10) The rest of your comrades see that you, a man among men, are fleeing. They realize the fight is lost. They flee as well. Your army is routed. Bunny-fear demoralizes the other French armies. French forces reel back to France. Allied hordes attack Paris and storm the Montmarte. France capitulates. Your flight from the Spanish battlefield brought all this about.

11) The French Emperor Napoleon gets exiled to Elba. The long-time leader gives a farewell to his Old Guard, “Adieu mes amis, nous sommes battus vaillamment et aurions gagné mais pour ce lecteur de recette et sa peur des lapins.”*

* = “Good buy my friends, we fought valiantly and would have won but for this read reader of recipes and his fear of bunnies. (Sorry, apparently Napoleon’s French is only as good as mine. Weird.)

12) So you’ve changed history. Awesome responsibility, isn’t it?

– 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.

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Omelette Curry

Posted on March 14, 2016 by pauldelancey

Sri Lankan Breakfast

OMELETTE CURRY

INGREDIENTS – OMELETTECurryOmelette-

3 green chiles
1 large onion (1 medium onion later)
3 fresh curry leaves or 3 teaspoons dried leaf fragments or 3 teaspoons dried basil (10 leaves more later)
1½ tablespoons sesame oil (1 tablespoon more later)
6 eggs
1 tomato
½ teaspoon pepper 1/8 teaspoon more later)
1 teaspoon salt (¼ teaspoon more later)

INGREDIENTS – CURRY

½” cinnamon stick
¾ teaspoon grated ginger (½” whole ginger)
½ teaspoon fenugreek seeds
1 garlic clove
1 medium onion
10 fresh curry leaves or 10 teaspoons dried leaf fragments or 10 teaspoons dried basil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 teaspoons curry powder (not the same thing as curry leaves)
2 teaspoons chili powder
⅛ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon turmeric
½ cup water
1 cup coconut milk

SPECIAL UTENSIL

spice grinder

Makes 4 bowls. Takes 50 minutes.

PREPARATION – OMELETTE

Mince green chiles and onions. Add green chile, onion, 3 curry leaves, and sesame oil to pan. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Remove green chile, onion, and curry leaves from heat. Add eggs to large mixing bowl. Whisk eggs. Dice tomato. Add green chile, onion, tomato, pepper, and salt. Mix with whisk until well blended.

Reduce heat to low. Add all ingredients in mixing bowl to pan. Fry on low heat for 10-to-15 minutes or until omelette is cooked to your desired level of doneness. Remove omelette. Cut omelette into squares. You get quite a bit of latitude in the size of your squares. 1″ perhaps?

(However, there is unanimity on the geometric shape. It has to be a square. What would happen if you cut the omelette into triangles? Would the Omelette Police come after you? Would the Earth’s surface convulse in earthquakes? I don’t know. Play it safe, make squares.)

PREPARATION – CURRY

While omelette cooks, grind cinnamon and ginger. Grind fenugreek seeds just long enough to crack them. Dice garlic clove and onion. Add cinnamon, ginger, onion, 10 curry leaves, curry powder, fenugreek seeds, and sesame oil. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Add chili powder, ⅛ teaspoon pepper, ¼ teaspoon salt, turmeric, and water. Stir with spoon until well blended. Simmer on low heat for 3 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add coconut milk. Simmer for 5 minutes or until curry starts to thicken. Stir occasionally.

Add omelette squares back into curry. Simmer on low heat for 2 minutes. Stir occasionally. Goes well with naan bread or rice.

TIDBITS

1) Omelette Curry is an an anagram for the illustrious Portguese navigator and explorer, Telemeo T. Crucy. Senhor Crucy rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1486 and discovered the Indian Ocean by way of the Atlantic. Bartolomeo Diaz did the same in 1488. Telemeo also discovered India via this sea route in 1487. Vasco de Gama duplicated this feat twelve years later.

2) But Crucy the Explorer–the inspiration for Dora the ExplorerTM by the way–got no credit at all, no monuments, no cities, no holidays, not even candy bars named after him. What the heck? Why?

3) Because he was the first one to bring the spicy curry leaves back to Portugal. Of course, the King of Portugal, whose name is lost to us as I am typing in WordPerfect and I’d have to get out of WordPerfect and into my internet browser, by which time I would have lost my train of thought here and degenerated into writing long, rambling sentences.

4) It was João II. The king’s name was João II! I looked it up. Who knew?

5) Anyway, Big Joe, as the king was often by his adoring subjects, was the first to be served the curry leaves. Portuguese monarchs, by established right, got to taste every new spice first.

6) Which was a mistake in this case. No chef in the king’s kitchen knew how much curry to put in the king’s chicken noodle soup. So they guessed.

7) One cup was a bad guess. Big Joe fled the banquet hall. He wasn’t seen for days. But his moans were heard all over the castle. They still can. Even his ghost has yet to get over this tummy ache.

8) Things deteriorated rapidly. Big Joe started hating the world. He tripled taxes on the peasantry. The despising people called him João the Moaner. The Moaner stripped Telemeo of his titles and erased all vestiges of his name. Proper spicing is a must. May this cookbook help.

– 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.

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Helpful Cooking Tips, #1

Posted on January 6, 2015 by pauldelancey

 People often ask me, “Paul, how do you make your food so, so edible?” Well, in the interest of culinary advancement, I shall pass on my cooking tips to the world.

1) Food generally heats up quicker if you turn on the heat or plug in the oven.

2) You are allowed to turn the burner or toaster oven off after cooking.

3) A hard-boiled egg left unattended will explode.

4) You meal will take on a whole new taste if you confuse cinnamon with cayenne pepper.

– 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: food, humor | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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