Posts Tagged With: Columbus

Mozzarella Hamburger

Posted on February 22, 2023 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

MOZZARELLA HAMBURGER

INGREDIENTS

SAUTE
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon peanut oil
2 garlic cloves
1 medium onion
1 teaspoon thyme
¼ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon Meat MagicTM spice
¼ teaspoon sea salt

BURGER MIX
1½ pounds ground beef
2 eggs
1½ tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
½ tablespoon basil
½ teaspoon oregano
no-stick cooking spray

8 hamburger buns or 16 slices of bread
8 slices of mozzarella
8 leaves of lettuce

PREPARATION

Dice garlic cloves and onion. Melt butter in frying pan. Add olive and peanut oils. Put thyme, black pepper, meat sauce, and sea salt in pan. Sauté these ingredients on medium heat for about 5 to 10 minutes or until onion is soft. Set aside.

(You can dice garlic, but there are no garlic dice.)

Combine ground beef, eggs, Worcestershire sauce, basil, and oregano in mixing bowl. Add sautéed ingredients. Mix again.

Form 8 patties. Put them in frying pan coated with no-stick spray. Fry patties on medium-high heat for 2 to 3 minutes, flipping them over with care and cook for 2 to 3 minutes more. Put mozzarella slices on top of each patty. Fry for 1 more minute. Heat patties more if they are not yet cooked to your satisfaction.

Toast 8 buns. Assemble buns, patties, and lettuce.

TIDBITS

1) Marco Polo traveled in China from 1275 to 1292. He brought back pasta to Italy, which was eagerly eaten by the peasantry but not by the nobility. (Goodness! That last sentence wasn’t clear, was it? I meant to convey the peasants ate pasta. They did not eat Italy.)

2) Marco Polo did not bring back hamburgers as the Great Khan of China was apparently too busy trying to subjugate the world to develop this wondrous culinary treat.

3) Cosimo de’ Medici gained power in Florence. His great financial and political skills brought prosperity to Florence, but, alas, no hamburgers.

4) Lorenzo de’ Medici took sole power in Florence. His rule brought Florence to its height of prestige. The arts flourished. Michelangelo produced magnificent works of art. No one produced a hamburger.

5) Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492. Did the original Americans possess the knowledge of the hamburger? (See Tidbit 7.)

6) In 1494, Naples, angered by Florentine politics, called in the French king Charles VIII to fight Piero de’ Medici and the Florentines. Hundreds of thousands of Italians presumably hoped Charles VIII would bring the hamburger to Italy.

7) The French, already showing antipathy to American cooking, discovered only two years before, not only refused to bring the hamburger to Italy, but suppressed all knowledge of it coming from the New World.

8) In 1495, Milan, Venice, the Holy Roman Empire, the Papal States, and Aragon seething over the suppression of the hamburger formed an alliance to drive the French out of Italy.

9) From 1495 to 1866, various Italian states and the Spanish, French, and Austrians waged nearly constant war up and down the Italian peninsula. This naturally delayed the development of the Italian hamburger. In fact, this blessed culinary treat would occur in the relatively tranquil America of 1826.

 

– 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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Loving Poem About NASA

Posted on February 2, 2023 by pauldelancey

NASA

NASA says they’re going to look more
For things they’ve never found.
How do they know what to look for
If they’ve never found them?

When Pooh looked for heffalumps
He never found the missing grumps.
But when Columbus looked for China
He found something much more fine-a.

Recently, I lost my sets of keys.
It was indeed of a time of anguish.
But I found them, for you see
I knew what for to wish.

So NASA, look around stars
Then you’ll find what is new
When you look up in the blue
OK, live large. Find planets, too.

 

– 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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Mason Jar Strawberry Ice Cream

Posted on February 11, 2022 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

MASON JAR STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM

INGREDIENTS

2 cups heavy whipping cream
5½ tablespoons sugar
2¼ teaspoons vanilla extract
⅛ teaspoon salt
2 cups whole strawberries, fresh or frozen

Makes 3 cups. Takes 15 minutes to make and 3 hours to firm in freezer.).

SPECIAL UTENSILS

food processor or blender
3 cup Mason jar or other airtight container

PREPARATION

Puree strawberries. Add all ingredients to Mason jar. Make sure that the lid to Mason jar is screwed on tightly. Shake jar for 5 minutes or until mixture thickens to the consistency of batter. Put jar in freezer. Let sit for 3 hours or until firm.

TIDBITS

1) Mason Jar Strawberry is fantastic. It’s so yummy. Only people who hate: whipping cream, sugar, vanilla extract, salt, and strawberries will dislike this dessert. That means billions and billions of people love it. People have adored this dessert for millennia. Lands without strawberries conquered surrounding peoples in a never ending quest to find wild strawberries. This is how the Roman Empire and the Mongol Empire, among others, grew to be so big.

2) Alas, the Romans and the Mongols despite their mighty armies never did manage to find, much less conquer, a land with strawberries. Their subjects grew sullen and defiant. Finally, their peoples rose up and overthrew their non-strawberry-providing rulers. (Okay, with a little help from invading foreign armies.)

3) Rulers then sent expeditions to find strawberries. This is really how Columbus sold Queen Isabella on finding the Americas. The idea that the Spanish went exploring to find gold was just a cover. The conquistadors wanted the real wealth, strawberries, just to themselves. Seeing the Spaniards’ success, other nations sent our their explorers to find their own La Fresado, The Land of Strawberries. Pretty darn quick, the entire globe got explored. International trade boomed between the old countries and the new strawberry-growing lands. We owe it all to the yummy strawberry.

 

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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Tacos de Rajas con Crema

Posted on February 6, 2017 by pauldelancey

Mexican Entree

TACOS DE RAJAS CON CREMA

INGREDIENTStacosderajas

2 tablespoons vegetable oil (2 tablespoons more later)
4 poblano or Anaheim chiles
1 garlic clove
1 medium onion
½ pound Oaxacan cheese or queso fresco
1½ cups crema Mexicana or sour cream
12 8″ corn tortillas

Makes 12 tacos. Takes 1 hour 10 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add 2 tablespoons oil to pan. Heat oil
on high heat until a tiny bit of tortilla starts to (We once thought the Earth looked like this.)
dance. Add poblano chiles. Stir the chiles
occasionally until the chiles blister and blacken all over. (Be careful when frying or sautéing at high heat. When stirring, hold a lid between you and the hot oil when stirring or tilt the pan away from you.) Put poblanos in plastic bags and let steam for 20 minutes. Remove from bags and rub skin off chiles. Discard skins. Seed poblano chiles and cut them into ½” wide strips.

While chiles steam, mince garlic clove and onion. Shred cheese. Add 2 tablespoons oil to, garlic, and onion to pan. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion and garlic soften. Stir frequently. Add poblano strips. Sauté for 2 minutes. Stir frequently. Add crema Mexicana. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 4 minutes or until crema thickens. Stir frequently. Add cheese, Reduce heat to low and simmer for 3 minutes or until cheese melts completely. Stir frequently.

Warm tortillas in pan on high for a few seconds or wrap them in a wet towel and microwave for 1 minute. Warming the tortillas makes them pliable enough to roll. Ladle 1/12th of the poblano/cheese sauce, about 2 tablespoons, onto each warmed tortilla. Roll up tortillas and serve.

TIDBITS

1) Before 1492, many believed the Earth was flat like a tortilla. Others, folks who ate oatmeal all day long, did not care. Then lost spice merchants from India accidentally showed up in Venice carrying peppercorns and basil. It was now possible to make the appetizer, caprese. Life was worth living.

2) Unfortunately, the land route to spice-laden India was blocked by meanies. Columbus, in the world’s first version of The Shark Tank, convinced Queen Isabella to sponsor his historic voyage of discovery. He and his brother Mercator had told her the Earth was round like a cylinder. Later Benedictine monks asserted our planet was rounded like the egg. Finally Peary, explorer and diner, after reaching the North Pole in 1909, concluded our planet is really shaped like a stuffed tomato.

– 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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Grilled Ham and Dill Havarti Cheese Sandwiches and the Discovery of America

Posted on April 24, 2014 by pauldelancey

Fusion Entree

GRILLED HAM AND DILL HAVARTI CHEESE SANDWICH

INGREDIENTSHamAndDill-

6 tablespoons butter
8 slices of your favorite bread
1 pound slice deli ham
6 ounces dill Havarti cheese

PREPARATION

Cut butter into 4 equal pieces or pats. Cut havarti cheese into 8 equal slices. Add 1 pat of butter to skillet. Melt butter using medium heat. Add 2 bread slices to skillet. Quickly Add 1/4 of the ham slices and 2 havarti slices to one the bread slices. Put the other slice butter-side up on top of the ham and cheese.

Grill for 2 minutes on medium heat or until bottom slice is browned on bottom. (Unless you have a skillet made of transparent aluminum, you will have to use your spatula to take a peek.) Carefully flip sandwich over and grill other side for 2 minutes or until the new bread on the bottom is golden brown and cheese has melted. (Note: cooking times for this sandwich will tend to become shorter with each new sandwich as the skillet absorbs more and more heat.)

TIDBITS

1) On April 1, 1491, Chef Bjorn Havarti sailed west from Copenhagen, Denmark, to discover a shorter route to the empire of the Great Khan. His voyage lasted just two minutes Remarkably, Mr. Havarti had not succeeded in hiring and keeping a crew. To this day, in Denmark, attempting a great task with woefully insufficient resources is called, “pulling a Chef Bjorn.”

3) Apparently, the Danish chef had prepared a bon voyage dinner of lutefisk. Four of their senses damaged beyond repair by contact with lutefisk, the entire crew elected to stay ashore. Before Bjorn could raise funds for another voyage, Christopher Columbus would discover America*. Bjorn was destined to be forgotten for two tidbits.

4) * = Columbus was not the first to discover America. Arriving before him were the First Americans who crossed over the land bridge from Asia, possible voyagers from China, and Vikings. Apparently, America can be discovered many times. You just need a new starting point.

5) Okay, I look out my window and see America. I hereby state that I am the first one to discover America from my home in Poway, California. April 24th will now be known as Chef Paul Day.

5) Chef Bjorn learned his lesson and devoted his life to discovering a truly tasty food. On April 1, 1920, just 429 years later, he succeeded with his pièce de resistance, Havarti cheese. He died just one day later, exhausted but triumphant.

– 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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Sloppy Joes

Posted on January 25, 2014 by pauldelancey

American Entree

SLOPPY JOES

INGREDIENTSSloppyJoes-

1 medium onion
2 garlic cloves
1 bell pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/4 pounds ground beef
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 tablespoon brown sugar
1/4 cup water
2 cups tomato puree
3/4 cup ketchup
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
5 hamburger buns or kaiser rolls

Makes 5 sloppy Joes. Takes 30 minutes

PREPARATION

Mince onion, garlic cloves, and bell pepper. Add onion, garlic, and olive oil to large skillet. Sauté for 5 minutes on medium-high heat or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add ground beef, bell pepper, chili powder, salt, and brown sugar. Reduce heat to medium. Cook until meat for about 4 minutes or until ground beef is no longer pink. Stir occasionally.

Add water, tomato puree, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and hot pepper sauce. Cook for 5 minutes on medium heat or until sauce starts to thicken. Stir occasionally. While sauce cooks, toast buns. Spoon about 1/2 cup of the meat sauce onto each half of each hamburger bun.

TIDBITS

1) Sloppy Joe’s, a popular bar in Havana, Cuba, served the first Sloppy Joe’s. The world is grateful.

2) Columbus, the discoverer of Cuba, did not prove the world was round. We think the people 1492 believed the world was flat because Washington Irving, the author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, said so in a history book. This book, required reading for untold thousands of schoolchildren, warped our view of history for over a century.

3) It is however, undeniably true that no Sloppy Joe’s existed in fifteenth-century Europe. Records have yet to be found to be prove this, but Queen Isabella, yearning for a new quest after the successful conquest of the Moors sent Columbus on a transatlantic voyage to discover the Sloppy Joes. She felt the acquisition of the Sloppy Joe would give Spain such prestige that its empire would never be challenged. But Columbus never discovered the Sloppy Joe despite making three more voyages. That’s why all of Spain’s New World colonies are now all independent.

– 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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Salsa

Posted on January 5, 2014 by pauldelancey

Mexican Appetizer

SALSA

INGREDIENTSSalsa-

3 serrano chiles
9 cloves garlic
1 white onion
8 Roma tomatoes
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon cilantro
2 teaspoons lime juice
1/4 teaspoon salt

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Remove seeds from serrano chiles if you desire a milder salsa. Put chiles, garlic, onion, tomatoes, and oil in baking dish. Stir until garlic, onion, and tomatoes are well coated with oil. Roast in oven at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

Dice roasted veggies. Add veggies, cilantro, lime juice and salt to mixing bowl. Blend with whisk or fork. Goes great with everything except lutefisk.

TIDBITS

1) May, 1997, was National Salsa Month. Our officials have too much time on their hands.

2) In 2003, Texas declared tortilla chips and salsa to be the Official State Snack. The Texas government has too much time on its hands.

3) Pace Foods uses over 20 million pounds of hot peppers every year. That’s a lot of peppers or maybe just one huge pepper. Can you imagine a pepper that big? If you managed to eat it you’d need a really huge glass of milk to coat the pain receptors in your throat.

4) It would take a really big cow to give enough milk to fill that glass in tidbit 3).

5) Tomatoes and serrano chiles are not vegetables. They are fruits. So is a banana.

6) “Sometimes a banana is just a banana.” – Sigmund Freud. Freud would have been greatly interested in a dream about a twenty-million-pound serrano chile.

7) Oh, and some historians think Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean to get away from lutefisk.

– 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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Chocolate Rice Candy

Posted on October 13, 2013 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

CHOCOLATE RICE CANDY

 INGREDIENTSRiceKri-

1 11.5 ounce bag milk-chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups Rice KrispiesTM

PREPARATION

Cook chocolate chips in saucepan on medium heat until chips completely melt, about 3 to 5 minutes. Stir frequently. (Oh my gosh yes, do you want to burn chocolate?) Stir in Rice KrispiesTM until altogether mixed.

Transfer candy mix to cookie sheet. While the mix is cooling, use a knife to separate it into 1-inch by 3-inches rectangles. When no longer warm, put cookie sheet with candy rectangles into refrigerator. (Oh heck, have one now, or two. Who will know?) Let remaining candy harden. This will take 30 minutes to an hour.

TIDBITS

1) Christopher Columbus brought back chocolate to Europe from his trip to the New World in 1502.

2) This feat alone makes him worthy of having his own day on October 12.

3) Do the folks who invented the hamburger, chicken Kiev, or the enchilada have a day named after them?

4) No.

5) This shows you how much politicians value chocolate.

6) The Swiss, both politicians and people, esteem chocolate as well, consuming 22 pounds each of the stuff per year, though presumably not at one sitting.

7) There is some caffeine in chocolate bars, but not much.

8) Which is why the Swiss drink coffee before yodeling.

9) I don’t think Columbus ever yodeled.

10) Tidbit 8 is entirely made up.

– 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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Roti, Guyanese Flatbread Recipe

Posted on May 8, 2013 by pauldelancey

Guyanese Entree

ROTI
(flatbread)

INGREDIENTSRoti-

2 cups and more flour (don’t put it away)
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
3/4 cups water
up to 1 cup vegetable oil (don’t put it away)

SPECIALTY ITEM

electric skillet

PREPARATION

Combine 2 cups flour, baking powder, salt, and water in mixing bowl. The amount of water added should be enough to make a fairly firm dough, so a bit more or less water maybe needed.

Sprinkle plate or board with flour. Divide dough into six lumps. Put a lump on board. Dust rolling pin with flour. Roll out dough until it is a circle 8″ across . Put 1 teaspoon on dough. Smooth the oil so it covers the entire circle. Sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon flour uniformly over dough or roti. Fold in corners of roti. Shape roti into a ball. Keep board and rolling pin dusted with flour as you repeat this process for 5 move rotis.

Let rotis stand for 30 minutes while you straighten out the world or sip on a nice, cold Roy Rogers soda.

Set heat on electric skillet to 350 degrees. Put 2 tablespoons oil in skillet. Flatten a roti by hand and put it in skillet. Cook the flatbread, roti, for 3 minutes or until both sides are starting to turn light brown. Turn roti over frequently, at least once every 20-to-30 seconds. Repeat for the other 5 rotis. Add enough oil to the skillet to maintain 2 tablespoons for each roti.

Mango chutney, see recipe, goes great with roti.

TIDBITS

1) Flatbread is flat.

2) The Earth is not flat. It is round.

3) Round, Earth, round.

4) Round in the morning, round at night.

5) In 1492, Columbus sailed west. Flat Earthers took fright.

6) Ooh yes, scary, scary.

7) And now in a seamless transition to more complex sentences, most people in 1492 thought the Earth to be round.

8) The flat-earth myth became popular with the1828 publication, Washington Irving’s imaginative, A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus.

9) Hundreds of thousands of American school kids have written essays about Christopher Columbus that have been wrong. All because of Washington Irving.

10) Someone should go back in time and send Mr. Irving to the principal’s office.

11) It’s a good thing, though, the world is not flat. What if you were playing soccer and someone kicked the soccer ball over the edge of the Earth and the soccer ball was gone for ever and no one had another soccer ball?

– 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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Greek Wraps

Posted on November 12, 2012 by pauldelancey

Greek Entree

GREEK WRAPS

INGREDIENTS

1 head lettuce
1 pound ground pork
1/2 pound ground beef
1 1/2 teaspoon Meat MagicTM spice
1 1/2 teaspoon coriander
Greek cucumber sauce or tzatziki sauce from previous recipe

PREPARATION

This dish works best with the outer, larger leaves of lettuce. Be sure to wash the lettuce and remove any leaves with brown spots.

Mix pork, beef, meat spice, and coriander. Cook meat until browned. Tear off one or two leaves of lettuce. Put about 3 or 4 spoonfuls meat on the leaves, but not so much that you cannot roll up the leaves.

Put about two spoonfuls cucumber sauce on top. Roll up the lettuce leaves so no meat shows. Hold at one end to keep the sauce from dripping out. Eat at the other end.

This is a tasty and healthy variation on gyros.

TIDBITS

1) Lettuce grew as a weed long before anyone ate it.

2) But if lettuce flourished as a weed, then why is it so hard to grow deliberately?

3) I think the definition of a weed is something that grows without help.

4) Food is something that is difficult to grow.

5) There is a town in northern California called Weed.

6) Columbus brought lettuce to the Americas.

7) Spanish explorers brought potatoes back from the Americas. Fair trade, you think?

8) There is no eighth tidbit. My computer decided to update my software at this point.

– 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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