Posts Tagged With: curry

Food to Die For: Paul’s 365 Meals of Murder, Mayhem, and Mischief – September 17

Posted on September 17, 2023 by pauldelancey

September 17: This entree honors British troops leaving  for South Africa to fight in the Boer War.*
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Soldiers never like leaving a place, whether it’s their beloved homeland or an exotic land that they’ve come to admire. So then, how much worse is it when you’re leaving to fight the Boers in South Africa? Very much worse. That enemy invariably fires back at you. With malicious intent. Suppose you’ve embarking from India with its verdant scenery and oh so good curry. As far as you know, South Africa has none of that. “Why am I going there?” you asked yourself.

Because you’ve been ordered to do as part of the war effort. And remember you’re not only one forced to go to South Africa. In the 1860s, British sugar-cane plantations needed ever more workers. So they imported Indians to work as indentured servants.

Being forced to get shot  repeatedly or to work without salary for a specific number of years is never fun. But since you’re already there, why not avail yourself of the amazing, tasty curry dishes this wonderful land has to offer?

The meal you should serve to commerate this day:  Bunny Chow

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Celebrate the drive and determination of the British soldiers and subjects who brought along their love of curry by sampling my favorite South African dish.

 

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.

– 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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Shrimp Pineapple Curry

Posted on July 27, 2023 by pauldelancey

Sri Lankan Entree

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SHRIMP PINEAPPLE CURRY

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INGREDIENTS – CURRY PASTE­
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2 green chiles
½ teaspoon black mustard or brown mustard seeds
1 medium onion
2 tablespoons sesame, coconut, or vegetable oil
1½ tablespoons fresh curry, kaffir lime, or basil leaves
3 garlic cloves
1½ tablespoons fresh* pandanus** or cilantro
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INGREDIENTS – SHRIMP PINEAPPLE
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1 cup coconut milk
¾ teaspoon fish sauce or soy sauce
1½ tablespoons sugar
1½ cup chopped or crushed pineapple
1 pound shrimp
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* = 1 tablespoon fresh herbs = 1 teaspoon dried herbs
** = Pandanus and some of the other ingredients can be hard to find. This is why I list substitutes.
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SPECIAL UTENSILS
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spice grinder
blender or food processor
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Serves 4. Takes 45 minutes.
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PREPARATION – CURRY PASTE
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Seed chiles. Grind mustard seeds in spice grinder. Mince onion. Add oil and onion to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add ground mustard seeds, sautéed onion, and the remaining curry paste ingredients to blender. Blend until you get a curry paste.
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PREPARATION – SHRIMP PINEAPPLE
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Add curry paste, coconut milk, fish sauce, and sugar to large pan. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add pineapple and shrimp. Simmer at medium heat for 4 minutes or until shrimp turns pink. Stir occasionally. Goes well with rice.
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TIDBITS
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1) Nearly everyone who isn’t a little child finds shrimp to be ever so tasty.
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2) Tots, however, greatly prefer ice cream.  This is why thousands upon thousands of ice cream trucks roams patrol the streets of our towns of cities.
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3) But what about the adults? Why can’t we can’t have shrimp trucks driving around, playing the notes to “Blow the Man Down” or ever better, “Shrimp Boats are  Sailing” Instead of various dairy desserts, these plucky vendors could sell: shrimp cocktails, shrimp scampi, or Shrimp Pineapple Curry?
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4) How did Shrimp Pineapple Curry come about?  Remarkably, while billions of words have been written, over hundreds of years, over what people like to eat and how to make their dishes, nearly nothing has been written about what shrimp like to dine on.
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5) Oh sure, we know they will devour all manner of algae organisms. And itty, bitty bits of deal corral, roots, and other rotting ocean-floor delicacies. But such fare doesn’t sound very appetizing, does it?  No, and the shrimp don’t think so either.
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6) So, it was quite a momentous event for the shrimp nation when the Portuguese navigator Bartolomeo Diaz sailed into the Indian Ocean in 1488.
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7) Bartolomeo had a shrimp, Vasco, for a pet when he was little. Everyday, little Barty watched his plucky shrimp perform high-impact acrobatics. “Wait and see,” said Barty to his pet, “I’m going to achieve great things on the open sea. Just like you.”
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8) But he had to endure endless name calling, such as “Batty Barty,” before he grew up enough to command a crown-sponsored naval expedition. Batty had wanted  trade coconuts to the shrimps of the Indian Ocean in exchange for algae, but a crabby King John II insisted on bringing back valuable spices.
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9) In disgust, Barty threw his cargo of coconuts overboard. The shrimp loved coconuts, once they decomposed. The cleverest shrimps discovered a way to grow ocean-floor coconuts.  A few years later an Arab trading vessel carrying pineapples and curry leaves sank. Brainy shrimps found a way to harvest these ingredients beneath the waves.
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10) Naturally, the shrimps who had been hating their bland diet since tidbit 5) created Pineapple Curry. Brilliant, industrious shrimps created colossal aquatic coconut, curry, and pineapple farms.
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11) Indian Ocean shrimps led a blissful culinary existence until submariners during World War II noticed thousands of square miles aquatic acreage. “I’ll bet Coconut Curry would make a great dish would make a scrumptious entree if one only added shrimp to it,” said Chef Bertie of HMS Entre.
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16) And he did. Now the world eats tons of shrimp every day and their vast aquatic farms lie untended and forgotten. And if you try to tell someone at cocktail party about this, they’ll make a squeaky sound and scurry to the other side of the room.
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– 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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Jackfruit Curry (Polos Curry)

Posted on July 8, 2023 by pauldelancey

Sri Lankan Entree

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JACKFRUIT CURRY

(Polos Curry)

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INGREDIENTS
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1 pound canned jackfruit*, drained
3 green chiles
3 garlic cloves
1 onion
2 tablespoons coconut oil or vegetable oil
½ teaspoon cumin seeds
½ teaspoon fennel seeds
½ teaspoon fenugreek seeds
½ teaspoon mustard seeds
1 tablespoon chili powder
½ tablespoon diced ginger
½ teaspoon pepper
1½ tablespoons roast curry powder* or curry powder
½ teaspoon turmeric
2″ cinnamon stick
3 collard green leaves or 2 pandan* leaves
6 curry leaves
1⅓ cups coconut milk
1 tablespoon tamarind juice or goraka*
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* = Can be found in Asian supermarkets or online.
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Serves 2. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.
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PREPARATION
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Cut jackfruit into strips 2″ long. Seed green chiles. Mince garlic and green chiles. Dice onion. Add coconut oil. Heat coconut oil using medium heat until a cumin seed starts to dance in the oil. Add cumin seeds, fennel seeds, fenugreek seeds, and mustard seeds. Sauté for 30 seconds or until seeds start to pop. Stir constantly.
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Add garlic, green chile, onion, chili powder, ginger, pepper, roast curry powder, turmeric, cinnamon stick, collard leaves, and curry leaves. Sauté for at medium heat for 4 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently.
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Add coconut milk, tamarind juice, and jackfruit pieces. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Cover. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 1 hour or until jackfruit pieces turn brown and soften. Stir enough to prevent burning. Remove cinnamon stick. Goes well with rice.
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TIDBITS
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1) This entree, Jackfruit Curry, is a curry that uses jackfruit.
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2) We are indeed starting this tidbit series on solid ground.
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3) It is less well known that this dish also goes by the name of Polos Curry.
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4) Culinary historians tell us that this curry was named after Marco Polo. Hence, Polo’s Curry.
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5) How do we not know this? Unfortunately for foodies everywhere, Polo’s travelog, The Travels of Marco Polo, blew his recipe book out of the water.
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6) I mean, Venetians, Pisans, Genoese, other Italians, and Europeans, from well, all over Europe kept saying, “Ooh, ooh, I want to know about far-off Asia.” So, Polo’s travel tale sold thousands and thousands of copies.
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7) So, the European book readers generally blew their literature budget on The Travels of Marco Polo.
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7b) Just now, I made a small typo and added an “i” before the “o” in “polo” to get “polio.” That kinda changed the meaning of the previous tidbit a bit. Fortunately, I edited out the offending letter, so you would never know my mistake.
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8) Anyway, Polo’s great culinary masterpiece Ottimi Pasti del Gran Khan, or Great Meals of the Great Khan, gathered dust in the most hidden parts of just a few European bookstores.
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9) Marco dictated Ottimi Pasti del Gran Khan to Fabio Manzo who languished in the same Genoese jail.
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10) How did Manzo’s effort get relegated to the dustbin of history, while everyone knows of Marco Polo and only a dedicated group of introverts talk freely–that is if they could talk freely to people–of the not great, but still pretty good, Signore Manzo.
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11) Sure, Marco Polo dictated his travels to his other cell mate, Rustichello da Pisa. Okay, da Pisa rates a mention. But Fabio Manzo never rates a mention.
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12) Why is this so?
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13) Literary agents.
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14) Signores Polo and da Pisa hired literary agents. Polo has been famous for nearly a millennium. Da Pisa merits a footnote every now and then. However, penny-pinching, Manzo hired no one. He is literature’s most forgotten man.*
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15) * = See Time Magazine’s(tm) issue, The 100 Most Forgotten Names in Literature.
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16) However, while Manzo and Great Meals of the Great Khan remain largely forgotten, this cookbook can always be found on the shelves of all great chefs. Something to think about.
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– 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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Curry Chicken Potjiekos From Namibia

Posted on December 4, 2022 by pauldelancey

Namibian Entree

CURRY CHICKEN POTJIEKOS

INGREDIENTS

2 garlic cloves
2 onions
2″ ginger root
3 pounds chicken, breast, thighs, or drumsticks
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1½ tablespoons curry powder
1 teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon coriander
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
½ tablespoon turmeric
2½ cups chicken stock
3 carrots
1 pound potatoes
1 bay leaf

SPECIAL UTENSILS (If difficult conditions are met)

potjie: this is a cast-iron pot with three legs and is the authentic for this dish. Order it online.
hot coals: The potjie’s contents are cooked over hot coals and firewood. Will your landlord mind?

ORDINARY UTENSILS (If, as likely, the above conditions aren’t met. )

large pot
stove

Serves 4. Takes 2 hours 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Dice garlic cloves and onions. Grate ginger. Add butter, vegetable oil and as many chicken pieces as will without touching to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until chicken browns all over. Flip chicken enough to ensure even browning. (You might need to cook in batches.) Remove chicken and set aside. Add garlic and onion to pot. Sauté at medium-high heat for 4 minutes or until garlic and onion soften. Stir frequently. Add curry powder, ground cloves, coriander, ginger, nutmeg, salt, and turmeric. Sauté at medium heat for two minutes. Stir frequently.

Return chicken to pot. Add chicken stock; enough to cover chicken. Cover and simmer at low heat for 1 hour. While pot simmers, dice carrots. Peel and cut potatoes into ½” cubes. Add bay leaf, carrot, and potato or until carrot and potatoes soften. Stir until well blended. Cover and simmer at low heat for another ½ hour. Remove bay leaf. Stir occasionally.

TIDBITS

1) Lots of famous people are named after foods and dishes,

2) And vice versa.

3) Here’s a partial list in alphabetical order of their food names.

Fiona Apple – Famous songwriter and singer. Composed and sang “Extraordinary machine.” When a recording company decided to not release one of her albums, her fans mailed the company apples until they release it after all.

Arnold Palmer – Great golfer. Gave his name to a lemonade-and-iced-tea drink.

Kevin Bacon – in many movies including A Few Good Men.

Shaun Bean – in many movies, including National Treasure and the BBC series Sharpe.

Halle Berry – in many movies including Monster’s Ball.

Brie Larson – in many movies including, Short Term 12. The doctor who delivered was Brita Larson and was a friend of my grandmother. I have visited Dr. Larson’s old farm in Sweden.

Hamilton Burger – D.A. on the show Perry Mason. Fictitious character with a great name.

John Candy – best known for the Canadian TV show, “Second City.”

Cherry Jones- in many movies including The Perfect Storm..

Rosemary Clooney – Chart-topping singer during the 1950s.

Tim Curry – in many movies, plays, etc, including Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Ginger Rogers – Great dance and actress. Starred in many movies with Fred Astaire.

Meatloaf – Born Marvin Lee Aday. Famous singer. Made Bat Out of Hell album.

Barry Pepper – in many movies including Saving Private Ryan.

Condoleezza Rice – Press Secretary of State, the second person to President George W. Bush

Tim Salmon – All Star outfielder for the California Angels.

Shirley Temple – Great actress. Ambassador for the US. Childhood acquaintance of my mother. Gave her name to a drink of grenadine, ginger ale* soda, and maraschino cherry. * = There’s a bit of controversy here. Some people insist that the soda is lemon lime.

Darryl Strawberry – All star right fielder for the New York Mets.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D. (but not with cell phones)

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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mchicha From Tanzania (Spinach and Peanut Curry)

Posted on July 11, 2022 by pauldelancey

Tanzanian Entree

MCHICHA
(Spinach and Peanut Curry)

INGREDIENTS

1 medium onion
1½ pounds spinach
1 tomato
2½ tablespoons ghee or butter
2 teaspoons curry powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup coconut milk
2½ tablespoons creamy peanut butter

SPECIAL UTENSIL

food processor (You really need this unless you’re willing to spend a lot of time chopping by hand, or so a friend told me when his food processor died just as the spinach dicing started.)

Serves 6. Takes 40 minutes.

PREPARATION

Dice onion, spinach, and tomato. Add ghee, onion, tomato, curry powder, and salt to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add spinach. Lower heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. (Do not let spinach get mushy.) Stir enough to prevent burning. Add coconut milk and creamy peanut butter. Simmer for 3 minutes or until peanut butter blends in completely. Stir occasionally.

Goes well with rice beans, or maize porridge.

TIDBITS

1) Popeye the Sailor ManTM loved spinach.

2) It also made him strong

3) Tanzania should have its own version of Popeye.

4) Papaye Mtu Baharia is quite possibly a correct translation of his name into Swahili.

5) The most popular name for men in Tanzania is James.

6) So, I give you James Mtu Baharia, Tanzania’s strong spinach-eating hero.

 

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.

Categories: cuisine, international, observations | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sri Lankan Beef Smore – New Tidbits

Posted on August 4, 2021 by pauldelancey

Sri Lankan Entree

BEEF SMORE

INGREDIENTS

2 pound piece of sirloin or beef chuck
2 tablespoons vinegar
½ teaspoon pepper
3 garlic cloves
1″ ginger root
1 small green chile
1 large onion
1 stalk lemongrass (tender inner bottom part only)
2½ tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil
2″ cinnamon stick
¼ teaspoon fenugreek seeds
10 fresh curry leaves or ½ teaspoon dry curry leaves or curry powder
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1¼ cups coconut milk
1 tablespoon lemon or tamarind juice

Serves 6. Takes 2 hour 30 minutes

PREPARATION

Make holes in beef with fork. (This will aid marinating.) Add beef, vinegar, and pepper to bowl. Marinate for 1 hour.

While beef marinates. Mince garlic cloves, ginger root, green chile, and onion. Seed and mince green chile. Thinly slice lemongrass. Add ghee to pan. Heat ghee at high heat until is hot enough to make a fenugreek seed dance. Carefully add beef to pan. Sauté for 2 minutes on each side or until browned all over. Remove meat to plate. Leave beef juices in pan.

Add garlic, ginger, green chile, onion, cinnamon stick, fenugreek seeds, fresh curry leaves. and lemongrass Sauté for 3 minutes on medium heat. Stir frequently. Add beef back to pan. Add beef, red pepper flakes, coconut milk, and lime juice. Lower heat to low and simmer 40 minutes or until the beef reaches your desired level of doneness and coconut milk reduces to a gravy. Turn beef over every 10 minutes. Slice beef to your desired thickness. Spoon onion gravy over beef slices.

TIDBITS

1) Every recipe in this cookbook requires a clock, a wristwatch, or a timer. But what would anyone do way back when there were no such timepieces? Why they’d use sundials of course. But, but, this recipes requires us to sauté beef for 2 minutes. Wouldn’t that require a precision lacking in normal sundials? Of course, that’s why serious ancient chefs always used. precision sundials. But such sundials cost quite a lot and weren’t very portable, not even if you had many servants. So they kinda fell into disuse. Cloudy countries never adapted these new timepieces at all.

 

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.

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Coconut Shrimp Curry

Posted on February 24, 2021 by pauldelancey

Sri Lankan Entree

COCONUT SHRIMP CURRY

INGREDIENTS

3 garlic cloves
1½” ginger root
2 small green chiles
1 medium onion
1 small tomato
12 fresh curry leaves
1 teaspoon dry curry leaves, or curry powder
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cinnamon stick
4 teaspoons curry powder
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon turmeric
1½ tablespoons lime juice
1 13.5-ounce can coconut milk
1¼ pounds shrimp (about 24 count)

Serves 4. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Mince garlic cloves, ginger root, green chiles, and onion. Dice tomato. Add garlic, ginger, chiles, curry leaves, onion, and oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add tomato, cinnamon stick, curry powder, red pepper flakes, salt, and turmeric. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 5 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Add lime juice and coconut milk. Cook on medium heat for 10 minutes or until coconut milk thickens. Stir frequently. Add shrimp. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 4 minutes or until shrimp turns orange or pink.

TIDBITS

1) The grass that cows eat affects the taste of butter that is made from their milk. Indeed, butter from Isigny Sainte Mère is the best tasting in the world. Why? The area’s rich pastures are chock full of mineral salts and just the right traces for buttery excellence.

2) Shrimp cooked in coconut milk tastes great. So, of course, shrimp vendors tried feeding coconut milk to these little crustaceans. But expecting shrimp to climb up trees and crack open the coconuts resulted in disappointment. Nothing happened even when they put the shrimp in trees. Of course! Shrimp can’t breathe out of water. The shrimpers tried planting coconut trees in water. It turned out that coconuts trees don’t grow in water. The once plucky entrepreneurs gave up the whole idea. Now we’ll never know if shrimp could have been trained to extract milk from coconuts.

– 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: cuisine, humor, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Currywurst

Posted on January 31, 2021 by pauldelancey

German Entree

CURRYWURST

INGREDIENTS

1 large onion
1½ tablespoons vegetable oil (1 more tablespoon later)
1½ tablespoons curry powder
½ teaspoon chili powder
2 teaspoons paprika
½ teaspoon salt
1 pound tomato sauce
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 pound bratwurst, knockwurst, or kielbasa
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Serves 3. Takes 50 minutes.

PREPARATION

Mince onion. Add onion and 1½ tablespoons vegetable oil to pot. Sauté at medium-high heat or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add curry powder, chili powder, paprika, and salt. Reduce heat to medium and sauté for 1 minute. Stir frequently. Add tomato sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes. Stir enough to prevent sauce from burning.

While sauce simmers, slice bratwurst into ½” slices. Add bratwurst and 1 tablespoon vegetable oil to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 10 minutes. Flip and stir bratwurst slices until they are all browned on both sides. Pour sauce over bratwurst slices and serve. Goes well with French fries.

TIDBITS

1) The city state of Ur was founded nearly 6,000 years when social media required flint chisels and stone. Archeologists–woo, spelled it right the first time, have found previous few examples of trolling in wall-platform comments’ sections, probably because they took several days to upload. Even then, the ripostes limited themselves to the likes of “Sez you.” and “So’s, your mother.”

2) So, Urs?, Urps?, Curs?,citizens of Ur generally expressed themselves in the culinary arts. German sausages were quite popular, thousands of years before the creation of the modern Germany. So far, culinary historians, always a fractious bunch, haven’t arrived at a consensus explaining this.

3) However, we know that Ramses II, pharaoh of Ancient Egypt–an inventor of the first condom, it still bears his name, loved Nile sausages. He hated the imports from Ur. “Ugh,” he said, “Those Curs, their sausage is the worst.” It was then only a hop, skip, and jump to the calling the foreign sausage, “Curry Wurst.” Currywurst, however, experienced a renaissance with the advent of refrigeration and air travel between Ur and Berlin. It’s now quite popular in the German capital.

– 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: cuisine, history, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Theluli Mas (Spicy Fried Tuna)

Posted on February 20, 2017 by pauldelancey

Maldivian Entree

THELULI MAS
(Spicy Fried Tuna)

INGREDIENTSthelulimas

1 small onion
5 garlic cloves
4 curry leaves or 2 tablespoons curry powder
2½ teaspoons peppercorns
2 teaspoons red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon salt
1½ pounds tuna steaks
½ cup vegetable oil
1 lemon

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour.

PREPARATION

Add onion, garlic cloves, curry leaves, peppercorns, red pepper flakes, and salt to blender. Blend on medium until you get a smooth paste. Add tuna and smooth paste to large mixing bowl. Turn tuna steaks until they are well ll coated. Cover and marinate in refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Add oil. Heat oil on medium-high heat. It will hot enough when a pepper flake put in the oil starts to dance. Carefully add tuna steaks to pan. (Tilt pan away from you as you do so.) Sauté at medium-high heat for 3 minutes on each side or until steaks become crispy and turn golden brown.
Cut lemon into as many slices as there are tuna steaks. Add a lemon slice next to each steak.

TIDBITS

1) Tuna is an anagram for nut. Tuna love nuts, especially the macadamia nut. “Macadamia nut” is an anagram for “Dam’ manic nut..” Tuna who taste macadamia develop an instant addiction. Fortunately, macadamia nuts are rarely found in the ocean. But they are found in the waters where cruise ships travel. Unthinking passengers adore the tuna who, desperate for a fix, perform all sorts of acrobatic and aquatic tricks.

2) Then the cruise ships move on, leaving in their wake desperate, addicted schools of tuna. Some places there get vicious, particularly where the amphibious variety of tuna abounds. In Macadamia Grove, Australia, gangs of crazed tuna thrash through the town to stampede the macadamia groves. They eat every single nut they can find and if their fix isn’t satisfied, they come back to assault the stores. People flee in terror; there’s nothing more vicious than a strung-out tuna. The townsfolk shake their fists at the tuna. “Dam’ manic nuts.”

3) This sad event happens to Macadamia Grove repeatedly. Its people are planning to leave their childhood homes for good and become a tribe of wandering mimes. Please don’t let this happen. Obey the signs that read, “Don’t feed the dolphins.” Thank you.

– 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: cuisine, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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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