Posts Tagged With: earthquakes

Corned Beef Cakes

Posted on November 12, 2021 by pauldelancey

Sierra Leonean Entree

CORNED BEEF CAKES

INGREDIENTS

1 pound potatoes or yams
1 teaspoon salt (1 teaspoon more later)
1 small onion
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon parsley
1 teaspoon pepper
1 12-ounce can corned beef
1 egg (1 more egg later)
3 tablespoons milk
1½ cups bread crumbs
1 egg
6 tablespoons peanut oil or vegetable oil (2 tablespoons per batch)

Makes 12 cakes. Takes 1 hour 10 minutes.

PREPARATION

Peel potatoes. Cut each potato into 4 pieces. Add potato pieces to large pot. Add 1 teaspoon salt and enough water to cover potato pieces. Bring water to boil using high heat. Boil for 15 minutes or until potato pieces are soft. While potato bits boil, dice onion. Remove pot from heat. Drain water. Mash potatoes with potato masher or fork. Add onion, 1 teaspoon salt, cayenne pepper, parsley, pepper, and corned beef. Mix with whisk until well blended.

Add 1 egg to small bowl. Beat with whisk or fork. Add milk. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add egg/milk mixture and corned beef/mashed potato mixture to large mixing bowl. Mix with hands until well blended. Make 12 patties.

Add bread crumbs to a 3rd bowl. Add 1 egg to a 4th bowl. Beat egg with whisk or fork. Add patty to bowl with egg. Coat both sides of patty with egg. Add egg-coated patty to bowl with bread crumbs. Dredge patty through bread crumbs until patty is completely covered. Repeat for remaining patties.

Add 2 tablespoons peanut oil to pan per batch. Heat oil using medium-high heat. Oil is hot enough when a breadcrumb added to the oil starts to dance. Carefully add 4 bread coated patties to the hot oil. Sauté patties for 1 minute using medium-high heat or until patties start to blacken on the bottom. Carefully flip patties over; they can be crumbly. Sauté for 1 minute more or until the new bottom side of the patties start to blacken. Remove patties from heat. Drain on paper towels. Repeat for remaining batches.

TIDBITS

1) The continents and other bits of land are constantly in motion.

2) Does this mean you’re going to get whiplash just by sitting in a chair watching TV in the den? Or will your television suddenly separate from the rest of the den and rapidly recede into the distance? And what about the giant chasm between you and the TV?

3) What if you are near sighted and suddenly your program “FriendsTM” is on a screen 100 yards away and you need to get your glasses and they are in your bedroom which is on the other side of a 100-yard-wide chasm and although you were a crackerjack long jumper in college and could leap 26 feet, you still know that your longest jump is still 274 feetshort of the width of the chasm and you are so distraught that you’ve just composed your longest run-on sentence ever?

4) What if you’re on the famous pier in Santa Monica and California’s entire coast falls separates from the rest of the continent and plunges into the ocean and you can’t help wondering if you had locked the front door or not?

5) What if you’re driving on a country road and all of a sudden the ground beneath you lurches forward so much so that you exceed the speed limit by 200 mph? A traffic cop pulls you over. You tell the officer, “The movement of the Earth’s crust made me go this fast”. The cop shakes his head. “Like I haven’t heard that one before.”

6) Well fret not, dear friend, the previous four tidbits are currently quite unlikely. The Earth’s plates currently move at a rate of about ¼” a year.

7) How long would it take for your television to move 100 feet away?

8) 400 years. The sitcom “Friends” would be over by then.

9) Let me further calm you down. Your TV and your chair are almost certainly on the same Earth plate. So now matter where your huge bit of the planet moves, you always be the same distance away from your show. You’ll not need to get your classes. Any 100-foot chasm. will be dozens of miles away.

10) So how do we know all this? How did the study of plate tectonics come about?

11) In 1946, Kadie Mansara of Makeni, Sierra Leone, served this entree, Corned Beef Cakes, for her little boy, Patrick. Now Patrick liked to play with his food. His three corned beef cakes were originally all next to each other. However, the little scamp moved the corned beef all over the plate until they were positioned as shown in the above photograph. Ma Kaide gazed at the new configuration

13) She had an epiphany. Great sections of the Earth must move in the same way. We don’t see the movement, but it happens. Slow continental movement would explain mountains, earthquakes, even why the west coast of Africa looks like the east coast of South America. Mrs. Mansaray would go on to found the prestigious Sierra Leone Plate Tectonics Institute. 40 years later she received a Nobel Prize for her ground-breaking research. 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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Shrimp Tempura

Posted on August 27, 2016 by pauldelancey

Japanese Appetizer

SHRIMP TEMPURA

INGREDIENTSShrimpTempura-

2½ cups vegetable oil (or enough to cover shrimp)
1½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ cup cornstarch
¼ teaspoon salt
1 egg yolk
1 cup ice-cold water
1 pound shrimp, 21-30 count, peeled, deveined, with tails left on*

* = Don’t worry if you removed the tails. This dish will taste as good. You’ll need forks; it will be hot.

SPECIAL UTENSILS                                                                         Oops, I removed the tails. I was distracted

deep fryer or electric skillet                                                                        by earthquakes and T-Rexes.
Bushnell 303 Hand Held Time MachineTM.

Serves 6. Takes 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add oil to deep fryer. (Make sure there is enough to cover shrimp.) Preheat oil to 375 degrees. While oil heats, add flour, baking powder, cornstarch, and salt to large mixing bowl. Beat egg yolk in small bowl with whisk. Add beaten egg yolk and ice-cold water to large mixing bowl. Mix with fork until combined mixture turns to batter and is still slightly lumpy. Dredge shrimp though batter until completely coated. Don’t batter shrimp tails.

Add shrimp to deep fryer. Don’t let the shrimp touch each other. Fry shrimp at 375 degrees for 1½-to-2 minutes or until golden brown. Drain on paper towels. Repeat for successive batches.

TIDBITS

1) So many recipes tell you to preheat. What if you don’t have time to preheat? What if your sweetie is coming over? What if you see monstrous, rolling earthquakes just outside your window and you had wanted to make something special for him on his birthday, probably the last one by the looks of it? Simply use your Bushnell 303 Hand Held Time MachineTM to travel back in time and preheat your oven. How far back? As far as the Cretaceous Period if you like**.

2) ** = Be sure to look out for carnivorous dinosaurs. Also, hold onto your oven when you time travel. Otherwise, it won’t go with you and you’ll will have risked by eaten by a T-Rex for nothing. And then, won’t you feel foolish? Oh, and your electric bill will be high.

– 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 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Slow Cooker Refried Beans

Posted on February 24, 2016 by pauldelancey

Mexican Entree

SLOW COOKER REFRIED BEANS

INGREDIENTSRefriedBeans-

2 cups or 14 ounces dry pinto beans
1 onion
1 jalapeno or serrano pepper
3 garlic cloves
5½ cups water
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon crema Mexicana or sour cream

SPECIAL UTENSILS

slow cooker or crock pot
colander
potato masher

Makes 2½ cups. Takes 8 hours 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Rinse beans. Cut onion into four pieces. Seed and dice jalapeno pepper. Mince garlic. Add beans, onion fourths, jalapeno, water, cumin, pepper, and salt to slow cooker. Stir once. Cook on high overnight or for 8 hours.

Remove onion fourths. Drain using colander in bowl. (Save drained water, in case your beans are too dry or use a bean broth.) Mash beans with potato masher. Add crema Mexicana. Stir with spoon. There you go. Serve hot.

TIDBITS

1) This dish takes 8-and-a-half hours. Think of all the lunar eclipses you could see in that time.

2) Depending where you are and if you want to see the whole thing or just the totality phase, you’re thinking anywhere from 2 to 120 eclipses.

3) Of course, the Moon goes its merry way after giving us an eclipse of itself. Why? It just does. So if you want to see sequential total lunar eclipses, you’ll need to take the Moon out of its orbit.

4) Repeatedly. Won’t this wreak havoc upon the Earth? Yes, it will. At the very least, displacing the moon again and again, will cause thousands of mile high tsunamis. Coastal cities will be obliterated. Humongous, terrifying earthquakes will finish off all remaining people, which makes this entree the ideal end-of-the-Earth meal.

– 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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Beef, Spinach, and Peanut Stew from South Sudan

Posted on December 6, 2015 by pauldelancey

South Sudanese Entree

BEEF, SPINACH, AND PEANUT STEW

INGREDIENTSSouthSudan-

1¼ pounds chuck steak or round steak
3 garlic cloves
2 medium onions
2½ tomatoes
2 bunches spinach (1 pound)
½ sweet potato
4 tablespoons unsalted, roasted peanuts (4 teaspoons more later)
2 tablespoons peanut oil
3 cups beef stock
½ tablespoon tomato paste
4 teaspoons unsalted, roasted peanuts
½ cup unsweetened peanut butter

SPECIAL UTENSIL

spice grinder
Dutch oven

Makes 6 bowls. Takes 1 hour 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cut beef into 1″ cubes. Mince garlic. Dice onions and tomatoes. Remove stems from spinach, then shred. Cut sweet potato into ½” cubes. Use spice grinder to make a paste from 4 tablespoons peanuts.

Add peanut oil and beef cubes to Dutch oven. Cook at medium heat for 6 minutes or until beef browns. Stir occasionally. Add garlic and onion. Raise heat to medium-high and sauté for 5 minutes or until onion and garlic softens. Stir in beef stock and tomato paste. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir occasionally. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 50 minutes or until beef becomes tender and stock is reduced by ½. Stir occasionally. Add sweet potato and 4 teaspoons peanuts. Simmer for 15 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Add peanut paste, and peanut butter. Simmer for 5 minutes or until peanut paste and peanut butter blends completely in. Stir frequently. Add spinach and tomato. Raise heat to low-medium and simmer for 10 minutes or until the oil from the peanut paste and peanut butter makes the stew shiny. Goes well with rice and flatbread.

TIDBITS

1) This entree is a stew. Stew is an anagram for west.

2) The Sun sets in the west.

3) Peanuts hate the Sun, because it’s bad for their complexion.

4) So, they dig into the ground to avoid the piercing rays of light.

5) Peanuts never get very far into the soil, though.

6) They don’t have opposable thumbs. You need opposable thumbs to hold hoes and shovels.

7) Nor do peanuts have any hands to speak of, really.

8) Which is why farmers never hire peanuts during harvest time, only humans.

9) Still, the Sun burns the little ground nuts.

10) The Sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

11) So, the peanuts migrate to the west in the morning and back east in the afternoon. They end up in the same place, which is why no one ever notices them moving.

12) Things get ugly, though, when herds of peanuts cross the same interstate freeway. Traffic halts. The traffic jam grows to includes connecting freeways and highways. The economy halts.

14) That’s not all. Giant herds of peanuts moving back and forth along the ground dislodge the Earth’s plates. Earthquakes result as in San Francisco in 1906

15) Indeed, peanut migrations have caused the Earth’s plates to shift. Before peanuts came on the scene there was only one continent, Pangaea.

16) Something had to be done and in 1939 all the nations gathered in Poway, California to discuss the looming peanutian threat.

17) Then, on September 1, Hitler invaded Poland and World War II broke out. Country after country uprooted their peanut fields to feed their rampaging armies. Fewer migrating peanuts meant fewer earthquakes during the war years. You can look it up.

18) The leaders of the major victorious powers: Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, knew it would be a matter of time before another Hitler would arise or peanuts would make their comeback. Perhaps, the next megalomanic dictator would even gather the peanuts of the world to his standard.

19) The United Nations was formed in 1945 to gather this very threat. An elite anti-peanut battalion was formed and peanut farming within 100 miles of fault lines was banned forever.

20) Something to think about when you have your next peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.

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

Peruvian Papa Rellena

Posted on September 25, 2012 by pauldelancey

Peruvian Entree

PAPA RELLENA
(Peruvian Stuffed Potato)

INGREDIENTS

DOUGH
4 medium-to-large potatoes
1 cup flour
1 egg (4 eggs total, 1 here and 3 in filling.)

FILLING
1 medium onion
4 garlic cloves
3/4 pound ground beef
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon Meat MagicTM spice
1/4 teaspoon parsley
3 eggs (4 eggs total, 3 here and 1 in dough.)

Vegetable oil

SPECIALITY COOKWARE

Deep fryer or deep pot
potato masher
a cheap Monet painting

INITIAL PREPARATION

Peel potatoes. Boil the spuds in large pot for about 40 minutes.

FILLING PREPARATION

While potatoes are boiling, boil 3 eggs for 12 minutes. (If you’re feeling particularly efficient, boil the eggs with the potatoes. Just be sure the eggs are only in the boiling water for the required 12 minutes.)

While eggs are boiling, mince onions and garlic. Add onion, garlic, ground beef, pepper, salt, meat spice, and parsley to frying pan. Cook on medium-high heat until beef is no longer red and onions are soft. Put beef mixture in first mixing bowl.

Remove hard-boiled eggs. Peel and dice them. Add diced hard-boiled eggs to beef mixture in bowl.

DOUGH PREPARATION

Remove potatoes. Pulverize them with a potato masher. (You say your son’s Little LeagueTM coach kept him on the bench? Then pulverize them taters! Put some muscle behind your blows. Smash ‘em, smash ‘em, make ‘em beg. Ahem.) Combine the surviving mashed potatoes with flour and egg in second mixing bowl.

Admire cheap Monet painting. Fill deep fryer with 4 inches of vegetable oil or a neutral cooking oil. Heat oil to 340-to-350 degrees. Anything higher gets kinda scary.

While oil heats, put a generous amount of flour on your hand. (This prevents the sticky flour from well, sticking to your hand.) Put a ball of the potato mixture–1 to 2 tablespoons–in your palm. Use four fingers of the other hand to make a hole in the mixture. Put about a teaspoon of the cooked ground-beef mix in the hole. Fold top of potato ball completely over the beef center. Roll the potato-meat ball in your hands to make it smooth. (Again, coat your hands with flour before making each potato-meat ball.)

Use a ladle or tongs to gently lower the potato-meat ball into the hot oil. (You don’t want to get too close to that stuff.) Fry the ball until it is golden brown. Remove and dab with paper napkin to remove excess oil.

This is a great and tasty way to use up those potatoes skulking in the corner of the pantry.

TIDBITS

1) Lima is the capital of Peru.

2) Boston is the capital of Massachusetts.

3) I like Boston baked beans much more than lima beans.

4) Peru has fourteen golf courses.

5) With 3,000 species of potatoes originating in Peru, the (potato species originating / golf course) ratio is 214:1.

6) Peru also has a lot of earthquakes.

7) Ireland is famous for having potatoes without earthquakes.

8) But Ireland also had the Great Potato Failure in the 1840s.

9) Growing potatoes is kinda scary, 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.

 

Categories: cuisine, food, humor, international, recipes | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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