Posts Tagged With: egg yolks

Vanilla Pudding 2

American Dessert

VANILLA PUDDING

INGREDIENTS

2 egg yolks
3 tablespoons cornstarch
⅛ teaspoon salt
½ cup sugar
2⅓ cups whole milk
1½ tablespoons butter, softened
½ tablespoon vanilla extract

SPECIAL UTENSILS

4 dessert dishes or ramekins
plastic wrap

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Beat egg yolks in mixing bowl. Add cornstarch, salt, and sugar to saucepan. Mix with spatula. Add whole milk slowly, while stirring gently with spatula. Cook using medium heat until mixture boils and thickens. Stir constantly to prevent burning. Boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Add ½ of the cornstarch/sugar/whole milk mixture to egg yolks. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add this mixture to saucepan. Bring to boil using medium heat. Boil for 1 minute. Stir constantly and gently.

Remove from heat. Add butter and vanilla. Stir gently until well blended. Pour pudding into dessert dishes. Cover with plastic wrap. Chill in refrigerator for 1 hour mixture firms into pudding.

TIDBITS

1) Stars are made from vanilla pudding. How do we know this? Stars are white. So is vanilla pudding white. The Sun is hot. That is because it’s yellow and not made from vanilla pudding.

2) If you were somehow able to catapult your vanilla pudding millions of light years away it would be far too small to be seen, even by the Hubble telescope. Indeed, you would need to buy trillions of pounds of: cornstarch, salt, sugar, milk, butter, and vanilla extract to fling a visible vanilla-pudding star into the far reaches of space. But don’t do it. Every van in the world would be needed to deliver your ingredients. The global economy would collapse. Oh my gosh, we’d have nothing left to make cake! For millions of years! What would we do for birthdays? I beg of you, reconsider this giant-star project!

 

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, observations | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Romanian Salata de Boeuf (Beef Salad)

Romanian Entree

SALATA DE BOEUF
(Beef Salad)

INGREDIENTS

1 pound thin beef sirloin
1⅓ pounds potatoes
2 carrots
2 eggs
⅓ cup green peas
1 cup diced or sliced pickles
½ cup pickled red bell peppers
1 cup mayonnaise (¼ cup more later)
2 tablespoons mustard
½ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon fresh parsley

Serves 8. Takes 1 hour. No mayonnaise topping at front, so you can see inside.

PREPARATION

Add sirloin and enough water to cover. Bring to boil at high heat. Boil for 30 minutes or until sirloin is tender. Drain. Remove sirloin, let cool, and chop into ½” cubes. While beef cooks, add potatoes and enough water to large pot. Bring to boil at high heat. Boil for 25 minutes or until tender. Drain. Let potatoes cool. Peel potatoes and chop them into ½” cubes.

While sirloin and potatoes cook, add carrots and water to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Boil for 15 minutes or until carrots becomes tender. Drain and cool. Chop carrots into ½” cubes. Add water to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Carefully add eggs. Boil for 8 minutes for soft boiled and 12 minutes for hard boiled. Let cool. Peel and cut each egg into 6 slices.

Add sirloin, potato, carrot, peas, pickles, pickled red-bell peppers, 1 cup mayonnaise, mustard, pepper, and salt. Mix by hand until well blended. Add this mixture to a serving plate. Mold by hand into a flat, round shape like a layer of cake. Use spatula to coat cake-shape mixture with ¼ cup mayonnaise. Dice parsley. Garnish with egg slices and parsley.

TIDBITS

1) Prehistoric humans believed the Sun was a god. Egg yolks look like the Sun. Our ancestors reasoned that egg yolks themselves must possess a bit of divinity. The ancient Egyptians went further. Any animal that could birth so much godliness must itself be divine. The chicken became the preeminent Egyptian god. However, during the 18th dynasty, the priests of Amun Ra gained power and destroyed the Chicken Cult. Chickens would never again be worshipped. Their eggs, however, may be enjoyed in this dish.

 

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

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