Posts Tagged With: Egypt

Yansoon (aniseed drink)

Posted on July 21, 2013 by pauldelancey

Egyptian Dessert

YANSOON
(aniseed drink)

INGREDIENTSYansoon-

4 cups water
6 tablespoons aniseed
2 tablespoons sugar

SPECIAL UTENSIL

tea strainer
or
cheesecloth

PREPARATION

Boil all ingredients together for 2 minutes. Stir until sugar dissolves. Pour through tea strainer or cheesecloth into teapot or cups. You’re done. Enjoy.

TIDBITS

1) Yansoon is an anagram for Nano soy.

2) Nano means one billionth. A nano soy is one billionth of a soy.

3) How can you have one billionth of a soy? Maybe a tiny part of a soy bean.

4) Tofu is made from soy. So, it’s probably the merest speck of a tofu cube.

5) A mere speck is just a tiny dot. A meerkat is a mammal. The San Diego Zoo has meerkats.

6) Did you know that a colony, or is it a coagulation, of meerkats always has a designated lookout. This sentinel’s only job is to search the sky and warn the colony of approaching hawks?

7) There are no hawks at the San Diego Zoo, so this precaution is unnecessary.

8) But it’s not harmful either. And how do these San Diegan meerkats know for sure they won’t wake up tomorrow in Hawkland?

9) If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Would the many, many industrial accidents and disasters throughout the years have occurred if meerkats had been overseeing the projects? I think not.

– 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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Kenyan Maharagwe Soup Recipe

Posted on May 22, 2013 by pauldelancey

Kenyan Soup

MAHARAGWE
(Spicy red beans in coconut milk)

INGREDIENTSMaharagwe-

3 tomatoes
1 1/2 onions
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/4 teaspoons cayenne
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 tablespoon turmeric
1 13.5 ounce can coconut milk
1 15 ounce can dark red kidney beans

PREPARATION

Dice tomatoes. Mince onions. Put olive oil and onion in soup pot. Sauté for 5 minutes on medium-high heat or until onion is tender. Drain kidney beans. Add tomato, cayenne, salt, turmeric, coconut milk, and kidney beans to pot.

Cook on low-medium heat for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Serve to guests who do not wonder out loud why a dish from Kenya has coconuts.

TIDBITS

1) Kenya grows coconuts. It does! It does! I never knew. I just looked it up. There’s even a Kenya Coconut Development Authority (KCDA). So there.

2) Egypt has pyramids. Mexico has pyramids. Did ancient Egyptians ever voyage to Mexico?

3) I’d always pictured coconuts growing only in islands in the Pacific.

4) But then again, Iceland grows bananas. Iceland is a republic. So, Iceland is a banana republic. So is the United States.

5) Did you know Iceland has a list of approved names? If you pick off the list, the government will not recognize your baby’s name. In that case, you must go to court to win approval.

6) Have you ever bought bananas from Iceland? Iceland has no McDonald’s. It costs too much to ship McDonald’s approved beef and potatoes there.

7) Juneau, Alaska has a McDonald’s. It used up it’s all the supplies that were supposed to last it an entire month on opening day.

– 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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Ful Medames – Egyptian Fava Bean Recipe

Posted on April 2, 2013 by pauldelancey

Egyptian Entree

FUL MEDAMES
(fava beans)

INGREDIENTSfulmeda-

6 eggs
2 garlic cloves
1 medium onion
1 tomato
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 16 ounce cans fava beans
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon coriander
1/2 teaspoon paprika
2 tablespoons parsley
1/4 teaspoon sea salt (or regular salt)
1/4 teaspoon white pepper (or black pepper)

PREPARATION

Boil water. (Hard to do on Mount Everest.) Put eggs in boiling water and cook for 6 minutes for soft-boiled eggs and 12 minutes for hard-boiled ones. Remove eggs.

While water boils and eggs cook, mince garlic and onion. Dice tomato. Add garlic, onion, and sesame oil to pot. Sauté on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes or until onion softens or starts to brown. Stir frequently.

Drain cans of fava beans. Add fava beans, lemon juice, cumin, coriander, parsley, salt, and pepper. Cook on low-to-medium heat for 10-to-15 minutes. Stir occasionally.

While fava bean/spice mix simmers, remove eggs from shells. Slice each egg into four slices. Pour fava bean/spice mix into bowls and top with egg slices.

Makes 4-to-6 bowls.

Do not do what the song suggests and walk like an Egyptian when serving hot ful medames to guests and family.

TIDBITS

1) On May 29, 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first people to successfully climb Mount Everest.

2) I read Norgay’s book about the climb in 5th grade. I remember them being happy and having a strong sense of accomplishment, but recall nothing about boiling eggs on the summit.

3) Indeed, I have been unable to find anything that suggests anyone has made any attempt to hard-boil eggs at the summit of Mount Everest. Apparently, everyone is too busy getting up there to even care about making culinary history with even this most modest of dishes.

4) This failure is despite the fact that oodles of people make the climb every day.

5) So many people go up Mount Everest there is a rescue helicopter designed specially to remove injured or debilitated climbers to hospitals. The chopper is kept busy.

6) If they can design a helicopter for this worthy mountain, why the heck can’t someone take the time to boil an egg at the peak?

7) We can calculate, though, how much time it should take to boil an egg there given what we know about air pressure at that altitude. A soft-boiled egg should take 20 minutes. A hard-boiled one should take 35 minutes.

8) Water should boil at the top at 66 degrees Celsius instead of the 100 degrees it needs at sea level.

9) So when someone says he’s boiling mad atop Mount Everest, it doesn’t mean much.

– 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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Eggah – Egyptian Omelette Recipe

Posted on March 31, 2013 by pauldelancey

Egyptian Breakfast

EGGAH
(Omelette)

INGREDIENTSEggah-

2 medium onions
1 tomato
1/2 red bell pepper
10 eggs
3/4 teaspoon coriander
3/4 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons parsley
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour

PREPARATION

Mince onions. Dice bell pepper and tomato. Mix eggs, coriander, cumin, parsley, and sea salt in mixing bowl. (This is why a mixing bowl is called a mixing bowl. ☺)

Put butter and onion into skillet. Sauté at medium-high heat for about 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add flour. Mix thoroughly. Add eggs/spice mixture to skillet. Stir. Cook for about 5 minutes with lid on or until eggs turn golden brown on the bottom. Flip the omelette over and cook for about 3 minutes or until the new bottom side is golden brown as well. (Note, it’s okay to use a spatula to cut the omelette in half or into four pieces before flipping it over. If your guests complain about this, point toward your vast supply of sharp kitchen knives, kitchen scissors, and kitchen mallets.)

Serve hot to friends and family and cold to telemarketers.

TIDBITS

1) Egypt is home to the Suez Canal.

2) Dentists perform root canals.

3) In a movie, Marilyn Monroe so dislikes a man she says, “You, you dentist.”

4) Do mimes cry out during root-canal operations?

5) I much prefer root beer to undergoing a root canal.

6) Charlie Root pitched for the 1935 National League champion Chicago Cubs.

7) Shirley Temple was a child film star around that time. She has a non-alcoholic drink named after her.

8) My mother met Shirley Temple.

9) My mother later had me and now you have this recipe. ☺

– 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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Kugelis, Potato Pudding Recipe

Posted on March 2, 2013 by pauldelancey

Lithuanian Entree

KUGELIS
(Potato Pudding Recipe)

INGREDIENTSkugelis-

5 pounds russet potatoes
12 ounces bacon
1 1/2 large white onions
1/4 cup butter
6 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 12 ounce can evaporated milk
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 cup farina

SPECIAL UTENSILS

1 9″*13″ baking dish
or
2 8″*8″ baking dishes
or
127 1″*1″ baking dishes

Serves a lot of people. We’re talking about 7 pounds of rich food here.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel potatoes. Grate or shred potatoes. (This is some debate about the authenticity of shredding potatoes for Kugelis. After noting how long it took to merely peel the potatoes, I fired up the trusty food processor and shredded away. Yep, I’m a rebel. Born to be Wild.)

Dice bacon. Shred onions. Put bacon, onions, and butter in frying pan. Cook on medium-high heat until bacon is done to your desired level of crispness and the onions soften. Stir frequently. Hold the pan at an angle away from you while stirring. You really want bacon splatter to head away from you.

Put eggs in large mixing bowl and beat the heck out of them. Add potato, bacon/onion sauté, milk, evaporated milk, salt, pepper, and farina. Mix thoroughly with spoon.

Bake in oven at 350 degrees for 1 hour 20 minutes or until golden brown on top. Remove baking dish from oven and let cool for 5 minutes before serving. Enjoy the national dish of Lithuania.

TIDBITS

1) Pepper is used in this recipe. It is a happening spice. Pepper was first widely used in India over two millennia ago. India is one of the world’s oldest civilizations One of every seven people in the world is Indian. India has lots of trains, great food, nuclear weapons, and customer-service reps. Okay, the last one is bad.

2) Pepper traded westward to ancient Egypt. Black peppercorns were found stuffed up the nose of the mummified body of Pharaoh Ramses II. Snorting, perhaps? Egypt was the dominant power in that region for hundreds of years. It’s chariots raced all over the countryside. Perhaps they wouldn’t have had to race all over if they had bothered to ask for directions, but you know men.

3) Some think Rome conquered great swaths of North Africa, Europe, and the Near East because the Romans were really cranky from constantly sneezing snorted pepper. The Roman Empire lasted so long because its subject were so down with the taste explosion pepper brought that they really didn’t mind constant taxation and civil wars.

4) Then around the 5th century AD, barbarians invaded and destroyed the Roman Empire for no good culinary reason. Lutefisk crazed Vikings pillaged everywhere. People stashed their pepper. The Vikings killed the stashers. Knowledge of pepper disappeared. The Dark Ages descended.

5) Around 13th century or so the Venetians started trade routes with India. Indian pepper once again flowed westward to Europe. Venice became the richest and mightiest city in Europe. Then they started making blinds and their economy tanked.

6) Portugal started the Great Age of Exploration. It sent fleets around Africa and to the Americas and sooner than you can say heteroskedasticity pepper graced the tables of people around the world.

7) Life’s been pretty good since then. Even the occasional global war was made tolerable by proper amounts of peppers in soldiers’ meals.

– 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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Honey-Mustard Sauce

Posted on August 31, 2012 by pauldelancey

American Appetizer

HONEY-MUSTARD SAUCE

INGREDIENTS

1/3 cup yellow mustard
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon coriander
1/4 teaspoon Poultry MagicTM spice
1/4 teaspoon ground mustard

PREPARATION

Use whisk to mix all the above ingredients in a small bowl. This is so easy and so tasty. Try it!

TIDBITS

1) Mustard was found in the pyramids of Ancient Egypt. Apparently, properly spiced food was just as important in the afterworld as it was in the land of the living.

2) There are 250,000 seeds in a pound of mustard. If you were to count one seed a minute, it would take you almost three days.

3) May I recommend that you a 1/4-teaspoon spoon instead?

4) Canada produces ninety percent of the world’s supply of mustard seeds. Go, Canada!

5) People in the 19th century put packs of mixed hot mustard with a lot of flour on their chests to relieve congestion. They passed this remedy on to succeeding generations.

6) People who used only plain hot mustard on chests were in too much pain to make succeeding generations.

– 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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Berbere Burgers From Cookbook, “Eat Me”

Posted on April 24, 2012 by pauldelancey

Moroccan Entree

BERBERE BURGERS

INGREDIENTSBerbeHB-

1/2 head lettuce
1 medium yellow onion
1 tablespoon Berbere spices (See recipe for BERBERE SPICE MIX INGREDIENTS, if you can’t find the mix)
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon parsley flakes
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
8 buns or 16 multi-grain bread slices
1 cup grated Mozzarella cheese
no-stick spray

UTENSILS

electric skillet

spice grinder (To make your own Berbere spice mix.)

PREPARATION

Tear lettuce into bun-size pieces by hand. Peel and dice onion. Put Berbere spices, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, coriander, ginger, parsley, pepper, salt, and ground beef in mixing bowl. Pretend you’re making the mortar for the mighty Egyptian pyramids as you mix everything together with your hands. (Edible pyramids. What a concept.) Make 8 hamburger patties.

Use non-stick spray on frying pan. Put 4 patties in pan. Cook on medium-high heat for 2 to 3 minutes. Flip patties over and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes. Don’t squash the patties with your spatula. This forces the juices out of the patties. (I also don’t recommend flattening oranges with your spatula for a similar if not more spectacular reason.) Patties should have no pink remaining. Repeat to make 8 patties. Toast buns.

Put a patty on each bun bottom. Top with lettuce and cheese. Put bun top and, violà, you have a burger so tasty you’ll want to conquer all of North Africa just to bring this dish’s culinary greatness to all its peoples.

TIDBITS

1) Most world conquerors, such as Napoleon, Cortes, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and Julius Caesar didn’t bring much culinary enlightenment to their defeated nations.

2) Pretty much just death by the thousands and enslavement.

3) What would it have hurt them to give their newly enslaved peoples a wondrous culinary novelty in compensation?

4) Oh sure, there are such things as Napoleons and Caesar salad.

5) But those military geniuses didn’t come up with them.

6) The Caesar salad was invented last century at Caesar’s hotel in Tijuana Mexico.

7) Indeed, it is also verifiable that Julius Caesar and all of the Julian-Claudian Emperors had nothing to do with the comedic brilliance of Sid Caesar.

8) Frederick the Great did encourage potato production in his Kingdom of Prussia, the precursor to modern Germany. The mighty tuber enabled Prussia to feed all its people even though its lands were repeatedly invaded by its enemies.

9) To this day, one may still buy French Fries in Germany.

10) Well done, Frederick.

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

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