Posts Tagged With: entree

Kunde

Posted on December 5, 2021 by pauldelancey

Kenyan Entree

KUNDE

INGREDIENTS

1 cup rice
1 medium onion
2 tomatoes
½ cup unsalted peanuts or ¼ cup creamy peanut butter
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
½ teaspoon coriander
½ teaspoon turmeric
½ teaspoon salt
1½ pounds black-eyed peas, cooked and drained
½ cup water

SPECIAL UTENSIL

food processor or coffee grinder

Serves 4. Takes 25 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cook rice according to instructions on package. Mince onion. Dice tomatoes. Grind peanuts in food processor until you get a paste. Add oil and onion to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Sur frequently. Add coriander and turmeric. Cook for 1 minute or until fragrant. Stir constantly.

Add tomato and salt. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 5 minutes or until liquid disappears. Stir frequently. Lightly mash black-eyed peas with a fork. Add peanut paste, black-eyed peas, and water. Bring to boil at high heat. Reduce temperature to low medium. Simmer for 5 minutes or until dish gets to the consistency of a stew. Stir enough to prevent burning. Serve over rice.

TIDBITS

1) Really ancient humans worshiped the Sun as a god. They could have adored the potato instead. But they didn’t. Not many peoples even had potatoes. So, it never occurred to these tribes to worship the mighty spud. It’s just like wanting to eat lutefisk when you’ve never heard of it. You wouldn’t want to; it’s horrible. Not enough half-centuries have gone by before I’ll eat lutefisk again.

2) Anyway, the Rohohoe tribe, prehistoric Kenyans, had the Sun and they worshiped it. After much discussion, the religious leaders decided that the best way to worship Sun was to make an entree out of: rice, onion, tomatoes, peanuts, veggie oil, coriander, turmeric, salt, black-eyed peas, and water. The brownish mix of ingredients in the middle represents the Sun and the rice, its rays. There.

 

– 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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Fun Festivals – Poutine

Posted on December 4, 2021 by pauldelancey

Looking for something to do after your significant other combusted? Then make your way to the Poutine Festival in Drummondville, Quebec.* Poutine, perhaps Quebec’s most famous dish, consists of French fries, beef gravy, and cheese curds or mozzarella. Listen to wonderful music while tasting caloric culinary greatness. Heart specialists are standing by.

This year’s festivities occurred from September 2 to 4. So, you missed it unless, of course, you have a time machine. If history is anything to go by, next year’s excitement will take place anytime from July to September. Keep checking, because 2021’s event only allowed 1,500 festivalgoers per day.

The highlight of the event is seeing which poutinier food truck will win the coveted Gold Fork for making the festival’s best poutine. See if you agree with the judges by sampling as many poutiniers as you can. It’ll be an experience you’ll long remember.

Reflect for a moment that this festival honors poutine. Ah, poutine. Tasty.

The festival is also called la Festival de la Poutine for those who only speak French.

* = Well, 1 hour 15 minutes from the city.

Again, there will many exciting musical groups to hear. I don’t recognize any of them, but I’m not up on my acts from Quebec. The winner of the 2020 Francouvertes attended this latest festival. What is a Francouverte? I don’t know. My imperfect French tells me it means “Green French Thing” or maybe “Open French.” Google translate(tm) is no help at all. It translates “francouverte” as “francocouverte.” However, winning the Francovertes is probably a good thing.

Go there next year and find out what a francouverte is. Please, let me know. And eat lots of poutine. It’s really, really good.

– 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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National Protest Against Gravity Day

Posted on December 1, 2021 by pauldelancey

Freedom fighters

Who likes all those laws the government makes us obey?

No one.

Who would like to lose some weight?

Quite a few of us.

What do we need to do?

Repeal the Law of Gravity!

We have too damn many laws to obey, government or physics. Stop telling us what to do.

We weigh too much. If there were no physics, no Law of Gravity, we could eat as much as we want and never gain a pound.

Thank you, Newton.

I know you all are as outraged as I am at gravity. Until our president repeals the law of gravity, we will have to take steps ourselves.

So, I propose that we jump up into the air as high as we can all day long, the protest the Law of Gravity. Today. A National Protest.

Join this protest. Make your voice heard.

 

– 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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Shiro (Spicy Ground Chickpea Stew)

Posted on November 28, 2021 by pauldelancey

Eritrean Entree

SHIRO
(Spicy Ground Chickpea Stew)

INGREDIENTS

1 jalapeno
5 garlic cloves
1 large onion
1 large tomato
⅓ cup vegetable oil
3 cups water
2 tablespoons Berbere spice*
¾ cup chickpea or garbanzo flour*
1 teaspoon salt

Serves 4. Takes 50 minutes.

* = Can be found in Middle Easter or African supermarkets or online.

PREPARATION

Seed jalapeno. Slice jalapeno into small circles. Mince garlic cloves and onion. Dice tomato. Cook onion at medium-high heat for 4 minutes or until it turns brown. Stir frequently. Add oil. Sauté for 2 minutes at medium heat. Stir frequently. Add garlic and tomato. Sauté at medium heat for 3 minutes. Stir frequently.

Add water. Bring to boil. Stir occasionally. Reduce heat to low. Add Berbere spice. Add chickpea flour, 1 tablespoon at a time. Stir with whisk after each tablespoon until lumps disappear. Simmer on low heat for 20 minutes or until stew reaches your desired level of thickness. Add jalapeno circles and salt. Stir until well blended.

TIDBITS

1) About 6,000 years ago, people everywhere grew terrified over solar eclipses. These eclipses meant that the moon god was eating the sun god. If the sun god got devoured, we’d have perpetual darkness. Crops wouldn’t grow in the perpetual gloom. It was all quite distressing.

2) 500 years later, Chief La Fong of the Rohohoe tribe was contemplating the infinite while eating Shiro in a bowl exactly like the one above. Amazing coincidence, isn’t it? Anyway, he noted that while he couldn’t see the bottom of the bowl, it was still there. Shiro had merely come between his eyes and the bottom of the bowl. La Fong then embarked on a campaign of conquest by invading during solar eclipses. He’d simply told the invaded tribe to surrender and he’d make the Moon give back the Sun. How do we know this? Culinary archeologists have decoded the Rohohoe alphabet, which was based on dried out doughnuts. We don’t have the doughnuts anymore. Someone dropped a safe on them. Ironically, the safe was meant to preserve the doughnuts. Oh well.

 

– 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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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.

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

Tarte Flambee

Posted on November 5, 2021 by pauldelancey

French Entree

TARTE FLAMBEE

INGREDIENTS – DOUGH

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2 cups flour (3 more tablespoons later)
½ tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon sugar
½ tablespoon olive oil
½ cup warm water
3 tablespoons flour

INGREDIENTS – TOPPINGS

½ pound bacon
¼ pound Gruyère cheese
1 medium onion
¼ cup crême fraiche
¾ pound fromage blanc or cream cheese
⅛ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt

SPECIAL UTENSILS

pizza stone or baking sheet
parchment paper
mandoline (optional)
sonic obliterator (Go get one)

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.

PREPARATION – DOUGH

Add pizza stone to center rack in oven. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Add 2 cups flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add oil and water. Knead by hand until well blended and dough forms.

Dust large flat surface with 3 tablespoons flour. Divide dough in half. Roll out dough half until you get a round pizza crust 10″ across. Put parchment paper on baking sheet. Put pizza crust on parchment paper. Repeat for the 2nd dough half.

PREPARATION – TOPPINGS

Dice bacon. Grate Gruyère cheese. Cut onion into slices ⅛” thick. Add crême fraiche, fromage blanc, nutmeg, pepper, and salt to 2nd mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Spread crême fraiche/fromage blanc mix evenly over pizza crusts. Leave a ½” border around the edges. Sprinkle bacon evenly over cheese mix. Sprinkle onion over bacon and crême fraiche. Sprinkle Gruyère cheese over everything.

Carefully, carefully (use oven mitts) slide pizza crusts and the parchment paper underneath them onto preheated pizza stone or baking sheets. Bake at 500 degrees until puffed, golden brown, and crispy. Serve immediately.

Zap unappreciative guests with sonic obliterator. You don’t need negativity in your kitchen.

TIDBITS

1) This recipe uses a pizza stone.

2) The earliest human, Lucy of Olduvai Gorge, did not have a pizza stone. So, she did not make this recipe. If only she had had even a baking sheet. But she did not. No Tarte Flambee for Lucy.

3) Her friend Charlie Olduvai had a football his mom had made from the pelts of little animals. Lucy always promised to hold the pelt football while he ran up to kick it. But Lucy always pulled the pelt ball away at the last moment and Charlie would fall onto his back.

4) Charlie Olduvai grew tired of his mistreatment. So did his parents who never liked Lucy’s parents anyway. “They’ve ruined football for us until the twentieth century. Bah, the slackers will never make anything out of themselves.”

5) So the disgruntled Olduvais left. Many gorge dwellers followed the well-liked family. These first humans thought they’d only walk for a day or so before settling down beside a new stream near a nice plain filled with lots of juicy animals to eat.

6) Then George Gorge piped up and said he wanted a pizza. Now, the little group did carry all the ingredients for pizza for humanity has always hungered for pizza. So they looked for holes in cliffs that would double as a pizza oven. They found dozens of such ovens.

7) But no pizza stones or baking sheets So they marched on. The little walk turned into months, years, and even millennia. Thus, began humanity’s great migration out of Africa.

8) Then the early humans invented the wheel. Brilliant minds soon–thousands of years–made pizza stones. People could finally make pizza! Eat pizza! Huzzah!

9) The Stone Wheel clans appointed wisdom keepers to tell succeeding generations the way to make pizza stones. So for century upon century peoples could feast on mastodon pizza.

10) Then humans, too hungry for mastodon pizza toppings, killed off all the mastodons No other pizza toppings would do. Pizza fell out of favor. There was no long a need for pizza stones, no need to pass on the knowledge to make them. Humanity’s ascent stagnated for millennia.

11) Don’t let this happen again. Buy a baking sheet! Buy a pizza stone! Do it now!

 

– 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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Gutaps, Meat Pastries

Posted on November 2, 2021 by pauldelancey

Turkmen Entree

GUTAPS

INGREDIENTS – MEAT FILLING

1 pound ground beef or lamb
1 medium onion
⅛ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes or cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (3½ cups more later)

INGREDIENTS- SPINACH FILLING

1 pound fresh spinach
¼ cup vegetable oil (¼ cup more later)
2 tablespoons flour (3½ cups more later)
¼ cup water

INGREDIENTS – DOUGH

3¼ cups flour
1 cup warm water

INGREDIENTS – FINAL

no-stick spray
3½ cups (1½”) vegetable oil

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 40 minutes.

PREPARATION – MEAT FILLING

Mince onion. Add all meat-filling ingredients to large mixing bowl. Blend with hands.

PREPARATION – SPINACH FILLING

Add enough water to cover spinach to large pot. Bring water to boil using high heat. Add spinach. Boil for 4 minutes. Drain. Add ice water and spinach to 2nd bowl. The ice water stops the spinach from continuing to cook and prevents its leaves from wilting. Drain.

Add ¼ cup vegetable oil to pan. Heat using medium-high heat until a little bit of flour dances in the oil. Add 2 tablespoons flour. Reduce heat to meat and cook for 1 minute or until flour starts to brown. Add ¼ cup water. Still with whisk or fork until well blended. Add back spinach. Stir until well blended. Remove from heat.

PREPARATION – DOUGH

Add 3¼ cups flour, 1 cup warm water, and ¼ cup oil to 3rd, large mixing bowl. Mix with hands until you get a smooth dough ball that is not sticky. Add a bit more flour if necessary. Cover and set aside.

PREPARATION – FINAL

Spray flat surface with no-stick spray. Divide dough into 16 smaller dough balls. Roll out small dough balls until they become rounds ⅛” thick. (The rounds should be about 6″ across.) Divide meat filling equally over on the right half of the rounds. Distribute the spinach filling equally over the sides with meat. Leave a small uncovered edge on all the round.

Brush the edges with little bit of water. This will help the pastries to seal better. Fold uncovered half of the dough rounds over the covered side to make your gutap pastries. Seal the edges together by pressing down with the tines of a fork. Prick top of gutap with fork. This allows hot air to escape while cooking. (It also helps for even browning of both sides.)

Add 3½ cups oil to large pot. Heat oil at medium heat until a little bit of dough in the oil starts to dance. Carefully add 2 or 3 gutaps to pot. (Do not let them touch It also helps the flip side brown evenly.) Fry 3 minutes on each side or until gutaps turn golden brown all over. Add more oil as needed. Remove with slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Serve hot.

TIDBITS

1) The Sun and the Moon are round. The Ancient Romans worshiped them as gods. Pizzas are round. Pizzas are made round to honor the Sun god, Sol, and the Moon goddess, Luna. Why did the Romans honor these gods with pizzas? Because Sol and Luna loved pizzas. Who doesn’t?

2) Sol wanted the heavens to himself during the day. This is how we get the modern word, solo.

3) Luna would go insane when the Earth hid her beloved Sun. Her face sported a tic during these events. Her followers would worship her during lunar eclipse by scrunching their faces to resemble tics. This is how we get the word, lunatic.

4) The supreme Roman god, Jove, certainly played the field. He took the form of a dove and made passionate love to a Gallic lass called Carla La Fong. You’d think Carl would taken a man for a lover rather than a dove, but there’s no accounting for taste.

5) Carla named the fruit of this union, Gutap. Gutap was a handsome and muscular lad. Indeed, he killed the requisite number of wild beast expected of a demigod, but his passion was making meat pastries. He didn’t even half to follow the recipe above. He just pressed dirt between his hands and presto, he’d made a semicircular pastry. Jove’s fellow Olympian loved these pastries, calling them gutaps after Juno’ son. Indeed, they found them so tasty, that they esteemed Gutap above, Juno, head goddess and wife of Juno.

6) This adulation pierced Juno’s vanity so much that she cast Gutap down to Earth. Gutap fled Juno’s wrath until he reached Turkmenistan, a land so far away that even the gods could not see it. The demigod fed his meat pastries to his new neighbors. They loved the pastries so much that they found a way to make their own gutaps. 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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Pizzaghetti

Posted on October 29, 2021 by pauldelancey

Canadian Entree

PIZZAGHETTI

INGREDIENTS – PIZZA CRUST

2 cups all-purpose flour (1 tablespoon more later)
¾ cup water
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
½ teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
½ tablespoon active dry yeast
no-stick spray
1 tablespoon flour

INGREDIENTS – TOPPINGS

½ pound spaghetti
no-stick spray
1½ cups pasta sauce
½ pound sausage meat*
¼ pound sliced pepperoni*
2 cups mozzarella cheese

* = Substitute with your preferred toppings, if you like.

SPECIAL UTENSILS

bread maker
16″ pizza pan

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 50 minutes.

PREPARATION – PIZZA CRUST

Add flour, water, oil, sugar, salt, and yeast to the bread maker. Do not put the yeast directly on top of the salt. Salt is bad for yeast and yeast makes the dough rise. “Ask not what your yeast can do for you. Ask what you can do for your yeast.”

Set the timer or the menu on the bread maker to “Dough.” Wait for the required time, maybe up to an hour. In the meantime preheat the oven to 400 degrees and liberally spray the pizza pan with no-stick spray. This will prevent the crust from forming a glue-like bond with the pan.

Take the dough out of the bread maker and roll it out until the dough covers the pizza pan. If you do not possess a rolling pin, any canned food can will do as long as it is at least six inches tall. Spray the pan and coat it with 1 tablespoon flour before spreading the dough.

PREPARATION – TOPPINGS

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Read instructions for spaghetti on package. Subtract 3 minutes from the suggested time. (The spaghetti will continue to cook in the oven.) Drain.

Spray pizza pan with no-stick spray. Put pizza crust on pizza pan. Spread pasta sauce over entire crust. Make ½” sausage balls. Arrange sausage balls and pepperoni slices evenly over sauce. Distribute spaghetti evenly over pizza. Sprinkle cheese over everything. Bake pizza in oven at 400 degrees for 16 minutes or until cheese turns golden brown.

Note: This another version of pizzaghetti that simply has spaghetti and sauce served next to one or two slices of pizzas. To me, the version presented here is much more exciting.

TIDBITS

1) I must say that this is an exciting dish.

2) It’s so simple now, yet so many never had the wit to combine pizza with spaghetti.

3) But Patrice Grandchat did. Culinary financial analysts report that Mlle. Grandchat now has so much money that she’s about to launch a hostile takeover of AmazonTM. “I have a lot of things in my closets and attic that I’d like to sell,” said the billionaire Quebecoise.

4) I want to be as rich as Mlle. Grandchat. If I were that wealthy, I’d never have to think twice about spending ten cents on a recyclable plastic bag at the supermarket checkout stand. So, here are my forthcoming money-making food dishes.

A) PB&S: Peanut Butter and Steak. Simply slather your steak with peanut butter. There’s a version of this entree where the steak gets stuffed with peanut butter. This is the famous Stuffed PB&S.

B) Ravioli Burger: Substitute the meat patty in your burger with ravioli.

C) Camcowpigturducken: This is a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey inside a pig inside a cow inside a camel. Vegetarians are warned away from this dish. It’s also a diet-busting meal.

D) Taco Ice Cream: Who doesn’t love tacos? Who doesn’t love ice cream? I tell you, putting a crushed taco inside cream is a stroke of genius.

E) Roast Marshmallow Beef: It’s often called RMB by its legion of fans. Nothing’s more fun than roasting marshmallows over a campfire. And roast beef is the tastiest meat entree around. And what better way to get food fussies to eat their roast beef than hiding it inside a dessert?

F) Coke Dogs: Coca ColaTM is the world’s favorite soda. The hot dog is America’s most beloved meal. Simply boil your frankfurters in a pot of Coca Cola instead of water.

G) Bean Kabobs: Finally a way to grill beans! We never could before because beans would, of course, fall through the grill. But they won’t when they’re skewered between pork cubes and onion slices.

 

– 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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Käsknöpfle (Cheese Pasta) from Liechtenstein

Posted on October 23, 2021 by pauldelancey

Liechtensteiner Entree

KÄSKNÖPFLE
(Cheese Pasta)

INGREDIENTS

2¼ cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
⅔ cup water
1 medium onion
1½ tablespoons butter
6 cups water
5 ounces Gruyère, Emmenthaler, or Appenzeller* cheese
2 ounces sour cheese: ricotta, cottage, Limburger, goat, Harzer*, or other

* = Appenzeller and Harzer cheeses are your first choices, but they are powerful hard to find in supermarkets. Better luck will be found online.

Serves 4. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add flour and salt to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk. Add eggs and ⅔ cup water to small mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork. Add watery eggs to large mixing bowl. Knead with hands until you get a firm, smooth dough ball. Dough should be thin enough to be pushed through holes in slotted spoon. If not, add a little more water and knead once more. Cover with damp cloth and let sit for 15 minutes.

While dough sits, grate or crumble Gruyère and sour cheeses. Mince onion. Add onion and butter to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently.

Add 6 cups water to large pot. Bring water to boil using high heat. Push dough ball through holes in slotted spoon into boiling water. You should be getting teeny, tiny bits of dough falling in the pot. Stir enough to keep dough from sticking to bottom of pan. Using slotted spoon, skim off dough bits as they float to the surface and add them to a serving bowl.

Add Gruyère and sour cheese to serving bowl. Mix dough bits and cheese with fork until well blended. Top with sautéed onion. Serve with applesauce or green salad.

TIDBITS

1) This is a Liechtensteiner entree. Liechtenstein is a tiny country. It needs a tiny tidbit. Indeed, if you were to spread out a picnic towel, part of the towel would spill over into neighboring Austria. To avoid international incidents, the Treaty of Vaduz forbids expressly picnics in Liechtenstein.

 

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

Bicycle Chicken

Posted on October 15, 2021 by pauldelancey

Burkina Faso

BICYCLE CHICKEN
(Poulet Bicyclette)

INGREDIENTS

1 MaggiTM chicken or vegetable bouillon cube*
2 tablespoons peanut oil or other oil
1 teaspoon vinegar
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
2 chicken breasts with bone and skin
2 chicken thighs with bone and skin
2 bay leaves
2 potatoes
2 red or green chile peppers
2 carrots
4 garlic cloves
2 medium onions
2 tablespoons butter

* = It’s way more authentic with a Maggi cube. Maggi rules western Africa.

SPECIAL UTENSILS

baking sheet.
kitchen thermometer

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 35 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add Maggi cube to large mixing bowl. Crush Maggi cube. Add peanut oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt. Mix thoroughly with whisk or fork. Add chicken pieces. Turn chicken pieces until they are completely coated. Add bay leaves. Let marinate for 40 minutes.

While chicken pieces marinate, preheat oven to 390 degrees. Peel potatoes. Add potatoes and enough water to cover to them to pot. Boil potatoes on high heat for 20 minutes or until tender. Place chicken pieces on grill in oven. Place baking sheet under chicken to catch drippings. Cook at 390 degrees for 55 minutes or until no longer pink inside or the chicken’s temperature reaches 165 degrees. Turn chicken pieces over once.

While chicken pieces cook, seed chile peppers Mince carrots, chile peppers, garlic cloves and onions. Add butter, carrot, chile pepper, garlic, and onion to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until garlic and onion soften. Stir frequently. Add a chicken piece to each plate. Top chicken with sautéed veggies. Surround chicken with potato slices.

TIDBITS

1) There are many reasons why this dish is called Bicycle Chicken.

2) The chickens running about the streets in Burkina Faso look like they’re riding a bicycle.

3) The chicken vendors in Ouagadougu, the capital city, bicycle around the town with chickens hanging upside down from their bike’s handle bars*.

* = Do not confuse handle bars with Handle bars, which the great musical composer used to organize his written music in small sections.

4) People know chickens derive enjoyment from looking a bicycles. So whenever a bicyclist pedals past a hen, people will say, “Look, a bicycle, chicken.”

5) Would-be chicken vendors who are afraid to ride a bicycle are known as “bicycle chicken.”

6) The 1st grade textbook used in Ouagadougu’s grammar school has a picture of a bicycle on page one and a bicycle on the next page. The words are shown below the corresponding picture. So, the first words the country’s young learners learn to spell are bicycle and chicken. Walk by any 1st grade classroom first thing in the morning and you will hear the words “bicycle, chicken” spoken over and over.

7) Some very small dictionaries have the words bicycle and chicken next to each other. Don’t buy these books. They’re not of much use.

8) “Bicycle chicken” is spy code for “my cover has been compromised.” Oh dear, I compromised that code now, haven’t I?”

9) However, culinary etymologists* tend to believe that the phrase “bicycle chicken” derives from the world-renowned Le Tour du Poulet Burkinabé (LTDPB).

10) The muscular thighs of Burkina Faso’s chickens make them naturals for bicycle races.

11) Indeed, chickens are quite athletic when properly motivated. The longest recorded flight by a chicken is 301 feet. The chicken’s motivation remains unknown. At least, no one is talking.

12) Anyway, every May sees the LTDPB sees the chickens pedal like mad from Banforo toward Ougadougu.

13) Every August sees the chickens cross the finish.

14) The great popularity of the LTDPB has naturally spawned imitations such as the ones in Greenland*, Oregon, and Scotland.

15) * I’m sad to say, that this year’s Chicken Race Across Greenland (CRAG)has been cancelled due to inclement conditions. It’s best, anyway, to wait for and watch LTDPB on ESPN9TM.

 

– 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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