Posts Tagged With: entree

Southwest Stuffed Bell Peppers

Posted on April 14, 2023 by pauldelancey

American Entree

SOUTHWEST STUFFED BELL PEPPERS

INGREDIENTS

1 green chile
5 green bell peppers
½ red onion
2 garlic cloves
1 cup pepper jack cheese
2 ounces Cotija cheese
1 pound ground turkey
1 7-ounce can diced tomatoes (1 can more later)
4 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon oregano
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
3/4 cup water
4 tablespoons sour cream
2 stalks green onion
1 7-ounce can diced tomatoes
¾ cup water

Serves 5. Takes 55 minutes.

PREPARATION

Remove seeds from green chile. Cut bell peppers in half lengthwise. Remove stem, white innards, and seed from green bell peppers. Dice green chile, red onion, garlic cloves, and green onion. Grate or shred pepper jack cheese and Cotija cheese.

In a large frying pan or skillet, cook the turkey, green chile, red onion, and garlic over medium-high heat until meat is no longer pink. Stir occasionally.

Add 7-ounce can diced tomatoes, chili powder, corn starch, cumin, oregano, cayenne, green onion, and 3/4 cup water. Bring to boil then reduce heat. Simmer uncovered for about 15 minutes. (No, this does not mean to get angry and cook in the nude. Sauces can splatter.)

Place bell-pepper halves in a microwavable dish. (You’ll need a 3-to-4 quart dish if you want to use just one.) Add 3/4 cup water to dish. Cover and microwave on high for 7 to 8 minutes. (Microwaves vary in strength, so in general it’s best to heat for a short time, check the food and, if necessary, microwave some more.)

Pour any water out of the bell peppers. Fill each bell-pepper half to the top with ground-beef mixture. Put an equal amount of sour cream, 7-ounce can diced tomatoes, and cheese on the bell peppers.

Serve to adoring guests.

TIDBITS

1) Bell peppers have recessive genes that prevent them from having capsaicin, the stuff that makes other peppers hot.

2) Red bell peppers are important in Portuguese cuisine.

3) In 1801 my great-great-great-grandfather Napoleon I directed an invasion of Portugal by French and Spanish troops.

4) In 1808, Napoleon I invaded Portugal again. Say what you will about his megalomania and the countless deaths he caused, he did possess an admirable work ethic.

5) Oh, and he invaded Spain as well in 1808, unleashing more bloody, unrestrained guerrilla warfare.

6) Strange to say, most Napoleonic historians fail utterly to mention how six years of conflict in that region affected red-bell-pepper production in Portugal.

7) It seems likely, though, that red-pepper planting and harvesting fell precipitously in previously culinarily happy Portugal.

8) One’s mind recoils at the thought of wary-weary Portuguese reduced to eating beef-and-red pepper sandwiches without red peppers.

9) Bad French emperor, no éclaire.

 

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

Steak Chili

Posted on April 11, 2023 by pauldelancey

American Entree

STEAK CHILI

INGREDIENTS

1½ pounds steak
1 jalapeno pepper
1 yellow onion
1 green bell pepper
3 stalks green onion
1 ripe red tomato
4 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 16 ounce can red kidney beans
1 8 ounce can tomato sauce
3 teaspoons chili powder
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon basil
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon cilantro
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon oregano
½ cup barbecue sauce
½ cup sour cream
½ pound shredded cheddar or Four Mexican cheeses

SPECIAL UTENSILS

Dutch oven
Sufficient gas in your car so you can go to the store if you don’t have all the ingredients. Always be prepared!

PREPARATION

Cut steak into ½-inch cubes. Remove stem and innards from jalapeno pepper. Dice jalapeno, yellow onion, green bell pepper, green onion, tomato, and garlic cloves.

Put olive oil and steak cubes into Dutch oven. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes on medium heat or until steak cubes turn brown. Add jalapeno, yellow onion, bell pepper, green onion, tomato, garlic, kidney beans, tomato sauce, chili powder, Dijon mustard, basil, cayenne, pepper, cilantro, cumin, oregano, barbecue sauce, and sour cream.

Set temperature between off and warm. For best results, simmer with lid on for 2 hours. The chili will, however, still taste great if you cook it on medium heat for 20 to 30 minutes. Sprinkle cheese on top 3 minutes before serving.

Life is good.

 

TIDBITS

1) People going on long trips in America in the early 1800s sometimes carried chili in the form of dried bricks. It consisted of beef, chili peppers, salt, and suet.

2) From the 1880s to the 1930s Hispanic women sold hot chili to the passers by of San Antonio. People called them “Chili Queens.”

3) One of my favorite baseball players was called Chili Davis because his fellow Jamaican kids once thought his haircut looked like a “chili bowl.”

4) Chill Wills, the actor, starred in many fine Western movies.

5) Chi Chi Rodriguez was a great golfer.

6) “CH” stands for, in French, Switzerland

7) “C” is the symbol for the element Carbon and the basis for all life on Earth.

8) “ ” is what a mime says.

 

– 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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Spicy Italian Sausage

Posted on April 8, 2023 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

SPICY ITALIAN SAUSAGE

INGREDIENTS

1 medium white onion
2 large garlic cloves
6 mild Italian sausages
water enough to mostly cover sausages
1 cup olive oil
1½ tablespoons oregano
6 slices sourdough bread

Serves 6.

PREPARATION

It really is a good idea to thoroughly defrost the sausages. If not, you will have a tough time judging when they are cooked through. Frozen sausages cook quickly on the outside while still remaining cold, if not frozen, on the inside. You’ll either burn the outside before the inside is done or spend a lot of time at a low-to-medium temperature to cook it evenly. (And what if your guests are ravenous vampires? You don’t want to keep them waiting.)

Be sure to jab each sausage with a fork before cooking. Hot grease builds up inside the sausage if it doesn’t have an escape route. Jabbing a cooked sausage with a fork can result in a jet of hot grease heading toward you. Owie!

Mince onion and garlic cloves. Put sausages in a saucepan. Pour water on them until they are nearly covered. Pour in olive oil. Add garlic, minced onion, and oregano. Bring water to a boil. Reduce heat to a warm and simmer for 30 minutes.

Toast the sourdough bread while the sausages simmer. Sourdough bread goes great with Italian sausage. Put the sausage in the bread. Serve it like you would a hot dog. Spoon some of the olive oil/water mix along with some of the onion and garlic. Let the oil seep into the bread. Add a little of the liquid at a time to the toasted bread so that it doesn’t soak all the way through.

Wouldn’t buying spicy Italian sausage be easier than this? Yes, of course it would, but good cooks will want to have their blend of spices accenting the sausage rather than someone else’s. Also, pre-spiced sausages can never taste better than those with fresh onion marinated in olive oil.

TIDBITS

1) Sausages and legislation are the two things you should never see being made, only the final product. The Swedes like to mix in potatoes with meat to make their sausages. The Swedish word for sausage is korv.

2) I’ve never seen a sausage explode, but I’d bet it would be spectacular, if not dangerous. A frozen sausage makes a better hand-to-hand weapon than a defrosted one.

 

– 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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Powegian Vacation Potato

Posted on March 30, 2023 by pauldelancey

American Entree

POWEGIAN VACATION POTATO

INGREDIENTS

4 russet potatoes
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 garlic cloves
1 stalk green onion
½ small yellow onion
2 ounces diced green chiles
2 eggs
¼ cup grated Four Mexican cheeses
4 deli slices ham
4 deli slices turkey

PREPARATION

Wash potatoes. Bake potatoes at 425 degrees for about 50 to 60 minutes or according to instructions shown on bag.

While the potatoes are baking, put olive oil in frying pan. Mince garlic, yellow onion, and green onion. Put garlic, yellow onion, and green onion in frying pan. Sauté at medium high for about 3 minutes or until yellow onion is tender.

Also while potatoes are baking, boil eggs for 12 minutes. (Roger Bannister was the first man to run the mile in under four minutes with a time of 3:59.4. It is thus really cool to think how he could have left his kitchen, run the mile three times, and come back in time with 1.8 seconds to spare.) Cool eggs, peel off the shell, and mince the eggs.

Cut baked potatoes in two lengthwise. Put an equal amount of the sautéed mixture and the minced eggs on each potato half. Add half a ham slice and half a turkey slice to each potato half. Top each potato half with an equal amount of the grated cheese.

Put 8 fully assembled potato halves in the microwave for about 2 minutes or until cheese is completely melted.

TIDBITS

1) The Powegian Vacation Potato has a long tradition.

2) Where “long” is an hour. I was going on vacation and using up perishable ingredients.

3) My wife kept asking when it would be done. I had to say I didn’t know; it was a new recipe.

4) Everything is all right now. The dish came out well and I’m listening to my neighbor’s garage band. They’re quite 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.

Categories: cuisine, observations | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Food to Die For: Paul’s 365 Meals of Murder, Mayhem, and Mischief – February 25

Posted on March 20, 2023 by pauldelancey

February 25: This entree from Brunei celebratesbrate a drunken man breaking into a Pizza Hut(tm) on this day to fry wings

You love Pizza Hut(tm). Who does not? You love chicken.  Billions of people devour chicken. You want your chicken wings fried just the way you like it. But there’s that saying, “If you want something done right, you got to do it yourself.” Normally you’d fry your chicken at home. Alas and alack, you don’t can’t find your deep fryer or even a frying pan. Maybe you don’t have electricity or gas as you forgot to pay your utility bills.  Certainly no electricity would cause the chicken wings in your fridge to go bad. Or perhaps your synapses aren’t firing today.

What to do? Most people, at this point, would look harder for the deep fryer and the frying pan. Most folks would get on the phone and use their credit card to pay their utility bills. The rest of us would make our way to a restaurant or fast food joint and order chicken.

Not so for our plucky hero. He thought outside the box. He broke into a Pizza Hut and used their kitchen to fry his chicken wings. Alas, the enterprising fellow found himself being arrested by the police. I don’t know if he managed to eat his chicken wings. Now, he thinks inside the cell. Life can be hard.

The meal you should serve to commerate this day:  Honey Garlic Barbecue Pizza

If only the drunken chicken-wing lover had enough money and patience to fly halfway across the world to Brunei, where there is a Pizza Hut, he could have eaten honey garlic barbecue pizza. But luckily for you, I have a recipe for this dish.  It’s like the pizza served at the Pizza Hut in Brunei. And it has chicken as a topping! You can eat this tasty meal legally and in the comfort of your home.

HONEY GARLIC BARBECUE CHICKEN PIZZA

INGREDIENTS – SAUCE

1 teaspoon cornstarch
¾ cup water
3 garlic cloves
⅔ cup barbecue sauce
¼ cup honey
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 chicken breast
1 large bulb garlic (about 12 cloves)
½ tablespoon olive oil (1 more tablespoon later)

INGREDIENTS – ASSEMBLY

2 green onions
1 pre-made crust (store bought or your own)
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ pound grated mozzarella cheese
½ tablespoon sesame seeds

SPECIAL UTENSILS

roasting pan or baking pan
pizza pan
sonic obliterator

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.

PREPARATION – SAUCE

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Add cornstarch and water to mixing bowl. Stir with whisk or fork until cornstarch dissolves. Mince 3 garlic cloves. Add cornstarch/water blend, minced garlic cloves, barbecue sauce, honey, and soy sauce to pot. Bring to boil at medium-high heat. Stir frequently. Lower heat to low-medium and simmer until sauce thickens. Remove and set aside. Cut chicken into 1″ cubes. Add chicken cubes to pot. Stir until sauce coats chicken cubes. Marinate until garlic bulbs in next step are done roasting.

Cut off top of garlic bulb. Drizzle ½ table spoon olive oil onto bulb. Place garlic bulb on roasting pan. Roast in oven at 375 degrees for 30 minutes or until garlic starts to bubble. Remove and set aside.

PREPARATION – ASSEMBLY

While chicken marinates in sauce and garlic bulb roasts, dice green onions. Remove chicken with slotted spoon. (This makes spreading the sauce much easier.) Brush crust edge with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Brush sauce evenly sauce over crust except for the edge. Squeeze out the roasted garlic cloves from the garlic bulb. Cut roasted garlic cloves into 3 pieces each. Sprinkle roasted garlic pieces over sauce. Add chicken cubes evenly over pizza. Sprinkle cheese over pizza. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes or until cheese and crust brown. Sprinkle pizza with green onion and sesame seeds.

Serve to adoring quests. Zap unappreciative ones with sonic obliterator

– 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, food to die for, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pigs in a Buttermilk Blanket

Posted on March 18, 2023 by pauldelancey

American Entree

PIGS IN A BUTTERMILK BLANKET

INGREDIENTS

1 16-ounce package jumbo buttermilk biscuit dough
1 cup grated Four-Mexican cheeses
8 turkey franks

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Separate the dough into eight pieces. Elongate each dough piece with a rolling pin dusted with flour or simply roll a turkey frank along the dough if any are remaining.

(You don’t have to use turkey franks instead of beef franks or buttermilk biscuits instead of plain ones in this dish. In keeping with this cookbook’s theme of “Cooking with what’s handy,” I used, well, what was handy. You can even use a 10-ounce package of dough, but it will mean thinner blankets for your pigs.)

Sprinkle grated cheese evenly among the eight dough pieces. Put a frank near one end of a dough piece and wrap the dough around the frank. Put this work of art on cookie sheet with the dough overlap on the bottom. Otherwise, the dough will bake apart and you will have “Pigs in a Buttermilk Boat.”

Bake in oven until biscuits are golden brown or about 10 to 15 minutes. This is a bad time to hibernate; monitor your Pigs in a Buttermilk Blanket to make sure they don’t burn or cook unevenly. It’s discouraging to have part of a baked dish be burnt on one side and doughy on the other. You might need to rotate the Pigs at least once. Heat escapes each time you open the oven, so in these cases you might need to cook the dish a minute longer. Remember, vigilance when baking.

TIDBITS

1) This tidbit was eliminated during editing.

2) April 24th is National Pigs in a Blanket Day.

3) This dish is also known somewhere as “Weiner Winks.”

4) The British make Pigs in a Blanket by wrapping up small sausages in bacon.

5) Footballs were originally made from pigs’ bladders. This sounded so gross, people took to calling them pigskins. These early footballs could very well have been the inspiration for air pumps. But footballs made from cows’ bladders would have been huge, while ones coming from chickens would have been tiny. Would Payton Manning have thrown all those touchdown passes if he had been tossing chicken bladders downfield?

 

– 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 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Peruvian Hamburger

Posted on March 13, 2023 by pauldelancey

Peruvian Entree

PERUVIAN HAMBURGER

INGREDIENTS – AJI AMARILLO SAUCE

1 tablespoon butter
2 stalks green onion
1 tablespoon aji amarillo pepper
1 tablespoon peanut oil (1 tablespoon more in PATTY)
½ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup sour cream
1 tablespoon ketchup
1 tablespoon lime juice
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon Meat MagicTM spice

INGREDIENTS – PATTY

3 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons yellow onion
1 aji panca pepper
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 tablespoon butter
2 teaspoons parsley flakes
1½ pounds ground beef

6 lettuce leaves
6 hamburger buns

PREPARATION OF AJI AMARILLO SAUCE

Dice green onion. Melt butter in medium saucepan. Add green onion, aji amarillo pepper, and peanut oil. Sauté at medium-high heat for about 2 minutes or until all ingredients are well blended. Stir constantly.

Put above sautéed mixture in mixing bowl. Add mayonnaise, sour cream, ketchup, lime juice, sea salt, black pepper, and meat spice. Whisk together.

PREPARATION OF PATTY

Mince garlic cloves, yellow onion, and aji panca pepper. (Keep your aji panca pepper in TupperwareTM. Moths love aji peppers. Who knew they were such gourmands?) Melt butter in pan. Add garlic, yellow onion, aji panca pepper, and peanut oil. Sauté at medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes or until yellow onion softens. Stir constantly.

Combine above sautéed aji-panca-pepper mixture in mixing bowl with ground beef, and parsley flakes. Makes 6 patties.

Fry the patties until no pink color remains. Toast 6 buns. Coat the buns with the aji amarillo sauce. Add a lettuce leaf and patty and assemble the hamburger.

This is great. It is also spicy. Beverages such as milk go well with spicy foods. The milk coats the pain receptors in your mouth.

(This is important information if, for example, you’re in a restaurant in St. Louis with friends of yours from the Department of Economics from the University of Wisconsin and you’re dared to eat a truly spicy pepper.)

TIDBITS

1) Peru has a hamburger chain called Bembos.

2) If I ever get to Peru, I’m going to eat there. After that, I’m going to visit the ancient Incan ruins at Machu Picchu. Did you know there’s a McDonald’s there?

3) Pizarro and his Spanish conquistadors conquered the Incans of Peru in the 1520s.

4) Ancient Peru gave Europe and America the potato. Western Civilization gave Peru the hamburger.

5) Together these two great foods make up that wondrous meal burger and fries.

6) Without Peru and the Incans we could never say, “Would you like fries with that?”

7) So in a way, the Spanish arrival in Peru was a good thing.

8) At least on a culinary level.

 

– 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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Pepper Jack Meatloaf

Posted on March 10, 2023 by pauldelancey

American Entree

PEPPER JACK MEATLOAF

INGREDIENTS

1 small white onion
1 small red onion
3 garlic cloves
1½ tablespoons olive oil
1½ pounds ground beef
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon parsley
1 green bell pepper
1 green chile
1 14.5 can diced tomatoes
½ teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon tarragon
2 teaspoons fresh cilantro
1 cup grated pepper jack cheese
1½ cups bread crumbs

SPECIAL UTENSIL

8″-x-8″ baking dish

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mince red onion, white onion, and garlic. Add this to olive oil and sauté on medium heat until soft or about 6 minutes. Dice bell pepper and green chile. Combine red onion, white onion, garlic, ground beef, eggs, bell pepper, green chile, diced tomatoes, coriander, cumin, tarragon, cilantro, pepper jack cheese, and bread crumbs. You really need to use your hands to do a good job here.

(Better yet, get your nine-year old to mix this up. He’ll welcome the opportunity to be helpful while getting his hands messy. Take advantage of this willingness before he becomes a teenager.)

OR…dice and mince all the above ingredients and put them all into the oil to sauté at once. This will save six minutes.

(Saving six minutes is particularly useful if there is an accidental nuclear countdown near your home, you’re the only one with the key to abort the launch with the resulting global nuclear war, and you really don’t have the extra six minutes needed to perform this extra culinary step, eat this meal, and get to the missile silo in time.)

Spray 8″-by-8″ baking dish with no-stick cooking spray. Transfer the meat mix to this dish. Smooth the meat until it is a flat as the Kansan prairie. Bake for 50 minutes at 350 degrees. Let cool for 5 minutes.

TIDBITS

1) According to The Tales of the Arabian Nights, coriander is an aphrodisiac.

2) We should all absorb the lessons of great literature.

3) Coriander is also mentioned in the Bible. The Bible does not mention any non-culinary benefits from Tarragon.

4) Indeed, The Good Book commands, “Do not commit adultery.”

5) Sometime in the 1600s, two English publishers came out with a Bible with the exciting command, “Thou Shall Commit Adultery.”

6) The King of England fearing for the morals of his people, outlawed this version of the Bible, and heavily fined the publishers.

7) Editing and correct spicing are musts.

 

– 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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Orange Chicken

Posted on March 6, 2023 by pauldelancey

Chinese Entree

ORANGE CHICKEN

INGREDIENTS

RICE BED

1½ cups rice
3 cups water (1½ cups more later in SAUCE)
1 green pepper

MARINADE

2 ½ tablespoons rice vinegar (⅓ cup later in SAUCE)
1 green pepper
1 cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon Poultry MagicTM spice
1 tablespoon cornstarch (3 tablespoons more later in SAUCE)
4 chicken breasts

SAUCE

1½ cups water
⅓ cup orange juice
⅓ cup rice vinegar
¼ cup soy sauce
1 cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon ginger
1 clove garlic
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon sesame oil

2 tablespoons water
3 tablespoons cornstarch

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

hammer (If brown sugar is brick hard.)

PREPARATION OF RICE BED

Cook rice according to instructions on accompanying bag. This should take about 30 minutes. Add diced green bell pepper to top of rice while cooking.

PREPARATION OF MARINADE

Cut chicken breasts into 1-inch cubes. This is best done when the chicken is partially thawed. Mince garlic. Dice green pepper. If the brown sugar in its box is as hard as a brick, pound the box until the sugar fragments into little bits or individual granules, or until it cries, “Uncle.”

For the marinade, combine the rice vinegar, flour, salt, poultry spice, and cornstarch in large bowl. Mix thoroughly with whisk or fork. Add chicken cubes to bowl. Mix the chicken cubes with ingredients already in the bowl with your hands until the cubes are thoroughly coated. (Your hands will be considered icky for handshaking, so wash them before greeting anyone except door-to-door salesmen.)

PREPARATION OF SAUCE

Combine the 1½ cups water, orange juice, rice vinegar, soy sauce, pounded-into-submission brown sugar, ginger, garlic, red pepper flakes, and sesame oil. Cook over medium-high heat. Stir frequently. Bring to boil.

Gently-–to avoid being splattered by heated sauce–add the coated chicken cubes until the saucepan is full. Cook on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes, or until the coated cubes are golden brown and the chicken is no longer pink inside. Remove cubes with a spoon with holes in it so as to keep the sauce in the pan. Add remaining chicken cubes until all are cooked.

Add 3 tablespoons cornstarch and 2 tablespoons water to sauce remaining in pan. Stir thoroughly with fork or whisk.

Put rice in bowl. Put cooked chicken cubes on top. Spoon sauce over everything. This is great.

TIDBITS

1) Chickens are eaten all over the world because they are tasty and can be found on all continents except Antarctica.

2) Penguins are only found on one continent, Antarctica. Nobody on the upper six continents eat penguins. Perhaps penguins are protected because they come from a continent that since 1959 has been claimed by no nation.

3) After the British-Argentine war over the Falklands, British fighter pilots flew patrol after patrol over the retaken islands. To relieve boredom, they would fly back and forth over penguin colonies. Thousands and thousands of eyes followed them. After a few minutes of this, the jets would rocket straight up into the air. Thousands of penguins would tilt their heads farther and farther back to follow the jets until they all fell over like bowling pins.

4) I’d bet chickens would like to move en masse to Antarctica where they too would be protected.

5) Of course, that assumes that chickens have the brains to think up such a scheme, could cooperate enough to pull it off, and have enough money to book passage for all of them to Antarctica.

6) As of publication, chickens have shown no such abilities.

 

– 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

Sole Meuniere

Posted on February 25, 2023 by pauldelancey

French Entree

SOLE MEUNIERE

INGREDIENTS

¼ cup butter
1 lemon
2 tablespoons fresh parsley
4 4-ounce sole fillets
½ cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon white pepper or pepper
2½ tablespoons clarified butter or ghee or butter
1½ tablespoons lemon juice

Serves 2. Takes 25 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cut butter into 4 pats. Cut lemon into 4 slices. Dice parsley.

Use paper towels to pat sole fillets dry. Add flour, salt, and white pepper to large mixing bowl. Mix with fork or whisk until well blended. Dredge fillets through flour. Shake off excess.

Add clarified butter to large pan. Heat using medium heat until a small bit of flour in the clarified butter will start to dance or until clarified butter starts to bubble. Add sole fillets. Sauté for 3 minutes Carefully flip fillets with fish spatula or long spatula. Sauté for another 3 minutes or until sole fillets turn golden and the fish can be flaked with a fork.

While 2nd sides of the fillets sauté, add butter pats to 2nd pan. Melt butter using medium heat until butter bubbles. Add lemon juice. Combine by swirling pan. Spoon butter/lemon juice over sole fillets. Garnish with parsley. Serve immediately.

TIDBITS

1) “O Sole Mio” is an excellent Neapolitan song written by Giovanni Capurro. It means “My Sun.”

2) “O Sole Meuniere” is an excellent-mostly song written by the Powegian Paul R. De Lancey.

3) Here are a few verses:

What a beautiful thing is fried Dove sole!
The air in the kitchen smells so nice
As long as fan above the stove is set to high
Don’t forget to use clarified butter
The guests will appreciate your efforts!

 

– 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

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