Posts Tagged With: flatbread

Sumac Chicken (Musakhan) From Palestine

Posted on December 11, 2022 by pauldelancey

Palestinian Entree

SUMAC CHICKEN
(Musakhan)

INGREDIENTS

¾ teaspoon cardamom
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
¾ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sumac
1½ tablespoons lemon juice
3 pounds chicken breasts
4 medium red or yellow onions
2 tablespoons olive oil (2 more tablespoons later)
2 tablespoons olive oil
⅓ cup chicken stock
no-stick spray
12 ounces flatbread (taboun, lavash, or pita)
¼ cup slivered almonds

SPECIAL UTENSIL

9″ x 13″ casserole dish

Serves 6. Takes 2 hours 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and sumac to mixing bowl. Combine with fork. Add lemon juice. Mix with fork until well blended. Add chicken breasts. Mix with hands until chicken is well coated. Cover and marinate in refrigerator for 2 hours.

While chicken marinates, dice onions. Add onion and 2 tablespoons olive oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Remove and reserve onion. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil and marinated chicken to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until chicken breasts brown. Flip chicken breasts once. Add chicken stock and blend with spoon. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 15 minutes. Stir occasionally. Remove from heat.

Spray casserole dish with no-stick spray. Add flatbreads to casserole dish so that they overlap. Spoon the sautéed onion evenly over flatbread. Place chicken breasts on top of onion. Ladle pan juices over chicken. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Sprinkle slivered almonds over chicken. Bake at 350 degrees for another 5 minutes or until chicken is done and flatbread turns golden brown.

TIDBITS

1) Sumac Chicken backwards in Nekcihc Camus.

2) Amy Camus backwards is Yma Sumac.

3) Yma Sumac has a star on Hollywood Boulevard.

4) I’ve seen her star.

5) You might think that she herself put her star in the sidewalk of Hollywood Boulevard and through mystical powers led me to it. Years later, I wrote up this event in this blog and in a recipe in a cookbook. Now, you’ve read this.

6) Then a time machine showed up at my door. Ms. Sumac had set it to do this.

7) I got in. The time machine went back to the time when I saw her star on the Boulevard.

8) This sort of thing happens all the time.

9) It’s almost a cliche.

10) But wait! There’s more.

11) After I hopped out of the time machine, it went back to the 1950s when she showed this enthusiastic blog to band leaders.

12) Suitably impressed, she gained one singing gig after another, specializing in exotica music.

13) Heads of recording studios saw her and heard her as well. Whiz, bam, bing, she put out one fantastic album after another.

14) She had made it big.

15) Big enough to rate a star on Hollywood.

16) It just goes to show you what a little pluck and a time machine can do.

17) Of course, it didn’t hurt that she had a range over four octaves

18) In 1946, the Peruvian government formally recognized her claim to be descended

Palestinian Entree

SUMAC CHICKEN√
(Musakhan)

INGREDIENTS

¾ teaspoon cardamom
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
¾ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sumac
1½ tablespoons lemon juice
3 pounds chicken breasts
4 medium red or yellow onions
2 tablespoons olive oil (2 more tablespoons later)
2 tablespoons olive oil
⅓ cup chicken stock
no-stick spray
12 ounces flatbread (taboun, lavash, or pita)
¼ cup slivered almonds

SPECIAL UTENSIL

9″ x 13″ casserole dish

Serves 6. Takes 2 hours 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and sumac to mixing bowl. Combine with fork. Add lemon juice. Mix with fork until well blended. Add chicken breasts. Mix with hands until chicken is well coated. Cover and marinate in refrigerator for 2 hours.

While chicken marinates, dice onions. Add onion and 2 tablespoons olive oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Remove and reserve onion. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil and marinated chicken to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until chicken breasts brown. Flip chicken breasts once. Add chicken stock and blend with spoon. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 15 minutes. Stir occasionally. Remove from heat.

Spray casserole dish with no-stick spray. Add flatbreads to casserole dish so that they overlap. Spoon the sautéed onion evenly over flatbread. Place chicken breasts on top of onion. Ladle pan juices over chicken. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Sprinkle slivered almonds over chicken. Bake at 350 degrees for another 5 minutes or until chicken is done and flatbread turns golden brown.

TIDBITS

1) Sumac Chicken backwards in Nekcihc Camus.

2) Amy Camus backwards is Yma Sumac.

3) Yma Sumac has a star on Hollywood.Boulevard.

4) I’ve seen her star.

5) You might think that she herself put her star in the sidewalk of Hollywood Boulevard and through mystical powers led me to it. Years later, I wrote up this event in this blog and in a recipe in a cookbook. Now, you’ve read this.

6) Then a time machine showed up at my door. Ms. Sumac had set it to do this.

7) I got in. The time machine went back to the time when I saw her star on the Boulevard.

8) This sort of thing happens all the time.

9) It’s almost a cliche.

10) But wait! There’s more.

11) After I hopped out of the time machine, it went back to the 1950s when she showed this enthusiastic blog to band leaders.

12) Suitably impressed, she gained one singing gig after another, specializing in exotica music.

13) Heads of recording studios saw her and heard her as well. Whiz, bam, bing, she put out one fantastic album after another.

14) She had made it big.

15) Big enough to rate a star on Hollywood.

16) It just goes to show you what a little pluck and a time machine can do.

17) Of course, it didn’t hurt that she had a range over four octaves

18) In 1946, the Peruvian government formally recognized her claim to be descended Athualpa, the last Incan Emperor. You might think that her heritage propelled into stardom, But you’d be wrong; the influence yielded by the once mighty Incans had been negligible for over 400 years..

19) No, she had made it big from her drive, her voice, my blog, and a time machine. Proof you cannot deny.

20) Yma died in 2008, at the end of her life.

 

– 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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Non (Tajikistani Flat Bread)

Posted on November 17, 2016 by pauldelancey

Tajikistani Appetizer

NON
(Flat Bread)

INGREDIENTSnon

2¼ cups flour (2 more tablespoons later)
¾ teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon sugar
2¼ teaspoons yeast
½ cup water
½ cup plain yogurt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (1⅔ tablespoons more later)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 tablespoons flour
2 teaspoons vegetable oil (½ teaspoon at a time)
½ teaspoon black onion seeds, aka nigella stiva
2 teaspoons minced shallot
Enough ice cubes to fill an 8″ casserole bowl or oven-safe pot

SPECIAL UTENSILS

cookie sheet
parchment paper
8″ casserole bowl or oven-safe pot

Makes 4 flat breads. Takes 3½-to-4 hours.

PREPARATION

Add 2¼ cups flour to large mixing bowl. Add salt, sugar, and yeast to separate spots on the sides of the flour. Use fist to make a well in the middle of the flour. Add water to well in flour. Knead all ingredients thoroughly for 5 minutes. Make a well in dough with fist. Add yogurt. Knead thoroughly for 5 minutes. Add a little bit of water, if necessary, to make a sticky dough.

Spread 2 tablespoons vegetable oil on flat surface. Add dough to flat surface. Knead for 10 minutes or until dough becomes smooth. Make dough into ball. Spread 1 tablespoon vegetable oil to sides of large mixing bowl. Put dough ball in mixing bowel. Cover with kitchen towel or plastic wrap. Let dough rise for 1½-to-2 hours or until it doubles in size.

Cover flat surface with parchment paper. Dust parchment paper with 2 tablespoons flour. Add dough to surface. Flatten dough with hands to knock excess air out. Form dough into ball again. Cover with kitchen towel or plastic wrap. Let sit for 30 minutes-to-1 hour or until dough doubles in size a second time.

While dough is doubling in size a second time, put cookie sheet on top rack in oven and heat to 500 degrees. (You really do want the cookie sheet to be hot when you place the dough circles on it.) Divide into 8 balls. Roll balls out until they are 6″ wide circles. Use a fork to make a 4″ circular depression in the middle of each dough circle. Add an equal amount of shallot to each depression. Brush an ½ teaspoon vegetable oil over each dough circle. Sprinkle onion seeds equally over each dough circle.

Remove cookie sheet from oven. Carefully slide dough covered parchment paper onto HOT cookie sheet. (For goodness sake, use oven mitts.) Place cook sheet on upper rack in oven. Add ice cubes to casserole bowl. Place casserole bowl on lower rack in oven. (This will gradually create steam.) Bake at 500 degrees for 7-to-15 minutes or until breads turn golden brown. Serve hot.

TIDBITS

1) “Non” is Tajikistani for “a type of flatbread.”

2) “Non” is also French for “no.”

3) “Non” is English for “not” as in “non-alcoholic beer.”

4) It is easy to see from these three tidbits alone that languages are different.

5) Miming is the same everywhere, though.

6) And hateful. How often have you suffered through a diner trying to mime his order of a cheeseburger, medium-well done, with a toasted sesame-seed bun, Romaine lettuce, not iceberg lettuce, deli-mustard, caramelized onions, and organic, non-GMO ketchup, all topped with a fried egg from an open-pasture egg? I know! All the time. It takes forever.

7) After the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the leaders of America and Russia stopped miming when talking on the hot line. The nuances of the unseen mimed message proved just too much to pick up for the listener.

8) They still don’t mime even though we can now communicate visually. It’s just too slow. Suppose our president rings up their president to mime, “Oops. Sorry. My bad. Err, there’s no easy way to mime this, but we accidentally launched a nuclear missile at Moscow. Please deploy your anti-missile defenses right away. I’m most dreadfully embarrassed. And how’s the wife and kids?”

9) First of all, miming all that would take twenty-nine minutes, leaving the esteemed Russian ruler only one minute to deploy his defensive shield. If … he had only interpreted the mime correctly. Instead he will understand you to mean, “Sorry, my sperm impregnated your wife. She will be giving birth to aardvark sextuplets.”

10) The Russians will have no time to respond. Moscow will be destroyed. The Russian president will be miffed. A permanent state of coolness will exist between the two leaders, making future summit dinners remarkably uncomfortable, even when the shrimp scampi is excellent.

11) So when you parents tell you, “Why don’t you call me, already?” there’s a reason for 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.

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Kulu’wa (Beef tomato stew)

Posted on October 14, 2016 by pauldelancey

Eritrean Entree

KULU’WA
(Beef tomato stew)

INGREDIENTSkuluwa

1 pound lamb or beef stew meat
2 garlic cloves
1 onion
3 tomatoes
2½ tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon berbere spice
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt

Serves 4. Takes 40 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cut meat into ½” cubes. Dice garlic, onion, and tomatoes. Add butter, garlic, and onion to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add tomato, berbere spice, pepper, and salt. Stir until well blended. Add meat cubes. Sauté at medium-high for 15 minutes or until meat is tender. Goes well with injera, Eritrean or Ethiopian flatbread.

TIDBITS

1) When objects recede from you at a very fast rate, say 43.7 miles per second, they will look redder than they really are. Astronomers call this display a “red shift.”

2) The entire universe is expanding. This is why some marriages fail. The partners are literally getting farther apart from each other every second. And that brown freckle? The expanding universe makes it looks redder as well. The freckle now looks like a hickey to your already suspicious spouse. Harsh words get said, words that can’t be taken back and soon you’re on your way to divorce court when a cop pulls you over for going 43.7 miles per second, which is way more than you thought your Honda FitTM could do even with high-octane gas. You try to tell the lawman that your speed comes from the expanding universe. He shakes his head. “Like I haven’t heard that one before.”

3) This is also why many people haven’t eaten this recipe’s red entree. Kulu’wa. The redness means it is moving away from you at 43.7 miles per second. You really have to be a speedy eater to get even one delicious spoonful in your mouth. Why, in just one minute your kulu’wa has made across the country. Most of my red soups end up at my brother’s kitchen table. He says, “Thank you.”

4) One of my tomato soups ended up at Cape Canaveral. NASA quickly bolted it down and is currently investigating its possibilities in powering intergalactic space travel.

Chef Paul

 

– 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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Flatbread From Somalia (Sabaayad)

Posted on July 21, 2015 by pauldelancey

Somali Appetizer

FLATBREAD
(sabaayad)

INGREDIENTSFlatbread-

2⅓ cups flour
⅔ cup wheat flour (another ⅓ cup later)
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil
1 to 1½ cups water
4 tablespoons vegetable oil (another 4 teaspoons later)
⅓ cup flour
4 teaspoons vegetable oil

SPECIAL UTENSIL

electric skillet

PREPARATION

Add flour, wheat flour, and salt to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk. Add ghee. Mix again with whisk. Gradually add water to bowl. Knead flour and water by hand each time. Add water until dough becomes smooth and flexible. Let dough sit for 45 minutes.

Make 8 equal dough balls. Dust hard surface with ⅓ cup flour. Roll out dough ball into a circle 8″ wide. Spread ½ tablespoon oil evenly over dough circle. Fold edges of dough circle in so that four parts meat in the square. You should now have a square.FlatbreadDough-

Roll out square until it is again 8″ wide. (This gives the bread layers and makes it flakier.) Repeat for 7 remaining dough circles.

Set skillet to 325 degrees or medium. Place 8″ dough square in skillet. Let dough square cook for 1 minute or until dough square starts to puff. Flip the dough square and add ½ teaspoon oil evenly to the top. Cook for 1 minute. Continue to cook 1 minute per side until each side turns golden brown Repeat for the remaining 7 dough squares. Drain the golden brown flat breads of paper towels.

Serve warm with: fried eggs, honey, curries, or other stews

TIDBITS

1) The top picture on the previous page looks like a sock. The bottom picture on that page appears to be a sock puppet. These similarities are not an accident. There are an homage to the great Rome-to-Somalia olive-oil-for-socks trade.

2) This trade started in 31 BC after Caesar Augustus secured his position as emperor with his victory over Mark Anthony in the battle of Actium.

3) Rome desperately needed a new source of socks for its vaunted army. Without good socks, the legionnaires developed foot blisters. No soldier can march far with blistered feet. If the Roman legionnaires couldn’t march, they couldn’t catch the invading barbarian hordes before they looted and fired the Roman towns. Unfortunately, the long series of Roman civil wars, 83 BC – 31 BC had completely destroyed the once vibrant sock industry. Things looked grim. The Roman Empire was readt to collapse. The plays of Plautus, Terrance, and Maccius would have been replaced by barbarian reality plays.

6) Fortunately, in 18 BC, Primus Secundus Tertius, a goat herder set out from the tiny village of Perdiem in the southern Egypt to find a missing goat. He headed south, because all good goat herders know that goat only go missing in the south.

7) He walked for years looking for that goat. He was no quitter. Finally, he came across some villagers in Somalia. They were cooking lamb stew. The villagers didn’t give their real names upon meeting Primus for the first time. After all, Somalia is an anagram for Mo’ Alias.

8) While enjoying a delicious meal, Sam and the villagers engaged in pleasant conversation and swapped witty and urbane anagrams. Eventually, Sam handed his empty bowl to the villagers; his mother had raised him to always bring his dirty dishes to the sink. As he did so, he noticed a goat tag at the bottom of his bowl. It read, “Daphne, owned by Primus Secundus Tertius.” The villagers had killed his own goat. The fact that Daphne tasted great after being marinated in lemon juice and pepper only eased his rage a tiny bit.

9) With all the wonderful books deliberately burned in Alexandria’s magnificent library in 395 AD, it’s amazing and perhaps ironic that we have amazing that we have a partial, written record of the following conversation:

Primus: You killed my Daphne?
Villager #1: Who is this Daphne? No woman around here is called Daphne.
Villager #2: I think he means his goat. Roman goat herders like to name their goats Daphne.
Villager #3, Good Primus, are referring to the goat that was in this stew?
Primus: (Shows the goat tag.) I am.

10) The villagers, as was their custom, agreed to compensate Primus with ten pairs of socks. Primus was ecstatic. Emperor Augustus had promised to give a million denarii to any one securing a sock source for the empire. So Primus became fabulously wealthy, the legionnaires got their socks, and the empire became well defended again. It was only when the olive-oil-for-socks trade route got permanently disrupted in 476 AD, that Rome fell. Today, the production of socks is protected everywhere by an international treaty.

– 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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Roti, Guyanese Flatbread Recipe

Posted on May 8, 2013 by pauldelancey

Guyanese Entree

ROTI
(flatbread)

INGREDIENTSRoti-

2 cups and more flour (don’t put it away)
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
3/4 cups water
up to 1 cup vegetable oil (don’t put it away)

SPECIALTY ITEM

electric skillet

PREPARATION

Combine 2 cups flour, baking powder, salt, and water in mixing bowl. The amount of water added should be enough to make a fairly firm dough, so a bit more or less water maybe needed.

Sprinkle plate or board with flour. Divide dough into six lumps. Put a lump on board. Dust rolling pin with flour. Roll out dough until it is a circle 8″ across . Put 1 teaspoon on dough. Smooth the oil so it covers the entire circle. Sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon flour uniformly over dough or roti. Fold in corners of roti. Shape roti into a ball. Keep board and rolling pin dusted with flour as you repeat this process for 5 move rotis.

Let rotis stand for 30 minutes while you straighten out the world or sip on a nice, cold Roy Rogers soda.

Set heat on electric skillet to 350 degrees. Put 2 tablespoons oil in skillet. Flatten a roti by hand and put it in skillet. Cook the flatbread, roti, for 3 minutes or until both sides are starting to turn light brown. Turn roti over frequently, at least once every 20-to-30 seconds. Repeat for the other 5 rotis. Add enough oil to the skillet to maintain 2 tablespoons for each roti.

Mango chutney, see recipe, goes great with roti.

TIDBITS

1) Flatbread is flat.

2) The Earth is not flat. It is round.

3) Round, Earth, round.

4) Round in the morning, round at night.

5) In 1492, Columbus sailed west. Flat Earthers took fright.

6) Ooh yes, scary, scary.

7) And now in a seamless transition to more complex sentences, most people in 1492 thought the Earth to be round.

8) The flat-earth myth became popular with the1828 publication, Washington Irving’s imaginative, A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus.

9) Hundreds of thousands of American school kids have written essays about Christopher Columbus that have been wrong. All because of Washington Irving.

10) Someone should go back in time and send Mr. Irving to the principal’s office.

11) It’s a good thing, though, the world is not flat. What if you were playing soccer and someone kicked the soccer ball over the edge of the Earth and the soccer ball was gone for ever and no one had another soccer ball?

– 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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