Posts Tagged With: French Revolution

Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding

Posted on July 24, 2022 by pauldelancey

British Entree

ROAST BEEF WITH YORKSHIRE PUDDING

INGREDIENTS – ROAST BEEF

3½ pounds top sirloin or rib roast
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt (¼ teaspoon more later)
2 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ tablespoon rosemary

INGREDIENTS – YORKSHIRE PUDDING

4 eggs
1 cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup milk

SPECIAL UTENSILS

wire rack
roasting pan
cooking thermometer
aluminum foil
8″ * 8″ casserole dish

MEAT DONENESS

This recipe assumes that the center cut will be medium-rare and the end cuts more well done. But you can roast to your desired level of doneness. A rule of thumb has the following meat temperatures for the following cuts: Rare = 125, medium rare =135, medium = 145, medium well =155, and well done = 160.

Serves 8. Takes 2 hours 15 minutes.

PREPARATION – ROAST BEEF

Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Rub sirloin with pepper and 1 teaspoon salt. Mince garlic cloves. Add garlic, olive oil, and rosemary to small mixing bowl. Mix with fork. Rub sirloin with olive oil/garlic mixture.

Put wire rack in roasting pan. Put sirloin on wire rack. Roast at 475 degrees for 20 minutes. (Roasting is similar to baking but at a higher temperature.) Reduce heat to 375 degrees and roast
until meat thermometer in middle of sirloin registers your desired level, about 1 hour. (Please note that different ovens and different thicknesses of meat will make roasting time vary. Pay attention to the meat thermometer.) Place roasted sirloin on plate and cover with aluminum foil. Save drippings.

PREPARATION – YORKSHIRE PUDDING

After you put sirloin to oven, add eggs to cup. Beat eggs with whisk. Add flour and ¼ teaspoon salt to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk. Add eggs. Mix with whisk until well blended. Gradually pour in milk, whisking while doing so until you get a smooth batter with the thickness of heavy cream. Let sit until roast beef needs to be removed from oven.

After removing roast beef from oven, raise oven temperature to 425 degrees. Add ¼ cup reserved drippings to casserole dish. Put casserole dish in oven. Heat drippings for 15 minutes or until drippings start to smoke. (Save drippings remaining after this step. Put casserole dish on stove top. (Carefully! The casserole dish contains hot oil.) Ladle batter to casserole dish. (Again, do this carefully.) Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes or until batter puffs up and becomes golden brown.

PREPARATION – FINAL

Ladle any remaining drippings over roast beef. Carve the roast beef. (End cuts should be more well done than the center cuts.) Serve roast beef and Yorkshire pudding right away.

TIDBITS

1) The above picture shows a corner piece of the Yorkshire pudding. Notice how two edges of this piece puff up way higher than the rest of the pudding. In fact, doesn’t the entire corner piece look like a meadow full of golden wheat ripe for harvesting all set against two majestic mountains?

2) This is no accident. People have want to know what different places of the world looked like. Before the age of cameras, the only real way to depict landscapes and mountains was to paint them. But painting was slow and laborious. Making pigments for the paint colors cost lots of money. Finding the proper clays and pigment bases proved daunting as well.

3) By the time the client who’d commissioned a field of grain swishing in the wind before the Alps, he could already traveled to the Alps. Alps painting languished. Travel to Switzerland fell to zero.

4) Then in 1777, Chef Hans Gasthaus made Yorkshire Pudding for some British nobility. Hans noticed his pudding looked exactly like the wheat field and Alps outside the kitchen window. Hans journeyed from Alpine town to Alpine town skillfully making Yorkshire pudding that looked exactly like the local fields and mountain. He ‘dlet these creation dry out and send them to British tour guides.

5) Penurious British lords took to displaying their pudding art in their manors. After all, pudding art cost much less than a painting. Other chef painters turned out great pudding sceneries. It was the golden age of Yorkshire Pudding landscapes.

6) Alas, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars soon broke out. These bloody wars ruined everything. Flour, milk, and eggs which had powered the Yorkshire Pudding Landscape Revolution (YPLR) got diverted to feed the rampaging armies on the continent.

14) Yorkshire Pudding Art died forever. Our world became forever grayer. Hardly any (YPLR) examples remain. But if you can find an antique Yorkshire pudding, keep it. They’re worth millions.

 

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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Bragioli (Maltese Stuffed Beef Rolls)

Posted on September 17, 2021 by pauldelancey

Maltese Entree

BRAGIOLI
(Stuffed Beef Rolls*)

INGREDIENTS – BEEF ROLL

2 pounds topside, bottom, or round steak
6 slices bacon
2 garlic cloves (3 more cloves later)
⅔ cup fresh parsley
2 hard boiled eggs
¼ cup bread crumbs
½ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil (2 tablespoons more later)

INGREDIENTS – SAUCE

1 carrot
3 garlic cloves
3 medium onions
3 medium tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 bay leaves
⅔ cup red wine

Serves.4. Takes 2 hours 40 minutes.

SPECIAL UTENSILS

kitchen mallet
kitchen twine or toothpicks
sonic obliterator (Why is this not in your kitchen?)

* = The best, or at least most common, translation is really “Beef Olives.” Apparently, many people think rolls look like olives. This interpretation has over 500 years of history behind it Indeed, the word olive was sometimes used a verb, as in to olive, roll up, some ingredient. Now you know.

PREPARATION – BEEF ROLL

Cut steak into 12 slices. Pound beef slices with mallet to make them thinner and flatter. Dice bacon. Dice 2 garlic cloves and parsley. Cut each egg into 6 slices. Add bacon, 2 diced garlic cloves, bread crumbs, parsley, pepper, and salt to mixing bowl. Mix with hands until this stuffing is thoroughly blended.

Top a beef slice with 2 tablespoons stuffing. Place 1 egg slice on bacon/bread crumb mixture. Roll up beef slices lengthwise over stuffing. Secure rolled-up steak, bragioli with kitchen twine or toothpicks. Repeat for each bragioli Add 2 tablespoons olive and bragiolis to large pot. Sauté at medium-high heat until bragiolis turn slightly brown. Turn bragiolis enough to ensure even browning. Remove bragiolis from pot.

PREPARATION – SAUCE

Dice carrot, 3 garlic cloves, onions, and tomatoes. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil, 3 diced garlic cloves, and onion to same pot. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add carrot, tomato, bay leaves, and red wine. Simmer at low heat for 10 minutes. Stir enough to prevent burning. Add bagiolis back to pot.

Bring to boil using high heat. Stir enough to prevent burning. (Gently, don’t break open the bagiolis.) Simmer at low-medium heat for 45 minutes or until sauce thickens. Remove bay leaves. Serve to adoring quests. Zap unappreciative ones with your sonic obliterator. You don’t need negativity in your kitchen.

TIDBITS

1) This recipe uses eggs. Each egg is to be cut into six slices. This is easy to do if the egg is three inches long. Why, each slice would be one-half-inch thick. That’s easy to measure, but three-inch long eggs are hard to find, especially ones that come from hens.

2) Okay, what about an egg that is 1-8/9 inches long. Divide that by six and you get slices that should 17/54 inches wide. How the heck, do we measure that on a standard ruler? I’ll bet no ruler has ever been made that divides inches into 54 equal parts.

3) So what do we do? I’m glad you asked. 17/9 inches equals 4.8 centimeters. Divide that by six and you get 0.8. It’s a snap to measure that on a metric ruler. But how did we get the metric system?

4) From the French Revolution. French chefs everywhere ran into considerable delays when the aristocrats suddenly wanted their meal portions to include exactly one sixth of an egg. We don’t have rulers that measure in fifty-fourths now. It’s certain that pre-revolutionary chefs didn’t either. So cutting eggs became much problematic.

5) Problems in dividing eggs meant long delays in making the aristocrats’ favorite dishes. This enraged the impatient French nobility. Gourmet chefs all over Paris found themselves chucked into prisons especially the Bastille.

9) The French elite still clamored for their exquisite meals But there were no more gourmet chefs. But where would the aristocracy find new chefs? From the bakeries. This action, however, meant a shortage of bakers to mean bread.

10) So Paris suffered a bread shortage. Incensed Parisian mothers stormed the bakeries for anything they could find. A hungry mob gathered. It stormed the Bastille to release the imprisoned chefs. The French Revolution had begun. Desiring stability, the Revolutionary government of France converted to the metric system. France is now a stable country.

12) America is not metric. We are sitting on a powder keg.

 

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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Haitian Griots

Posted on February 17, 2021 by pauldelancey

Haitian Entree

GRIOTS

INGREDIENTS

3 pounds pork shoulder
1 green bell pepper
1 medium onion
1 shallot
1 Scotch bonnet or habanero pepper
½ tablespoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon thyme
3 tablespoons lime juice
⅓ cup orange juice
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
¼ cup fresh parsley

SPECIAL UTENSIL

large oven-safe pot The entree, not a safe riot.

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour, then 8 hours to marinate, and 2 hours more.

PREPARATION

Cut pork into 1″ cubes. Dice bell pepper, onions, Scotch bonnet pepper, and shallot. (Scotch bonnet is a truly spicy pepper. Wash your hands after handling it and for goodness sake, do not wipe your forehead after touching it.) Add all ingredients except oil and parsley to large oven safe pot. Mix with hands until well blended and pork cubes are thoroughly coated. (Wash your hands!) Cover and marinate in refrigerator for 8 hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cover oven-safe pot and put in oven. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour 30 minutes or until pork is tender. Remove pot from heat. Use slotted spoon to remove pork cubes from oven-safe pot. Pour liquid from oven-safe pot into regular pot. Return pork cubes to oven-safe pot. Add oil. Stir until pork cubes are well coated with oil.

Return oven-safe pot to oven. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. While pork in oven-safe pot bakes, add liquid to second, regular pot. Cook over medium-high heat for 10 minutes or until liquid has been reduced by half. Stir occasionally. Drizzle liquid over pork cubes. Dice parsley. Garnish pork with parsley. Goes well with rice or fried plantain.

TIDBITS

1) Governments rate riots for the maturity of their audiences. A Griot rating, that is a G-Riot, means that families can safely let their children go see the disturbance. However, deadly riots such as the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution, usually get an R, or restricted, rating.

– 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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Pumpkin Seed Meatballs (Kanda)

Posted on July 30, 2019 by pauldelancey

Central African Entree

PUMPKIN SEED MEATBALLS
(Kanda)

INGREDIENTS

3½ cups shelled, lightly toasted pumpkins or squash seeds
6 garlic cloves
1 medium onion (1 more later)
1¼ pounds ground beef
½ cup water (if needed)
1 medium onion
4 tomatoes
1 cayenne chile pepper or chile pepper
6 tablespoons palm oil or peanut oil
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1 cup fresh parsley

SPECIAL UTENSILS

food processor
mandoline (optional)

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 50 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add pumpkin seeds to food processor. Grind seeds until they become a powder. Mince garlic and 1 onion. Add pumpkin-seed powder, garlic, and onion to large mixing bowl. Blend with hands. (If needed to form a moist round meatball, gradually add up to ½ cup water, blending each time water is added.) Form mix into 1″ meatballs and chill in refrigerator for 30 minutes.

While meatballs chill, use mandoline to cut 1 onion into ¼” strips. Dice tomatoes. Seed and mince cayenne pepper. Add palm oil to large pan. Heat oil at medium-high heat or until a little bit of onion in oil starts to dance. Add onion slices, tomato, and cayenne chile pepper. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion slices soften. Stir frequently. Add pepper and salt. Stir.

Add 1 cup water. Bring water and sauce to boil using high heat. Stir occasionally. Gently add meatballs to pan. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for 20 minutes. Stir gently and occasionally. Reduce heat to warm-low and simmer for another 30 minutes. Stir gently and occasionally. Dice parsley. Garnish meatballs with parsley. This entree goes well with rice.

TIDBITS

1) Pumpkins are round. Balloons are also round.

2) This similarity is no coincidence; Louis XVI loved pumpkin seeds.

3) What the king of France wanted, the king of France got.

4) So great merchant fleets set out from France to import pumpkins from the Spanish territory of Peru. These Peruvian pumpkins cost the royal treasury a million francs every year.

5) Disaster struck in 1777. Pirates based from British Jamaica captured the French fleet bound for Peru, along with its many chests of gold. This loss proved such a blow to French finances that its treasury wouldn’t recover until the next tidbit.

6) King Louis hired Jacques Necker to handle France’s money matter. For Monsieur Necker knew how to get the best price for everything, centuries before AmazonTM even. Many even said he’d able to count up to six billion if given enough time. And that is how many francs he borrowed.

7) The French navy could now buy enough ships to escort their pumpkin fleets to and from France. Then boom! The American Revolution started. France went to war with the British. The French fleet helped America gain its independence.

8) However, French naval expenditures trained the French treasury. Its navy wouldn’t put to sea for decades. This left King Louis’ annual pumpkin fleets unescorted, easy prey for British ships of the line.

9) What to do? Louis XVI having scooped out all the pumpkin seeds, looked down at the empty pumpkin and had an epiphany. Why not carry Peru’s pumpkins seeds back using giant, balloons made from empty pumpkins?

10) Well, of course, the Peruvian pumpkins of 1781 were not big enough to make balloons or even the baskets beneath them. So France bought up an enormous pumpkin farm in Peru dedicated to making enormous pumpkins. No franc was left unspent in pursuit of the venture.

11) By 1789, Louis XVI had no money. His finance minister asked the French nobility if it would accept new taxes. It said, “Na, na, na, poo, poo.” So Necker asked all of France for a gigantic weenie roast to discuss ways to raise revenue. Fine suggestions were made, then disaster struck. A nobleman cut in front of a long line of peasants waiting for weenies. Words were said. Knives with drawn. Before you could say François’s your uncle the French Revolution began.

12) King Louis would lose his head in the ensuing kerfuffle. Napoleon would seize power and discontinue the bigger-pumpkin experiment in Peru. So bummer.

13) However, so good came out of Louis’ misfortune. America borrowed the idea of France’s Great Weenie Roast of 1789 to celebrate every Fourth of July. And Peru’s big pumpkins are still the envy of the world.

– 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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Mexican Tres Leches Cake

Posted on April 20, 2014 by pauldelancey

Mexican Dessert

TRES LECHES

INGREDIENTSTresLeches-

1 tablespoon cake flour (1 ½ cups more later)
1 tablespoon softened unsalted butter (½ cup more later)
½ cup softened unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar (½ cup more later)
5 eggs
1 ½ cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (1 teaspoon more later)
1 3/4 cups whole milk
1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 12 ounce can evaporated milk
1 3/4 cups heavy whipping cream
½ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

SPECIAL UTENSIL

9″ x 13″ baking pan
electric beater

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Use 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon cake flour to grease and dust baking pan. Add butter and 3/4 cup sugar to first large mixing bowl. Mix butter and sugar together, using cake or medium setting on electric beater, until butter and sugar become fluffy. Add eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Blend again. Add 1/3 of the baking powder and the 1 ½ cups flour at a time to batter. Use blender set on cake after each addition.

Pour batter into baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Let cake cool for 30 minutes. Poke cake several times with fork, skewer, or ninja knife. While cake cools, add whole milk, condensed milk, and evaporated milk to second large mixing bowl. (Also clean mixing bowls. As my Grandma Anna use to say, “The outstanding chef’s kitchen is perfectly clean when the dish is served.”) Mix the three milks together with whisk or with electric beater set on fold or low. Pour combined milks evenly on top of cake. Refrigerate cake for 1 hour.

Add whipping cream, ½ cup sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract to recently cleaned ☺ mixing bowl. Mix with electric beater set on whip or high until topping is thick. Pour topping over cake. Keep tres leches cake refrigerated until ready to serve.

TIDBITS

1) Doesn’t evaporated milk sound as if there should be no milk left? Well, because it’s all evaporated milk.

2) Condensed milk also seems like it should be hard to make. If you were to try condensing a cartoon of milk with, say, a sledgehammer, you’d most likely get milk flying all over the kitchen.

3) Then you’d have to clean up all that milk from the walls.

4) And goodness sakes, you’d be in big trouble if you shattered your sweetheart’s Ming Dynasty Vase on your back swing with that sledgehammer.

5) Best leave condensing milk to the condensed-milk manufacturers. Let them work their magic.

6) But you can safely smoosh a marshmallow bunny with your thumb and index finger.

7) Doing so will give a marshmallow figure that looks like that North Korean dictator, Kim Something.

8) The dour dictator doesn’t have a sense of humor. Maybe we can destabilize his regime by posting Kim marshmallow bunny pictures all over the internet. Maybe we can shake his authority to the point where he flees his country and a democracy takes his place.

10) We will all share in a Nobel Peace Prize.

11) Posting marshmallow bunny pictures can bring down Kim’s Stalinist regime. Remember the power of culinary politics. After all, it was Queen Marie Antoinette’s remark of, “Let them eat cake,” to the starving mobs of Paris that started the French Revolution.

– 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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Cemita, Mexican Sandwich

Posted on January 7, 2014 by pauldelancey

Mexican Entree

CEMITA
(Mexican Sandwich)

INGREDIENTSCemita-

2 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon minced onion
1 tablespoon butter.
1 teaspoon Mexican oregano
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup bread crumbs
2 eggs
1 pound round steak (sliced 1/4″ to 1/2″ thick)
at least 3 tablespoons olive oil.
2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 avocados
1 onion
12 ounces queso blanco or mozzarella
4 round rolls with sesame seeds
1/2 cup salsa

SPECIAL UTENSIL

kitchen mallet

PREPARATION

Mince garlic. Add garlic, onion, and butter to pan and sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion is tender. Remove garlic and onion. Add garlic, onion, oregano, pepper, and salt to mixing bowl. Stir with whisk until well mixed. Whisk eggs in separate bowl.

Tenderize steaks with kitchen mallet if steaks not already tenderized. Bam! Bam! Coat both sides of steaks in garlic/onion/spice mix. Dip steaks into whisked eggs, then into breadcrumbs, coating both sides. Add olive oil to skillet. Sautée each steak on medium heat for 1.5-to-2 minutes for each side, until breading is crispy and golden brown. Add olive oil as necessary for each steak sautéed. Place steaks on paper towels to drain Sprinkle with lemon juice. Slice lemon and put a slice with each steak.

Peel and pit avocados. Cut avocados into thin slices. Thinly slice onion. Grate cheese. Toast rolls. Place steak Milanesa on bottom half of roll. Top steak Milanesa with 1/4th of the avocado slices, 1/4th of the onion slices, and 1/4th of the grated cheese. Evenly spoon 1/4th of the salsa on top of the cheese. Put the top half of roll on top of everything. Repeat for the other 3 sandwiches.

TIDBITS

1) “Cemita sandwich” is an anagram for “Ascetic ham wind.”

2) There is a town in Massachussets called Sandwich. Its police cars have “Sandwich Police” on their doors.

3) Jim Morrison was the lead singer for the band, “The Doors.”

4) The Parisians use baguettes for their sandwiches.

5) The bloody French Revolution was caused, in great part, by the high cost of bread.

6) “Bread” was another great rock band.

7) Rock beat scissors.

8) Ancient Egyptians did not have scissors. They played “Rock, Paper.” As paper beats rock, everyone picked paper. All their games ended in a tie.

9) Tie are a popular gift for Father’s Day.

10) Doris Day was a great actress and singer. She never took her clothes off in any of her movies.

11) Clothes get cleaned in a washer.

12) But often only one sock per pair survives the washing. Where does the missing sock go?

13) I think the socks go to an alternate universe.

14) Socks the Cat was President Bill Clinton’s pet.

15) I met someone who had the job of protecting Socks when President Clinton visited San Diego.

16) But no one protects the socks that go into our washing machines. Perhaps our washing machines have obtained consciousness and have learned to hate us, just like computer printers.

17) Printers should be called Marleys because they’re always jammin’.

18) I almost saw Bob Marley’s house when I visited Jamaica.

19) Jamaica’s jerk-chicken dish is wonderful.

20) Soda jerks were common in America before World War II when this great land had lots of stores with soda fountains. Now soda jerks and soda fountains are mostly gone. The Allies made the world safe for democracy, but not for going out for a soda.

21) I need a sandwich to regain my rosy outlook on life. Ahh.

– 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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White Cake

Posted on November 8, 2013 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

WHITE CAKE

INGREDIENTSWhiteCake-

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
3 egg whites
2 cups flour
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cups milk
no-stick spray

SPECIAL UTENSILS

2 9″-round cake tins
electric beater

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Let butter soften at room temperature. Put butter and sugar in large mixing bowl. Use “cake” setting on electric beater for 5 minutes or until butter and sugar becomes creamy.

Blend in eggs and egg whites one at a time using “cake” setting on electric beater. Add flour, baking powder, and salt to mixing bowl. Blend all using “cake” setting. Add milk. Blend one last time using “cake” setting on your electric beater until batter is smooth.

Spray cake tins with no-stick spray. Spoon or pour batter into cake tins. Put tins in oven. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-to-35 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out clean or when the cake springs back when touched with a spoon.

TIDBITS

1) Queen Marie Antoinette was told that the poor Parisians couldn’t afford to buy bread anymore. She said, “Let them eat cake,” which was more expensive. This ignorance and callousness so inflamed the French poor that they started the French Revolution.

2) Thousands of the nobility died at the guillotine during the Revolution. Thousands more peasants died during the White Terror reaction of the nobility. France became so unstable that Napoleon was able to seize power in 1799. Napoleon plunged Europe into nearly constant warfare for the next sixteen years. Hundreds of thousands of people perished. People couldn’t every tweet outrage.

3) The French government since then has heavily regulated the price of bread.

– 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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Banane Celeste From Martinique

Posted on September 1, 2013 by pauldelancey

Martiniquai Dessert

BANANE CELESTE

INGREDIENTSBananeCeleste-

1 pound cream cheese (1/2 pound at a time)
3 tablespoons butter
6 ripe bananas
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (1/4 teaspoon more later)
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

serves 6

SPECIAL UTENSIL

baking dish

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Let cream cheese and butter soften. Peel bananas and cut them in half along their lengths.

Add cream cheese, brown sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. Use fork or blender on lowest setting until mixture is light and fluffy.

Light and fluffy sounds so peaceful doesn’t it? Next time you’re at a peace conference say, “Light and fluffy” to the warring sides and see if the mood of the room doesn’t improve dramatically.

Meanwhile back at the stove, use medium heat to melt the butter in a pan. Add banana halves to pan. Sauté bananas on medium heat until they turn light brown on both sides. Turn bananas carefully over with spatula to ensure even browning.

Evenly arrange 6 banana halves in bottom of baking dish. Spoon 1/2 pound cream cheese evenly over bananas. Place 6 more banana halves on top of the the cream cheese. Spoon another 1/2 pound of cream cheese atop the second banana layer.

Smooth heavy cream over the second layer of cream cheese. Sprinkle 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon over heavy cream.

Put baking dish in oven and bake in over for 15-to-20 minutes at 350 degrees or until cream-cheese sauce is bubbly and golden brown.

TIDBITS
1) Josephine Bonaparte, wife of the Emperor Napoleon, was born in Martinique in 1763 with the name of Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie. This name was way too long so most people just called her “Ma.” Josephine possessed a lively sense of humor.

2) People loved her jokes. She had them in stitches. Agents from Vau de Ville frequently came to her mansion to sign her up for large engagements but she always demurred, saying she was but a simple banana plantation monopolist.

3) Still the island’s elite kept coming to her comedy soirées to hear her jokes. They never wanted to leave even when she got tired and wanted to retire. They’d say, “Yo, Ma, Ma, tell us another joke.”

4) Her funnies became known as “Ma Ma jests,” then “Mama jests,” and finally by 1779 as “Yo, Mama jokes.”

5) In 1779, Ma Pagerie married the owner of the Folies Bergère, Monsieur de Beauharnais, and moved to Paris.

6) Nothing much of note happened in the lives of the de Beauharnaises until monsieur ended their marriage by getting guillotined in 1794. Saved the unpleasantness of a bitter divorce, Ma commenced a series of mirthful affairs with the handsome leaders of the French Revolution.

7) In 1796 she attracted the eye of a young artillery officer named Napoleon Bonaparte. “She made me laugh,” said Napoleon.

8) Napoleon had suffered from chronic depression and often stayed in bed neglecting to fight the smallest battle until Ma bucked him up with one of the world’s first chicken-crossing the road jokes. “Pourquoi le poulet a traversé la rue? Pour obtenir à l’autre côté.”

9) Ma’s mirth gave Napoleon the energy to follow his dream. In 1799, he and two other hombres overthrew the constitutional government. In 1804, he reached the top of the government ladder when he made himself emperor.

10) Life was good for France with Napoleon conquering one country after another. People no longer had to get visas to visit the Italian Riviera. Napoleon had made it part of France. What a guy!

11) But things went sour in 1810. Napoleon wanted an heir for his Empire. Ma, although always able to conceive a knee-slapping joke without a moment’s notice, could not do the same with a child. So Napoleon divorced her and married Marie Louise of Austria.

12) Marie Louise lived in a permanent humor-free zone. She never made Napoleon laugh, not once. Napoleon grew moody, his judgment became impaired. In 1812, he invaded Russia, a disaster. By 1814, his enemies were at the French border. They offered Napoleon a peace treaty, but without Ma’s jokes to relieve the tension caused by his tactless outbursts, negotiations went downhill.

13) Napoleon was forever defeated in 1815 and exiled to St. Helena. It would decades before vaudeville revived.

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

Roasted Red Peppers with Baguettes

Posted on July 10, 2013 by pauldelancey

French Entree

ROASTED RED PEPPERS WITH BAGUETTES

INGREDIENTSRoastedRPwB-

4 red bell peppers
3 cloves garlic
1 cup olive oil
4 teaspoons herbes de Provence
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon mignonette pepper (or pepper)
2 baguettes

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Bake bell peppers in baking dish at 450 degrees. Turn every 8 minutes until skin blackens on all sides. Remove bell peppers and put in a paper lunch bag. Close lunch bag and let bell peppers sweat for an hour.. Do not, do not, for the love of God, Montressor, take them out early.

If you take the red bell peppers out of the bag early, you will find it so difficult to remove the skin from the bell peppers. You will be so frustrated by this that you will find yourself going constantly to the DMV just to be in a happier place. You will become a DMV groupie. Do not let this happen. Keep those bell peppers in the bag for the full hour.

While the bell peppers are steaming in the sack, mince garlic cloves. Put garlic, olive oil, herbes de Provence, salt, and pepper in mixing bowl and mix with fork.

Because you will need to peel those bell peppers. Cut the peppers into thin short strips. Spoon mix with liquid over baguette slices. Serve to adoring guests. Unappreciative guests get bonked over the head with a stale baguette. Sacré bleu

The bell pepper/olive oil mixed can also be used Provençale Roasted Red Pepper Soup.

TIDBITS

1) This was supposed to have been called Rhone River Roasted Red Pepper Soup for its alliterative beauty, but that title would have been too long to fit on one line.

2) And without beauty, what is there? Might as well sit in dentists’ waiting room.

3) Fortunately, beauty exists everywhere.

4) We can thank the French Revolution which erupted in 1789 to protect the rights of the common person and to protect beauty.
5) Many people died ensuring that Revolution would succeed. Generations of Frenchmen would go to war before France would finally get a stable republic.

6) With a stable republic, artists need no longer go to war. They become free to create beautiful works of art.

7) So after all that, how could I mar beauty with a two-line title?

– 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

Simple Hawaiian Pancakes Recipe

Posted on April 24, 2013 by pauldelancey

Hawaiian Entree

SIMPLE HAWAIIAN PANCAKES

INGREDIENTSHawaWaf-

8 frozen waffles
4 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons milk
1/2 cups pineapple juice
4 ounce can pineapple chunks

PREPARATION

Toast waffles according to instructions on package. Cut butter into 16 pats. Combine in mixing bowl: sugar, milk, and pineapple juice. Place equal amounts of butter and mixed juice and 2-to-4 pineapple chunks of each toasted waffle. Aloha!

TIDBITS

1) In 1869, women of Wyoming got the right to vote. The waffle iron was first patented in 1869. It was a good year.

2) One-hundred years later, the amazing New York Mets won their first World Series championship after years of last place finishes. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

3) The waffle began its illustrious culinary journey during the Middle Ages. The waffle! So if someone calls this era the Dark Ages, waggle your finger at the fool and say, “Nooooo!”

4) The waffle became so popular that bloody fights became common between waffle vendors seeking prime locations. So much so, that a King of France took off time from wars and mistresses to decree a minimum distance between the warring vendors.

5) It has been said the French Revolution started in 1789 in part by disgruntled vendors seeking to throw out royal enforcement of the waffle decrees.

6) America annexed Hawaii in 1898 to ensure a steady supply of pineapple chunks in juice for its burgeoning appetite for Hawaiian waffles. A drastic measure perhaps, but it is worthwhile to note America has never since been involved in any military conflict over foreign pineapples. The same cannot be said for oil.

– 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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