Posts Tagged With: fun

Chocolate Fondue

Swiss Dessert

CHOCOLATE FONDUE

INGREDIENTSChocolateFondue-

3.5 ounces TobleroneTM Swiss milk chocolate
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 ounces pound cake (See above recipe.)
6 ounces strawberries
4 ounces marshmallows

SPECIAL UTENSIL

fondue pot
fondue forks

PREPARATION

Cut pound cake into 1″ cubes. Add Toblerone chocolate, semisweet chocolate chips, sugar, butter, and vanilla extract to large pan. Warm mixture using low-medium heat for 5 minutes or chocolate melts and everything blends together. Stir constantly.

Transfer melted chocolate in pan to fondue pot. Adjust flame under fondue pot so that the chocolate stays smooth, but barely bubbles. Use fondue forks to dip cake cubes, strawberries, and marshmallows in chocolate sauce.

TIDBITS

1) Chocolate fondue was invented on April 1, 1798, by the great Swiss ballet dancer and explorer, Fon d’Ue. Monsieur d’Ue and all his fellow ballet dancers were at that time in the 89th infantry.

2) One day, d’Ue held up a handful of brown musket balls. “Bah, we never kill any French with these things.” He flung the balls away. The musket balls bounced off the marbled statue of the beautiful ballerina, Madame Swiz Staek that lurked in the town square.

5) The musket balls landed in the regiment’s soup pot. “Want not, waste not,” was the philosophy of the regiment’s Calvinist cook, Claude Monet. Monet dipped his supply of pound-cake cubes, strawberries, and marshmallows into the soup pot. He fished out a coated marshmallow with a long thin fork. It tasted great! The regiment’s and indeed the whole army’s bullets were being made from discarded chocolate remnants from the frugal nation’s chocolate factories.

7) And so Switzerland had lost every battle. The French annexed the whole chocolate-eating country for nearly sixteen years. Bad for Switzerland, sure, but great for the culinary world. Yum.

– 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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Tuna Melt

American Entree

TUNA MELT

INGREDIENTSTunaMelt-

2 5-ounce cans albacore tuna
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup diced celery
2, tablespoons minced yellow, brown, or red onon
1 teaspoon dill weed
1/8,teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup shredded cheddar or mozzarella cheese
1 medium, ripe avocado (optional)
2 hamburger buns on 4 bread slices

PREPARATION

Drain water from tuna cans. Preheat broiler to 375 degrees. Toast bread for 2 minutes. While bread toasts, become a whirlwind and add tuna, mayonnaise, celery, onion, dill weed, pepper, and salt to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk.

Top the bread slices equally with tuna/mayonnaise mix. Put slices in broiler and broil at 375 for 2 to 3 minutes. Remove tuna/mayonnaise/bread slices from broiler and top equally with shredded cheese. Return slices to broiler and broil at 375 degrees for about 2 minutes or until cheese melts. Remove from oven. Carefully combine two slices together. (You might wish to use a spatula.)

TIDBITS

1) “December 7, 1941–a date which will live in infamy…” – President Roosevelt on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

2) “December 23, 1941, a date which will live in culinary glory…” – me, today. For this is the date of the first recorded sighting of the word, “cheeseburger.” This wondrous event happened at a small restaurant in Burbank, California.

3) The first six months of the war in the Pacific went poorly for America. Some culinary historians speculate that the invention of the cheeseburger was the only thing that prevented defeatism spreading throughout America.

4) Moreover, the humble cheeseburger provided American soldiers, marines, and sailors the energy to keep up the good fight when their Japanese counterparts flagged from a want of calories. Now, Japan and America are friends, because we both eat cheeseburgers. May I suggest a Japanese cheeseburger with wasabi ketchup?

– 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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My Cookbook, “Eat Me: 169 Fun Recipes From All Over the World” is Available in Paperback and as an E-book

Woo hoo! My international cookbook, Eat Me, 169 Fun Recipes From Around the World, is out.

On Amazon: paperback and e-book

On Nook: e-book

cover

PRAISE FOR EAT ME

“Paul De Lancey’s cookbook, Eat Me! 169 Fun Recipes From All Over the World is as hysterical as it is chock-full of yummy recipes and wacky trivia.

“From the author of We’re French and You’re Not and The Fur West, De Lancey entertains supreme as he distills cooking to the simplest of terms—from boiling water (and identifying the stove) to preparing timeless classics from every corner of the globe including scrumptious Beef Stroganoff and Greek Wraps with tzatziki sauce.

“Every recipe is followed by hilarious tidbits, such as, ‘King Louis XV ate boiled eggs every Sunday. This practice ceased with his death.’ And advice galore, Crunchy Tuna Casserole – ‘This is not a good meal to make if your dishwasher doesn’t work as happened to me. Grr!’

“De Lancey is one of the freshest voices in the cookbook world. He will have your family and guests spewing milk from their noses as you read about the perils of dropping raw eggs from too great a height into hot Tomato Drop Soup.

Eat Me! is a must read for anyone with a sense of humor and a desire to expand their menu.”
– Marie Etienne, author of Storkbites: A Memoir and Confessions of a Bi-Polar Mardi Gras Queen

“What’s up with straightforward, no-nonsense cookbooks? A little nonsense in the kitchen can make meal preparation more fun. That’s what Paul De Lancey does in Eat Me, a cookbook spiced with comedy, leavened with silliness, and still fully informative and functional. So get out those pots and pans and your sense of humor and have some fun creating that next meal.”

—Roger L. Conlee, author of Fog and Darkness and The Hindenburg Letter.

“I don’t cook, my favorite dinner is popcorn and M&Ms and I store my sweaters in the oven, but Paul De Lancey’s new cookbook may change all that. From what I’ve seen of his recipes and accompanying photos, this cook knows his ingredients.”

-Judy Reeves, author of A Writer’s Book of Days

Eat Me by Paul De Lancey is the only way I know of to learn how to cook simple yummy meals while laughing too hard to eat your simple yummy meals. Seriously. This author’s recipes are so inextricably layered with absurdity, puns, and outrageous assertions that I never knew whether I was chuckling at his jokes or cooking them up myself. A great, side-tickling–and practical–read for anyone’s kitchen!”

– Reina Lisa Menasche, author of Twice Begun

– 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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Zimbabwean Dovi (Peanut Butter Chicken Stew)

Zimbabwean Entree

DOVI
(Peanut Butter Chicken Stew)

INGREDIENTSDovi-

1 1/2 medium onions
2 cloves garlic
2 green bell peppers
1/2 pound spinach
4 medium tomatoes
3 chicken breasts
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 cups water

Makes 8-to-10 bowls

PREPARATION

Mince onions and garlic. (Vampires won’t like this soup.) Dice bell peppers. Remove stems from spinach. Dice tomatoes. Cut chicken into 1/2″ cubes. Put onion, garlic, and butter in pot. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion is tender. Stir frequently.

Add chicken, bell pepper, cayenne, paprika, pepper, pepper, and salt to pot. Cook for about 5 minutes on medium heat or until chicken begins to brown. Add tomato, peanut butter, and water. Simmer on low heat for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Add spinach to pot. Simmer on low heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve and enjoy. Live long and prosper.

TIDBITS

1) I looked up fun facts about Zimbabwe. I read how its current leader had the houses of 700,000 homes of poor people destroyed because they had opposed him. Boy, fun facts you betcha.

2) Divo is an anagram for void. It is also an anagram for Ovid, the famous Roman.

3) Devo was a famous band from the early 1980. I have one of their albums. I’ve found no evidence to back the assertion that the band was named after this stew.

4) However, if Ovid had been a member of Devo, say bass guitar, and he didn’t have a video of divo soup then Devo Ovid would have had a TivoTM divo void.

5) And now two divo haikus:

Oh great Zimbabwe
Your peanuts and your spinach
Make yummy dovi

Mince ingredients
Simmer for ten minutes long
Stir occasionally

– 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

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.

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Irish Hamburgers Recipe

Irish Entree

IRISH HAMBURGERS

INGREDIENTSIrCorBB-

1 4-to-5 pound ready-to-cook corned beef brisket
6 russet potatoes
3 large carrots
1 large white onion
1/2 head cabbage
water
6 hamburger buns

SPECIALTY UTENSIL

crock pot

PREPARATION

At the crock pot’s low setting, the brisket can take 10-to-14 hours to become tender. The high setting will cut this time by about half.

Put ready-to-cook corned beef brisket in crock pot. Add water to crock pot until it covers the brisket. You may need to cut the brisket into smaller pieces depending on the size of your crock pot. Cook for 10-to-14, possibly overnight, or until brisket is tender.

Clean potatoes and carrots. Cut potatoes carrots, onions, and cabbages in slices no thicker than 1/2″ inch and add them to the crock pot. and vegetables. Add water until it covers the brisket and vegetables. Cook on low setting for about 2 hours or until vegetables are tender.

So far, this has been a simplified, but still traditional meal of corned beef. But new culinary horizons beckon. Beef burgers beget beguilingly Irish burgers, beggorah.

Put a slice of corned beef from crock pot on bun. Top that with a slice of onion and cabbage also from the crock pot. Add a squiggle of mustard and complete with top bun. A Irish burger to be sure.

Use remaining ingredients in crock pot as a traditional corned beef meal or as in the next recipe, corned-beef soup.

TIDBITS

1) This recipe uses carrots. The world famous cartoon character Bugs Bunny loved carrots.

2) Bugs Bunny was named after one of his creators at Warner Bros. studio, Buggsy Hardaway.

3) Bugs Bunny was officially born on July 27, 1940 in a rabbit warren under Ebbets Field, home of the Dodgers, in Brooklyn. Although previous incarnations occurred in the late 1930s, his official cartoon debut occurred on that date in a cartoon feature called a “Wild Hare.”

4) Bugs went on to have a illustrious cartoon career starring in several beloved shorts and even a few movies. This patriotic bunny also squared off successfully against the nefarious German and Japanese leaders of World War II. Bugs even appeared in two-minute films designed to get Americans to buy war bonds.

5) It’s possible without Bugs Bunny’s buy-war bonds films America would not have had enough funds to prosecute the war against the Axis powers.

6) And indeed, America’s fighting men were grateful. Bugs Bunny was the official mascot of at least one air training school and two air squadrons.

7) Bugsy Siegel’s story is somewhat different. Born into the real world, Bugsy rose to prominence as a bootlegger and notorious co-founder of Murder, Inc. Switching to gambling, Bugsy founded the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was gunned down in 1947.

8) There you have it. One Bugsy has made the world laugh for decades and won a world war. The other Bugsy not so much.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Chicken Provencale Recipe

French Entree

CHICKEN PROVENÇALE

INGREDIENTSChicPro-

2 chicken breasts
2 teaspoons herbes de Provence
1/2 teaspoon mignonette pepper (Tellicherry black pepper, Muntok white pepper, coriander)
2 tablespoon olive oil
2 red bell peppers
1 green bell pepper
3 garlic cloves
1/2 cup white wine

SPECIALTY UTENSIL

kitchen mallet

Serves one wrestler in training for the Olympics, two people with regular appetites, and four guests who got into your private stash of Belgian truffles before even trying this lovingly prepared meal and are never getting invited again.

PREPARATION

Pound chicken breasts to a half-inch thickness. (Remembering the day’s swarm of rude drivers on your ride home helps immeasurably.) Cut chicken breasts into fourths. Coat chicken pieces with herbes de Provence and mignonette pepper. Cut bell peppers into strips about 1/2″ inch wide and 2″ long. Mince garlic cloves.

Put olive oil in frying pan. Add bell-pepper and garlic. Sauté on high heat for a minute or until olive oil boils. Stir frequently. Add white wine and chicken pieces.

Cover and reduce heat to low-medium for about 5 minutes or until chicken is cooked through. You can cut a piece in half. If the chicken is still pink inside, sauté everything a few minutes more. If both halves are all white, eat one half. It’s your kitchen.

TIDBITS

1) The Olympics first occurred in Ellis, Greece in 776 BC as a way to honor Zeus. Wrestling was perhaps the most popular event.

2) Contestants and trainers appeared nude partly to prevent women from surreptitiously participating.

3) The Olympics started to die out around 260 AD what with barbarians invading the Roman Empire and civil wars erupting every few weeks. In 391 Emperor Theodosius outlawed the games because they were pagan.

4) No summer Olympics, no chance for winter Olympics. No winter Olympics, no bobsledding. No bobsledding, no thriving winter tourist industry. No thriving winter tourist industry, no taxes for the government. No taxes, no money to fund an army for the Empire.

5) Indeed, quite soon after Theodosius’ decision, massive waves of barbarians assaulted the poorly defended Roman Empire, defeating it quite easily.

6) The death of the Roman Empire plunged Europe into the Dark Ages for about a thousand years. Way to go, Theodosius.

7) Today the Olympic Committee is considering dropping wrestling from the games claiming lack of interest.

8) Perhaps there would be more interest if we brought back nude wrestling.

– 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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Bacon Buttermilk Pancakes Recipe

American Breakfast

BACON BUTTERMILK PANCAKES

INGREDIENTSbutt-

15 slices bacon (about 1 pound)
1/2 cup butter
1 cup cultured buttermilk blend
4 cups water
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs

You can, of course, buy buttermilk instead of buttermilk blend, but your buttermilk will go bad if you don’t use it right away.

SPECIALTY UTENSILS

electric mixer
griddle or skillet

PREPARATION

Cut bacon strips in half. Fry bacon on medium-high heat until it starts to get crispy. Put bacon on towel-covered plate.

Melt butter. Use “batter” setting on electric mixer, or beater, to combine buttermilk blend, water, eggs, and butter. Combine in a second large mixing bowl: flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Pour the contents of the second bowl into the first mixing bowl. Mix together with fork until just blended.

Fire up the griddle to 350 degrees. Use a 1/2-cup ladle to pour your batter onto the griddle. Put two half bacon strips in batter. Cook for 1 3/4 minutes on the first side and for 1 1/2 minutes on the second side or until brown on both sides.

Makes about 16 8-inch diameter pancakes. Come join bacon mania.

TIDBITS

1) Bacon makes you smart.

2) The choline, whatever that is, in bacon stimulates fetal brain development.

3) China began preserving and salting pork bellies around 1,500 B.C.

4) China was one of the first places on Earth to develop a complex, thriving civilization. It is the most populous nation in the world.

5) The Greeks were one of the first peoples in the West to preserve and salt pork. The Greeks developed modern Western philosophy.

6) The Romans preserved and salted pork. They built the largest empire Europe and the Mediterranean world has ever seen. America’s founding fathers consciously based our system of government on the Roman model.

7) Americans eat bacon all the time. America’s economy is the largest in the world.

8) But other countries’ economies are catching up. Their peoples are eating more bacon.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Berbere Stew

Ethiopian Entree

BERBERE STEW

INGREDIENTS

1/2 medium yellow onion
1 garlic clove
1/2 russet potato
3 baby carrots
1 1/4 cups water
3/4 cup orange lentils
2 1/4 teaspoons Berbere spice mix (See recipe for BERBERE SPICE MIX INGREDIENTS, if you can’t find the     mix)
1 14.5 can diced tomatoes

PREPARATION

You will make your culinary life easy for yourself and everyone else within cussing distance if you soak your lentil beans before starting to cook. (It is a little known fiction that 37% of all aggressive dictators since 1738 ate unsoaked beans at one time or another.)

Anyway, there are two ways to soak your beans. The first way is the “quick soak” method. Soak lentils in 6-to-8 cups of water. Heat on high until water boils. Boil for 2 minutes. Turn off heat and cover for 1 hour. Drain and rinse. The second way is the “slow method.” Soak lentils in 6-to-8 cups of water for at least 6 hours. (This give you time to run marathons in record times with about an hour break in between.) Drain and rinse.

Peel and dice onion, garlic cloves, and potato. Dice baby carrots. Put water, lentils, onion, garlic, potatoes, baby carrots, bebere spice mix in soup pot. Cook over medium-low heat for about 20 minutes or until lentils soften. Stir periodically with increasing frequency as you reach the 20-minute mark.

Let me stress that the time necessary to soften lentils varies with the time it soaked beforehand and the temperature at which they are cooked. So it is quite a good idea and periodically monitor the softness of the lentils. (Too many business mergers have been stopped because one CEO made another CEO wait too long for unsoaked lentils to soften.)

Add diced tomatoes and heat at low-medium heat for another 15 minutes.

Serve in a bowl or over rice on a plate.

1) Cardamom, used to make the Berbere spice mix, costs about $60 a pound.

2) Many of today’s cars weigh about a ton and cost about $25,000.

3) The same car made from cardamom would run you about $120,000.

4) That’s before labor costs. Who knows how much it would cost to hire workers skilled enough to fashion cardamom into an internal combustion engine, tires, windows, steering wheels and all the fixin’s.

5) Saffron costs about $170 an ounce or about one-tenth the price of gold or four times the cost of silver.

6) Thank goodness, keeping up with the Joneses doesn’t mean owning a $5,600,000 saffron car.

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

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