Angry Man #8
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.
Why I shouldn’t become a liver doctor. I’d be tempted to open an office like this.
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.
INGREDIENTS – PIONONO
4 eggs (2 hard boiled eggs later)
2½ tablespoons sugar (2½ tablespoons more later)
½ cup flour
2½ tablespoons sugar
⅓ cup sugar
⅛ teaspoon salt
no-stick spray
INGREDIENTS – FILLING
2 eggs, hard boiled
5 ounces ham
1 tomato
1 cup grated cheese (your favorite)
5 tablespoons mayonnaise
* = This is often made as a dessert. To do so, ladle dulce de leche over the rolled up pionono and substitute sweet ingredients for the above savory ones.
SPECIAL UTENSILS
electric beater
10″ x 14″ baking sheet
parchment paper
sonic obliterator
Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 10 minutes.
PREPARATION – PIONONO
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Separate eggs into yolks and whites. Add yolks and 2½ tablespoons sugar to medium mixing bowl. Whip yolks with electric beater until mixture becomes creamy. Add flour. Mix with whisk until well blended.
Add egg whites, 2½ tablespoons sugar, and salt to small mixing bowl. Whip until mixture until soft peaks form. Use electric beater set on lowest level to fold egg whites into yolk/flour mixture.
Spray baking sheet with no-stick spray. Cover baking sheet with parchment paper. Spray parchment paper with no-stick spray. (This makes removing the pionono easier late on.) Gently pour in the egg yolk/egg whites/flour mix onto the parchment paper. Level mixture with spatula. Make sure mixture reaches all the sides of the baking sheet.
Bakes 400 degrees for 8 minutes or until egg mixture turns golden brown and becomes spongy and flexible.. Use edges of parchment paper to remove egg mixture from baking sheet. Keep pionono or doughy/egg mixture on parchment paper. Cool doughy egg mixture by placing it on a damp towel. Gently roll up pionono and parchment paper. Surround pionono with damp towel. Let Cool.
PREPARATION – FILLING
While pionono cools, dice hard boiled eggs, ham, and tomato. Add all filling ingredients to 3rd mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended.
Gently unroll the pionono. Gently separate pionono from parchment paper. Use spatula to evenly and gently spread filling over pionono. Carefully and tightly roll up filled pionono. Carefully cut pionono into 6 pieces along its width. Serve to adoring guests. Use sonic obliterator on those who thought you weren’t gentle or careful. You don’t need such negativity in your kitchen.
TIDBITS
1) A black op is a clandestine, usually illegal, action launched by a government agency or private organization to wreak havoc on another country. These tend to be rather secretive affairs and never discussed on social media. Nope, neither before or after the operation.
2) “Pionono is an anagram for “onion op.”
3) An onion op is a clandestine, usually illegal, action launched by a government agency or private organization to wreak havoc on another nation’s cuisine.
4) Typically an onion op will do something like inserting minced onion into every aspect of a nation’s dairy supply.
5) After a successful such op, the victim country will have all its milk taste like onion. Its buttered toast will taste like onion. Ice cream will taste like onion. Malts will taste like onion. Oh this is too horrible to contemplate any further.
6) Suffice it to say, this onion op would decimate the dairy industry forever. The effects then cascade to all other industries. The nation’s economy collapses.
7) The afflicted country would be ripe for take over. All the invaders would need to say is, “Our dairy products taste like dairy products. All you need do is to get them to reply, “We accept you as our new overlords.” And that will be that.
8) This recipe uses no onions.
9) So if someone cooks you this recipe and uses onions, he is a foreign agent trying to carry out an onion op on your homeland.
10) I thought you should know.
Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
INGREDIENTS
1 12-ounce can Dr. PepperTM
3 tablespoons brown mustard
¾ cup brown sugar
5 pounds boneless or 5½ pounds bone-in ham
SPECIAL UTENSIL
slow cooker
Serves 8. Takes 4 hours 45 minutes.
PREPARATION
Add Dr. Pepper, brown mustard, brown sugar, and brown mustard to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add ham. Turn ham until well coated. Poke holes in ham with toothpick or skewer. Add ham to slow cooker. Ladle Dr. Pepper mixture over ham. Cook on high for 2 hours 15 minutes. Turn ham over. Cook on high for another 2 hours 15 minutes. Slice ham while hot.
That’s it! That’s the length of the ingredients’ list. That’s the length of the preparation; just one paragraph, I love cooking. I find it therapeutic and satisfying. So, I sometimes love complicated and time-consuming dishes. But every one in a while, it’s such fun to make something simple.
TIDBITS
1) Ham is red. Dr. Pepper is reddish.
2) Mars is red.
3) Mars is a gigantic Dr. Pepper ham.
4) It was made in a huge slow cooker.
5) Mars has almost no atmosphere. Our Earth has quite a good atmosphere. We’re very proud of it.
6) So, it stands to reason air-breathing Martians came to our planet quite a long time ago.
7) How do we know this? We Earthlings eats lots of ham, just like the Martians. Also, we love MarsTM bars. QED.
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.
Thanks to screwups with forms sent to me and other such nonsense, I’ve been fighting with taxes and health insurance almost nonstop for ten days. Whenever I thought I’d solved everything and could safely organize things into binders, some fresh hell presented itself with the ferocity of a mama bear defending its cub. This enabled unsorted papers to gradually take over the office. You really could hide Amelia Earhart here. So, if you don’t hear from me in a while, please send search parties and tacos.
Thank you. I love you all.
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.
INGREDIENTS
2 large avocados
6 ounces crabmeat
2 tablespoons minced bell pepper
2 tablespoons minced celery
2 teaspoons lemon juice
¼ cup mayonnaise
⅛ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon minced shallot or onion
4 leaves lettuce
6 olives
Serves 4. Takes 35 minutes.
PREPARATION
Peel avocados and cut them in half lengthwise. Remove pits. Add crabmeat, bell pepper, celery, lemon juice, mayonnaise, pepper, salt, and shallot to mixing bowl. Mix with fork until crab mix is well blended. Shred lettuce.
Arrange lettuce evenly over 4 plates. Fill avocado hollows with crab mix. Top avocado halves with neat little mounds of remaining crab mix. Cut olives in half. Garnish each avocado half with 3 olive haves. Place filled-and-topped avocado halves on shredded lettuce.
TIDBITS
1) The early peoples of Central America subsisted on avocados. The tribes living along the Pacific coast of South America lived on potatoes. Naturally, no one likes to eat only potatoes or even just avocados. So, soon a lively avocado-potato trade developed. Then culinary ingenuity propelled these peoples into a golden age with the harnessing of corn into tortillas. Before long a brilliant mind, Chef Ozomatli, constructed the first potato taquito with guacamole sauce.
2) This golden age didn’t last. Robbers ambushed the potato and avocado traders. To meet this threat, the great Aztec empire arose around Mexico. Its armies threw volley after volley of avocado pits at the heads of the robber gangs until the thieves broke and fled. The Incan warrior, however, was invulnerable in his suit of potatoes. These innovations were enough to maintain the great empires until the arrival of the musket carrying, metal-armor wearing Conquistadors.
3) In desperation, local chieftains attempted to attack the Spanish fleets by making canoes out of gigantic avocados. Unfortunately, crabs ate these vessels as soon as they put out to sea. Resistance collapsed. Spain would rule this corner of the world for 300 years. This dish commemorates the destruction of the avocado fleets by the crabs. So some good came out of all this turmoil.
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.
This is my 400th blog in a row. Thank you, gentle readers, for reading them. Writing for you takes
my mind off problems in my life and in the world around us. Blogging also exercises my brain. It’s
always good to take the brain for a walk around the block.
In honor of this, I’ve just learned how to insert a moving image into my blog. Go me! Go us!
Let’s go for another 400 more blogs.
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.
INGREDIENTS – MARINADE
¾ pound sirloin steak or flank steak
2 teaspoons sesame oil or vegetable oil
1 tablespoon mirin or rice wine
1 tablespoon light soy sauce or soy sauce
2 teaspoons cornstarch
INGREDIENTS – SAUCE
¼ cup chicken stock
4 teaspoons oyster sauce or hoisin sauce
¾ teaspoon light soy sauce or soy sauce
1 teaspoon cornstarch
INGREDIENTS – FINAL
1½” ginger root
3 scallions or green onions
1 cup peanut oil or vegetable oil
SPECIAL UTENSILS
wok (optional, not to be confused with an EwokTM. Although having an Ewok would be cool.)
Serves 4. Takes 45 minutes.
PREPARATION – MARINADE
Cut steak against the grain into as thin as possible slices. Cut these slices into 1″ squares. Add all marinade ingredients to large mixing bowl. Stir with hands until cornstarch is no longer visible and steak squares are well coated. Let sit for 20 minutes.
PREPARATION – SAUCE
While steak marinates, Add all sauce ingredients to small mixing bowl. Stir with fork until cornstarch is no longer visible.
PREPARATION – FINAL
Peel ginger root. Cut ginger root into thin strips or rounds. Cut scallions into ½” long pieces. Add peanut oil and marinated steak squares to wok. Sauté at medium-high for 3 minutes or until steak squares brown. Stir enough to ensure even browning. Remove steak squares and drain on paper towels. Remove all but 1 tablespoon oil from work.
Add ginger strips and scallion pieces to work. Sauté for 30 seconds. Stir frequently. Return steak squares and add sauce to wok. Stir fry using medium-high heat until liquid starts to boil and steak squares are cooked through. Stir frequently.
TIDBITS
1) America has the Easter Bunny. It is both a symbol of the Resurrection and of fertility.
2) Britain also has the Easter Bunny.
3) The Easter originally came to America from Germany.
4) But Germany hasn’t really celebrated the Easter Bunny for a long time.
5) Germany also started two world wars.
6) Coincidence? Perhaps.
7) Australia doesn’t have an Easter Bunny either. In 1859 or so, someone released rabbits into the wilds. The rabbits bred like rabbits. Soon, rabbits were displacing all sorts of native critters and munching acres upon acres of crops. Farmers hated that. So, Australia periodically wages a campaign against the rabbit hordes. But the rabbits keep coming back. Farmers still hate them.
8) Thus, the land Down Under doesn’t have an Easter Bunny. It has the Easter tilby. A tilby looks a bit like a rabbit. The tilby has great sex, producing eight babies a year. This number is apparently, less than what the rabbit can do. But even so, the Easter tilby isn’t as celebrated as the Easter Bunny is in other lands.
9) America, Britain, Germany, and even Australia aren’t the only nations with a rabbitish animal celebrating fertility.
10) Oh no, the Cantonese region of China honors fecundity through cattle.
11) What is the singular form of cattle? Technically, there isn’t one. However, extensive research –Watching hours of the TV show Rawhide–gives us “beeves” as an alternative word for “cattle.” “Beef” is the singular form of “Beeves.” There you go.
12) It might seem strange for a beef to symbolize fertility. Would a bee have been a much better representative for reproduction?
13) Yes, it would have. Except that in 1884, a British newspaper, The Lion, wrote an article about Canton’s annual Bee Festival. Only The Lion didn’t say that. A misprint turned the celebration into the Beef Festival.
14) Hundreds of thousands of tourists thronged Canton to honor beef., spending millions of pounds while there. The Cantonese government knowing a good thing when they saw it, officially renamed the event, The Beef Festival. Local restaurateurs developed this dish to serve their British guests. Now you know.
Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
INGREDIENTS
3½ tablespoons cornstarch
⅛ teaspoon salt
½ cup sugar
2½ cups milk
1 tablespoon butter, softened
½ tablespoon vanilla extract
Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 45 minutes.
PREPARATION
Add cornstarch, salt, and sugar to saucepan. Mix with spatula. Add milk slowly, while stirring gently with spatula. Heat for 5 minutes using medium heat or until mixture thickens. Stir constantly to prevent burning. Remove from heat. Add butter and vanilla. Stir gently with spatula until well blended.
Chill in refrigerator for 1 hour 30 minutes or until mixture firms into pudding.
TIDBITS
1) Stars are made from vanilla pudding. How do we know this?
2) Stars are white.
3) Vanilla pudding is white.
4) The Sun is hot. That is because it’s yellow and not made from vanilla pudding.
5) If you were somehow able to catapult your vanilla pudding millions of light years away it would be far too small to be seen, even by the Hubble telescope
6) Indeed, you would need to buy trillions of pounds of: cornstarch, salt, sugar, milk, butter, and vanilla extract to fling a visibile vanilla-pudding star into the far reaches of space.
7) But don’t do it. Every van in the world would be needed to deliver your ingredients. The global economy would collapse. Oh my gosh, we’d have nothing left to make cake! For millions of years! What would we do for birthdays? I beg of you, reconsider this giant-star project!
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.
INGREDIENTS
1 pound dried red kidney beans*
6 cups water
8 cups water
2 bay leaves
½ teaspoon salt
3 garlic cloves
1 medium onion
⅓ cup fresh cilantro
½ cup walnut halves
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ tablespoon ground fenugreek**
1½ tablespoons pomegranate molasses or juice
¾ teaspoon pepper
* = Red kidney beans MUST be properly boiled. Eating kidney beans that haven’t been boiled for 10 minutes can make you quite sick. They’re quite safe and tasty once sufficiently boiled them. Discard the water used to soak the beans.
** = To be authentic, this recipe should use blue fenugreek. It’s widely available in its native country and extremely difficult to find elsewhere. Please let me know if you discover a source. Thank you.
SPECIAL UTENSILS
spice grinder
potato masher
Serves 4. Takes 2 hours 20 minutes 24 hours to soak beans.
PREPARATION
Add red kidney beans and 6 cups water to large pot. Let sit for 24 hours.
Drain beans. Add 8 cups water, beans, bay leaves, and salt to large pot. Bring water to boil using high heat. Boil for 12 minutes. Stir enough to keep beans from burning. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 1 hour 40 minutes or until beans become tender. (They really must tender.) Check pot every 10 minutes and add 1 cup water, if needed, to keep at least 1½ cups of liquid in the pot. Stir enough to keep beans from burning. Drain water, saving 1½ cups liquid for later use.
While beans cook, dice garlic, and onion. Mince cilantro. Grind walnut halves in spice grinder until you get walnut powder. Add garlic, onion, and olive oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until garlic and onion soften. Stir frequently. Add fenugreek, cilantro, and walnut powder. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 1 minute or until mixture becomes fragrant.
Add beans and reserved 1½ cups liquid to large pot. Mash beans with potato masher until only ¼th of the beans remain whole. Stir with spoon until thoroughly blended and the beans and water achieve the consistency of a thick stew.
Add garlic/onion/walnut mixture, pomegranate molasses, and pepper to beans in large pot. Mix with spoon until well blended. Cook at medium heat for 5 minutes. Stir occasionally. Remove bay leaves and serve hot.
TIDBITS
1) Desperadoes, bandits, and gunslingers terrorized the Old West.
2) Everyone’s heard of Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and the Dalton Gang.
3) But no one knows anything the greatest outlaw of them all. Giorgi Beridze.
4) Beridze terrorized the Great Western Ailroad, GWA, from 1869 to 1875.
5) It should have been called the Great Western Railroad, But the typesetter made a mistake when publicizing the railroad’s inaugural run. Thereafter, passengers called it Typo Road. Many, however, figured Ailroad to be a startling bit of honesty from GWA’s president.
6) Anyway, Mr. Beridze who has been waiting patiently since Tidbit 1 to have his exploits related to recipe-reading world, so disrupted Great Western’s schedules that the company thought it was about to go under.
7) Then on May 10, 1875, Beridze’s Gang’s raided one last time. The outlaws swarmed the train as it huffed its way to the top of Willow Summit, Texas. They expertly and efficiently rounded up all the train’s employees. The bad men forced the conductor to open the doors to the baggage car.
8) In swarmed Hercules Smith. This desperado grunted as he hurled one heavy sack after another to men waiting on the ground. Down to the hard ground fell the bandits below. Sure they caught the sacks, but the savvy railroad had filled the bags with anvils. Irate passengers quickly overwhelmed the lone anvil tosser. A scant hour late, lawmen easily rounded up the concussed Beridze and gang. Judge Noah Moore sentenced Beridze to hang.
9) His jailers asked Beridze what he wanted for his last meal. He requested this dish, Lobio. His jailers road off to find the ingredients: red kidney beans, water, bay leaves, salt, garlic cloves, cilantro, walnuts, olive oil, blue fenugreek, pomegranate molasses, and pepper. A number of those fixings proved impossible to find in 1875 Texas. They had to travel to Beridze’s home country, Georgia. Beridze’s buddies busted him out two months before the jailers returned.
10) Beridze, now anvil shy, fled the country. Embarrassed GWA officials decided the best thing to do was to hush up the whole affair. That’s why we never hear about the daring Beridze.
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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