Posts Tagged With: humanity

Chicken Orzo Soup From Portugal

Posted on August 28, 2022 by pauldelancey

Portuguese Soup

CHICKEN ORZO

INGREDIENTS

1 garlic clove
1 onion
5 cups chicken broth
7 cups water
8 allspice berries or ½ tablespoon ground allspice
1½ pounds chicken boneless
2 bay leaves
1¼ teaspoons salt
½ cup orzo or arborio rice, couscous, and pearl barley
½ cup fresh cilantro

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 15 minutes

PREPARATION

Mince garlic clove and onion. Add chicken broth, water, chicken, allspice, bay leaves, garlic, onion, and salt to large pot. Bring to boil using medium-high heat. Stir occasionally. Reduce to medium heat and simmer for 50 minutes or until chicken is tender to the fork. Stir occasionally. Remove chicken. Shred chicken with 2 forks. Return shredded chicken to pot.

Add orzo to pot. Simmer at medium heat for 10 minutes or until orzo is done to your desired level of tenderness. Stir enough to keep from burning. While orzo cooks, dice cilantro. Garnish soup with cilantro.

TIDBITS

1) Every time you hesitate to eat some new meat or fish someone will say, “Try it, it tastes just like chicken.” I used to say, “Well, why can’t I have chicken then?”

2) But don’t get angry at your annoying would-be advisor. He has to say that. It’s in our genetic make up. Just like we have a gene to determine height; we all have a gene that makes us say, “Try it, it tastes just like chicken.”

3) However, the chicken in Chicken Orzo does taste like chicken. Indeed all chicken tastes like chicken. The reverse is also true.

4) One wonders why humanity evolved this gene millions of years ago. You’d think learning to walk upright, to cook with fire, to build huts, or to harvest wheat would have been much more useful to Early Man than saying, “Try it, it taste just like chicken.” Particularly, when chickens weren’t around. And what of the woman hearing this advice? She couldn’t understand all those words nor respond intelligently, particularly when the vocabulary of the time limited itself to “ugh” and “ugh!”

 

– Paul De Lancey, 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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Tarte Flambee

Posted on November 5, 2021 by pauldelancey

French Entree

TARTE FLAMBEE

INGREDIENTS – DOUGH

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2 cups flour (3 more tablespoons later)
½ tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon sugar
½ tablespoon olive oil
½ cup warm water
3 tablespoons flour

INGREDIENTS – TOPPINGS

½ pound bacon
¼ pound Gruyère cheese
1 medium onion
¼ cup crême fraiche
¾ pound fromage blanc or cream cheese
⅛ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt

SPECIAL UTENSILS

pizza stone or baking sheet
parchment paper
mandoline (optional)
sonic obliterator (Go get one)

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.

PREPARATION – DOUGH

Add pizza stone to center rack in oven. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Add 2 cups flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add oil and water. Knead by hand until well blended and dough forms.

Dust large flat surface with 3 tablespoons flour. Divide dough in half. Roll out dough half until you get a round pizza crust 10″ across. Put parchment paper on baking sheet. Put pizza crust on parchment paper. Repeat for the 2nd dough half.

PREPARATION – TOPPINGS

Dice bacon. Grate Gruyère cheese. Cut onion into slices ⅛” thick. Add crême fraiche, fromage blanc, nutmeg, pepper, and salt to 2nd mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Spread crême fraiche/fromage blanc mix evenly over pizza crusts. Leave a ½” border around the edges. Sprinkle bacon evenly over cheese mix. Sprinkle onion over bacon and crême fraiche. Sprinkle Gruyère cheese over everything.

Carefully, carefully (use oven mitts) slide pizza crusts and the parchment paper underneath them onto preheated pizza stone or baking sheets. Bake at 500 degrees until puffed, golden brown, and crispy. Serve immediately.

Zap unappreciative guests with sonic obliterator. You don’t need negativity in your kitchen.

TIDBITS

1) This recipe uses a pizza stone.

2) The earliest human, Lucy of Olduvai Gorge, did not have a pizza stone. So, she did not make this recipe. If only she had had even a baking sheet. But she did not. No Tarte Flambee for Lucy.

3) Her friend Charlie Olduvai had a football his mom had made from the pelts of little animals. Lucy always promised to hold the pelt football while he ran up to kick it. But Lucy always pulled the pelt ball away at the last moment and Charlie would fall onto his back.

4) Charlie Olduvai grew tired of his mistreatment. So did his parents who never liked Lucy’s parents anyway. “They’ve ruined football for us until the twentieth century. Bah, the slackers will never make anything out of themselves.”

5) So the disgruntled Olduvais left. Many gorge dwellers followed the well-liked family. These first humans thought they’d only walk for a day or so before settling down beside a new stream near a nice plain filled with lots of juicy animals to eat.

6) Then George Gorge piped up and said he wanted a pizza. Now, the little group did carry all the ingredients for pizza for humanity has always hungered for pizza. So they looked for holes in cliffs that would double as a pizza oven. They found dozens of such ovens.

7) But no pizza stones or baking sheets So they marched on. The little walk turned into months, years, and even millennia. Thus, began humanity’s great migration out of Africa.

8) Then the early humans invented the wheel. Brilliant minds soon–thousands of years–made pizza stones. People could finally make pizza! Eat pizza! Huzzah!

9) The Stone Wheel clans appointed wisdom keepers to tell succeeding generations the way to make pizza stones. So for century upon century peoples could feast on mastodon pizza.

10) Then humans, too hungry for mastodon pizza toppings, killed off all the mastodons No other pizza toppings would do. Pizza fell out of favor. There was no long a need for pizza stones, no need to pass on the knowledge to make them. Humanity’s ascent stagnated for millennia.

11) Don’t let this happen again. Buy a baking sheet! Buy a pizza stone! Do it now!

 

– 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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Gado Gado

Posted on September 10, 2021 by pauldelancey

Indonesian Appetizer

GADO GADO
(Vegetable Salad)

INGREDIENTS

¾ pound Yukon gold or new potato
3 eggs
½ head Chinese cabbage or Napa cabbage
1¼ cups spinach
1¼ cups bean sprouts (aka mung beans)
½ pound tofu
2 tablespoons peanut oil or sesame oil
½ cucumber
8 prawn crackers*
1 cup peanut sauce or satay sauce

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour.

* = Some prawn crackers can be served as is. Others need to be deep fried. If so, please follow instructions on package.

PREPARATION

Add enough water to pot to cover potatoes. Bring to boil. Add potatoes. Boil potatoes for 20 minutes using medium-high heat. Remove potatoes and set aside. While potatoes boil, add enough water to 2nd pot to cover eggs. Bring water to boil using high heat. Carefully add eggs. Boil eggs for 6 minutes if soft-boiled eggs are desired or for 12 minutes if you want hard-boiled eggs. Remove eggs from heat and seat aside.

Add enough water to 3rd pot to cover cabbage, spinach, and bean sprouts. Bring to boil. While water comes to boil, dice or shred cabbage and spinach. Add spinach and bean sprouts to pot. Let boil for 30 seconds. Remove spinach and beansprouts with slotted spoon and transfer to large mixing bowl. Add cabbage to pot. Let boil for 2 minutes. Remove cabbage with slotted spoon and transfer to mixing bowl with spinach and bean sprouts. Add ice cubes and cold water. Let sit for 2 minutes. Remove veggies with slotted spoon and pat dry with paper towel.

Cut tofu into 1″ cubes. Add tofu and oil to pan. Sauté on medium-high heat for 15 minutes or until all sides turn golden brown. Stir frequently to ensure even browning. Remove from heat. Cut cucumber into slices ½” thick. Cut potatoes into ½” cubes. Peel eggs and cut each one into 4 slices.

Add cabbage, spinach, and bean sprouts to large serving bowl. Toss veggies with forks. Arrange potato cubes evenly over veggies. Do the same, one ingredient at a time, for the tofu cubes, cucumber slices, egg slices, and prawn crackers. Divide the peanut sauce into 4 small bowls, 1 for each guest. Guests then add peanut sauce as desired to the top of their salad.

TIDBITS

1) Gado Gado is Indonesian.

2) Gado Gado is anagram for A dog, a dog. It’s also an anagram for A god, a god. And even one for O dga, o dga.

3) Dga is, of course, the plural form for dgum.

4) Only the Latin language changes um to a to make a noun plural. The Ancient Romans spoke Latin. These way-back Romans worshiped gods.

5) They only worshiped gods that looked like people. But they were aware of the gods worshiped in other lands. Such as the dga, the dog gods of what is now Olduvai Gorge.

6) This is a long train of thought, so feel free to have coffee and doughnuts.

7) Anyway, Lucy of Olduvai Gorge is the first known human. Dr. Mary Leakey discovered Lucy’s skull on July 17, 1959. Lucy had a pet dog. She called it Dgma. It’s skeleton was discovered 42 years later under a rusty lunch box left behind by the site’s original excavators.

8) Okay, we now have enough information to trace humanity’s history from then to now.

9) Lucy’s tribe, possessing a limited vocabulary, took to calling all dogs Dgma.

10) Over the millennia, Lucy’s and Dgum’s descendants traveled ever northward. Along the way, because there really nothing else to do but walk, these hardy trekkers decided to worship dogs. Prehistoric shrines to Dgma trace the great northward walk.

11) By 1786 BC, the dgma worshipers reached Egypt. Little Osibis, daughter of Ramses II, saw one of the dogs. “Father, would you buy me that dog?” asked Osibis, “I shall call it Annubis.”
“Well okay,” said the ruler of all Egypt, “ but don’t go asking me to make it a god.”
“Ooh, that’s a good idea.” Osibis clapped her hands. “Make it a god or I shall cry.”
And so softy Ramses added Annubis to Egypt’s horde of gods.

12) In 48 BC, Julius Caesar arrived in Egypt, fought a bit, and took the Queen Cleopatra back with him to Rome. Cleo wanted to take all her dogs with her. Caesar said just one.
“Very well,” said Cleopatra, “I shall bring this dgma.”
“No, said Julius, “The singular form of dgma is dgum. The Romans will kill me if I left you butcher their language.”

13) But Cleo never did change the dog’s name to Dgum. This incensed Brutus, an ardent grammarian, so much that he assassinated Caesar. Rome would become an empire and go on to conquer the world.

14) Dog worship did make it to long-ago Indonesia. Those ancient people, all hardy anagramists, changed the chant “O god, o god” to “Gado, gado.” Gado Gado became the name of the food eaten after morning devotions. Then other stuff happened over the centuries and here we are.

 

– 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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Afghan Burgers

Posted on April 9, 2018 by pauldelancey

Afghan Entree

AFGHAN BURGERS

INGREDIENTS

3 cups crinkle-cut fries or enough to cover cookie sheet
4 eggs
1 cup fresh cilantro
3 garlic cloves
1 red onion
3 sausages, beef or chicken
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
⅓ cup water
2 Roma tomatoes
½ cup vinegar
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
5 lavash or roti loaves

SPECIAL UTENSILS

11″ x 17″ cookie sheet
newspaper or paper*
tin foil*

* = This really is a street food. It is meant to be held. If you don’t have paper, and perhaps, foil on the bottom, your hands will get greasy and food will go all over everything.

Serves 5. Takes 55 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cook French fries according to instruction on package. While fries cook, boil eggs, for 6 minutes for soft boiled to 12 minutes for hard boiled. While eggs boil, dice cilantro, garlic cloves and red onion. Slice each sausage into 8 round pieces. Add sausage pieces and vegetable oil to pan. Sauté sausage pieces at medium-high for 5 minutes or until they are brown on all sides. Turn sausages enough to prevent burning. Add water. Reduce heat to medium. Cook at medium heat for 3 minutes or until pieces are no longer pink inside.

Cut each egg into 6 slices. Cut tomatoes into ½” slices. Add vinegar, pepper, and salt to onion. Stir with fork until well blended. Cut lavash loaves into 4″-wide strips. Evenly add ingredients to the lavash strips in the following order: egg, tomato, red onion/vinegar/pepper/salt, fries, sausage, cilantro, and garlic. Roll up food-laden lavash strips. Wrap the lavash roll-ups with paper, being careful to fold paper under the bottom of the roll-ups. Then do the same with the tin foil.

TIDBITS

1) As noted above in the recipe, the Afghan burger is a street food.

2) It is less well known, however, is that it is the world’s first street food. And even less known than that is that the Afghan burger was invented in Poway, California, two million years ago*, 100,000 years before Lucy, homo habilis, the supposed first human roamed the Earth.

* = Also written as 2.0 mya. These tidbits are nothing, if not scientific.

3) Patty, homo streetfoodus and chef extra ordinaire, invented the Afghan burger, while pondering the infinite* and keeping an eye out for vicious mountain lions.

* = Homo streetfoodus’ counting system was one, two, infinite. So, her dreaming of infinity was not as grandiose as it might have seemed. But then she had a smaller brain than we do, so it all worked out.

4) Anyway, while Patty contemplated a herd of infinitely-legged gazelles, the sky began to thunder. Zap! Zap! a lightning bolt struck one of the gazelles. The force and heat of the bolt was so intense that the gazelle exploded into dozens of fully cooked sausages. It is by fortuitous events that humanity advances.

5) Pow! Zap! The storm raged. A lightning bolt hit an elm tree turning into paper. Then the storm stopped, enabling tin traders from Cornwall, homo satnavus, to arrive.

6) Then food traders from Boston*, homo marathonus, showed up at Poway; even then Poway was the place to be. They gave Patty fresh cilantro, garlic, red onions, potatoes, vegetable oil, pepper, salt, and vinegar.

* = The Boston of two million years ago was much smaller than the current city. You wouldn’t have recognized it.

7) “All we need is some eggs.” said Patty. Fortunately, and this was one of those rare days when things really came together for humanity*, a herd of chickens migrated by, leaving an infinite number of eggs.

* = Indeed, Patty won a million dollars in the lottery that very day. However, as she and the others had no notion of money, the winning ticket went uncashed.

8) And so, Patty made Afghan burgers for the happy band of traders. And the burgers said that they were good. And Patty was well pleased. But they were quite hot. Truly and forsooth, through the millennia. as people lost the enormous finger calluses they had 2.0 mya, this version of the hot, juicy Afghan burgers caused more and more pain. Eventually, the Afghan burger disappeared into the sands of time. Fortunately, an unknown chef hero resurrected the entree, this time using flatbread to soak up the hot juices. Afghan burgers are now taking the culinary world by storm.

9) Culinary paleoanthropologists, however, don’t know why this dish is called the Afghan burger when there is no patty in it but created was by Patty, and was first made in Poway, California, not Afghanistan. We may never know. Further research is indicated.

Leave a message. I’d like to hear from you.

Chef Paul

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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Shawarma

Posted on August 13, 2015 by pauldelancey

Emirati Entree

SHAWARMA

INGREDIENTS – CHICKEN AND MARINADEShawarma-

2 pounds chicken breasts
½ teaspoon ginger
3 garlic cloves
¼ teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon cardamom
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon garam masala
1 teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon red chili flakes
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup plain yogurt
4 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil
1 egg
3½ tablespoons lemon juice
no-stick spray

INGREDIENTS – SALAD

1 cucumber
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro
1 tomato
1 cup lettuce, shredded
2 tablespoons pomegranate seeds (It’s cheaper to buy a pomegranate and scoop out the seeds.)

INGREDIENTS – DRESSING

1½ tablespoons fresh cilantro
1½ tablespoons fresh mint
3 tablespoons lemon juice
⅓ cup tahini sauce
1 cup plain yogurt

INGREDIENTS – ASSEMBLY

6 pita loves

Makes 6 pita sandwiches. Takes 40 minutes for preparation and 2-to-3 hours to marinate.

PREPARATION – CHICKEN AND MARINADE

Cut chicken into strips ¼” thick. Mince garlic. Add all chicken-and-marinade ingredients to large mixing bowl. Mix by hand until ingredients are well blended and chicken strips are thoroughly coated. Marinate in refrigerator for 2-to-3 hours.

Add marinated chicken to skillet. Cook at medium-high heat for 10 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink inside and marinade is nearly dried out. Stir occasionally.

PREPARATION – SALAD

Peel and dice cucumber. Dice cilantro and tomato. Shred lettuce. Use fork to combine all salad ingredients in mixing bowl.

PREPARATION – DRESSING

Mince cilantro and mint. Add all dressing ingredients to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended.

PREPARATION – ASSEMBLY

Add pita loves to second skillet. Use medium heat for 1 minute or until pita loaves are warm. Turn over at least once. Divide salad equally among pita loaves. Top loaves amount of chicken and marinade. Ladle dressing over chicken and marinade. Shoot anyone who says you left out an ingredient. Be sure to revert to your role as a gracious host before serving. Manners matter.

TIDBITS

1) Shawarma is in an anagram for “Has a warm.”

2) Has a warm what?

3) This is the poser that has bedeviled humanity ever since it started painting millennia ago. This might be our ultimate question, followed only by, “What happens to all those socks that disappear while in my clothes dryer?”

4) Lest you doubt, the phrase, “Has a warm” can clearly be seen in the prehistoric paintings in the famous Lascaux Caves of France.

5) However, a few decades ago, archeologists–whoa, I spelled that correctly on the first try–gave up trying to figure out what word or words would complete the sentence started by “Has a warm.”

6) The French government closed those caves to all but a few people so as to spare their archeologists further embarrassment.

7) If you take out the “r” in “archeologist” you get “acheologist.” An acheologist studies pains. Similarly, a painologist studies pains. What is the difference between an acheologist and a painologist? Two years of graduate stiudy? Kinda like the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist.

8) An ologist studies olos.

– 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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Root Beer Pulled Pork Sandwiches

Posted on June 24, 2014 by pauldelancey

American Entree

ROOT BEER PULLED PORK SANDWICHES

INGREDIENTSRootBeerPulledPork-

2 garlic cloves
1 onion
2 pounds pork sirloin or tenderloin
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 ounces liquid smoke
1 can or 12 ounces root beer (1 more can later)
1 1/2 cups barbecue sauce
1 can root beer
8 hamburger buns or kaiser rolls

SPECIAL UTENSIL

crock pot

PREPARATION

Dice garlic cloves and onion. Rub chili powder, pepper, and salt onto pork. Add garlic, onion, pork, liquid smoke, and 1 can root beer in a crock pot. Cover and cook on low for 6-to-8 hours or until pork shreds easily. (If after 6 hours the pork is not close to being tender or able to be shredded, turn up the heat one notch.)

Remove the pork. (Save the liquid, garlic, and onion for later. It makes a good soup.) Let pork cool. Shred pork with fork. Add shredded pork, barbecue sauce and one car root beer to crock pot Cover and cook on low for 1 hour. Serve on hamburger buns.

TIDBITS

1) August 6 is the anniversary of the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan. However, this date is also National Root Beer Float Day! Atomic warfare is surely a downer,  but nothing’s better than a root beer float. Indeed the life-giving, life-soothing properties of root-beer floats have helped us all deal with the legacy of the atomic bomb, have prevented future atomic warfare forever

2. In August, 1893, Frank J. Wisner, was drinking root beer during a full-moon night. The full moon inspired Mr. Wisner to add a scoop of vanilla ice cream to root beer. The ice cream floated! He had invented the root beer float. We have been living in The Golden Age of Humanity ever since.

3) Root beer originally contained sassafras and was considered by some to be a medicinal drink. It also contained alcohol and was deemed by even more folks to be a medicinal drink. Is there anything root beer can’t make better?

– 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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“The Darwin Murders” ebook Anthology is Available

Posted on August 20, 2013 by pauldelancey
Come read stories of happy murdering from 42 amazing authors. Free days are the next five Sundays.DarwinCover

The Darwin Murders

The dark humor of The Darwin Awards inspired this anthology. The authors here achieved the same mood with murder, feeling humanity should be better off without their victims. Happy murdering for goodness sake. You can make people happy by giving them a cookie as well, but that’s another anthology.

The Darwin Murders ebook is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Darwin-Murders-ebook/dp/B00ENQBI7Q/

 

– Paul De Lancey, co-editor

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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