I have now blogged 500 days in a row.
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 – 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.
INGREDIENTS
1 15-ounce can guava shells in syrup*
8 ounces cream cheese
* = Found in Hispanic supermarkets or online.
Serves 4. Takes 15 minutes.
PREPARATION
Remove guava shells from syrup. Keep syrup. Add ½ tablespoon to 2 tablespoons cream cheese to guava shell. (Amount depends on size of guava shell.). Drizzle 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon syrup over each guava shell with cream cheese, again depending on the size of the shell. Repeat for each guava shell. Goes well with saltine crackers.
TIDBITS
1) I had to go online to order guava shells in syrup.
2) They traveled the entire country by truck. They arrived by truck. The whole process took days. Fortunately, I planned to prepare this dessert for family. They were willing to wait days.
3) But if instead, I am regaling my business associates about Cascos De Guayaba. I’m really selling how great it tastes when I made it. I can see them starting to drool.
4) Finally, my boss snaps. “Dang, that sounds great,” he says, “I sure could go for some good Cascos de Guayaba. Whip me up a batch right now and I’ll make you vice president. And if you can’t, well . . .” He draws a finger across his throat. I’ll be clearing out my desk tomorrow.
5) But it doesn’t have to end this way. What if I could launch millions of bags of Cascos de Guayaba into the outer atmosphere? Higher than where planes fly, of course. I am nothing, if not careful.
6) Anyway, I’ll have billions of freezer bags full of this delicious dessert orbiting the Earth. All you have to do is order. With seconds a package of Cascos of Guyaba will be directly over your house. A little parachute will deploy. Your dessert will drift precisely to your doorstep. You will be able to make this dessert for your boss. You will become vice president. Your life will be good, very good.
7) But won’t billions of bags of Cascos de Guayaba in the atmosphere block out the Sun, at least to an extent? Won’t that temperatures to fall? Yes. But that what’s needed to stop global warning. I see a Nobel prize in my future.
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.
Dear Reader,
Quite a few! Uranus is incredibly huge. So we’ll need to use a lot of large numbers to find the answer. Fortunately NASA, took a lot of accurate photos of Uranus. Hey, did you know that Uranus was originally called George? It’s true! Anyway, . . .
1 cup = 8 medium strawberries
1 cup = 14.4375 cubic inches
1 cubic mile = 254,358,061,056,000 or 2.544 * 10^14 cubic inches
1 cubic mile = 17,617,874,358,857 or 1.762 * 10^13 cups
1 cubic mile = 140,942,994,870.857 or 1.409 * 10 ^10^14 strawberries
Uranus = 68,300,000.000.000 or 6.83 * 10^13 cubic miles
So, ta da!
Uranus = 9,626,406,549,679,540,000,000,000,000 or 9.626 * 10^27 strawberries
There! That’s how many strawberries would fit in Uranus.
Now, you don’t have buy oodles of strawberries for a hands-on experiment. Besides Uranus is a cold and gaseous place.
Strawberry…………………………………… Uranus
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.
Archer Woman doesn’t want want you to harass the servers.
Archer Woman #3
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.
An amazing amount of food is round. Are there other shapes allowed in cooking?
Yes, I’m glad you asked. Just in time for early, early Christmans shopping is the cookbook:
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.
Men, you’d better listen to Lucy.
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 cups fresh, crushed strawberries (about 1 pound whole)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
4¼ cups sugar
¾ cup water
6 tablespoons (1 1.75 oz box) fruit pectin powder
SPECIAL UTENSILS
potato masher or food processor
6 * 1-cup hot, sterilized* Mason jars (They really must be hot and newly sterilized.)
Makes 5-to-6 cups. Takes 1 hour plus maybe 3 hours to set.
PREPARATION
Remove green stems from strawberries. Cut each strawberry into 8 bits. Smash strawberry bits with potato masher until thoroughly crushed. (Or bits add to food processor. Pulse processor until thoroughly crushed, but not yet pureed.) Some strawberry bits should remain.
Add strawberries and lemon juice to large mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended. Add sugar. Mix with fork or whisk until sugar dissolves completely. (Sugar that doesn’t dissolve make the jam grainy.)
Add water and pectin to pan. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir constantly. Boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Pour boiling water over strawberry/sugar mix. Stir constantly for 3 minutes. The mixture should start to jell and thicken.
Pour strawberry mixture into Mason jars. Leave ½” gap at the top. Stir until strawberry bits, gel, and juice blend. Cover and let stand until set, but not longer than 24 hours. If desired, serve some immediately. Store the rest in the refrigerator for 3 weeks or in the freezer for up to 1 year.
TIDBITS
1) Mason jars are round.
2) Not everything is round. Sometimes pizzas are rectangular. Flower pots can be square. Refrigerators are never round. No, not ever.
3) However, Mason jars must be round. It would be impossible to screw on or off a square lid.
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.
Some people forgo common courtesy. Archer Woman knows how to teach them.
Archer Woman #2
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.
People who do rude things often say, “Well, what are you going to do about it?” Archer Woman knows what she’ll do,
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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