Posts Tagged With: International Space Station

Fettuccine Alla Papalina

Posted on August 7, 2018 by pauldelancey

Vatican Entree

FETTUCCINE ALLA PAPALINA

INGREDIENTS

1 pound fettuccine
3 eggs
3 tablespoons cream
1¼ cups freshly grated Parmesan cheese*
1 medium onion
¼ cup butter
5 ounces diced or cubed pancetta, or cubed, uncooked ham
1 teaspoon pepper**
1 teaspoon salt

* = This dish was originally created for Pope Pius XII. His chef used the best ingredients. So, if you are having the pope over for dinner, you really should try to use Parmesan-Reggiano. And even if you aren’t having His Holiness over to dine, your guests will appreciate being placed at his level of importance. However, your grocery store might not stock Parmesan-Reggiano. In this case, use regular Parmesan. The pope will understand. He is a kind and humble man.

** = This dish is supposed to be peppery. The amount of pepper used should be near the upper range for your taste.

Serves 6. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cook fettuccine according to instructions on package. Set aside in a large serving bowl when done. Add eggs, cream, and Parmesan cheese to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended. Mince onion. Add onion and butter to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes. Stir frequently. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes or until onion is quite soft. Stir occasionally. Add pancetta to pan. Simmer on low-medium heat for 4 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Pour egg/cream/Parmesan mixture to noodles in serving bowl. Add pepper and salt. Toss noodles until thoroughly coated and the cheese has completely melted. Add onion/pancetta mix to noodles. Mix with fork until well blended.

TIDBITS

1) This dish is difficult to cook in zero gravity. So, no astronaut has ever made this pasta. The moon, however, possesses a weak gravitational field. So, any pasta, and pancetta would, more or less, stay put. Unfortunately, water on the moon evaporates, so this dish can’t be made there either. However, the International Space Station is an enclosed environment and is designed to rotate just fast enough to trick the fettuccine alla papalina into believing gravity exists there.

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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Ginger Millet Porridge

Posted on April 29, 2017 by pauldelancey

Equatorial Guinean Breakfast

GINGER MILLET PORRIDGE

INGREDIENTS

1 cup millet flour
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon grated ginger (or ¼ teaspoon ginger powder)
1⅓ cups water
1⅓ cups milk
¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Makes 3 bowls. Takes 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add millet flour, sugar, and ginger to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended. Gradually add water. Stir with fork until well blended. Pour mixture into pot. Cook at medium heat. Gradually add in milk. Stir constantly to avoid lumps and to keep the porridge from sticking to sides of the pot. Cook for 10 minutes or until bubbles form and porridge thickens. Stir constantly with whisk.. Garnish with cinnamon.

TIDBITS

1) Ginger millet porridge is enormously popular wherever gravity exists, present-day Earth, for example.

2) Ginger millet porridge is not popular in space. Without gravity the porridge will simply not stay in the bowl. The authorities at the International Space Station fired their traditionally trained waters. They spent $1.3 billion dollars retraining waiters to carry bowls in weightless conditions without spilling porridge. There is, of course, gravity on Earth. So to simulate conditions of outer space, the waiters had to carry bowls of porridge while a transport plane nose dived. This was a frustrating experience for all involved. But after several thousand nose dives a staff of four waiters emerged who could serve porridge in weightless conditions.

3) Needless to say.

4) It was needless to say, so I didn’t say it.

5) Anyway, the waiters served porridge to the people on the space station. Without spilling! Hurrah!
But when the diners stirred their meal or raised their spoon to their mouth, ginger millet porridge went everywhere.

6) Some point to the $1.3 billion spent on the waiters as an example of government waste. Perhaps so, but that’s just water under the bridge or in this case, ginger millet in the ventilating system.

– 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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Rizogalo (Rice Pudding)

Posted on March 20, 2017 by pauldelancey

Greek Dessert

RIZOGALO
(Rice Pudding)

INGREDIENTS

¼ cup butter
4½ cups whole milk
½ cup short-grain white rice
½ cup sugar
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon corn flour
¼ teaspoon cinnamon.

Makes 4 cups. Takes 3 hours.

PREPARATION

Add butter, milk, rice, and sugar to large pot. Bring to boil, stirring frequently. Reduce heat to low. Simmer for 45 minutes or until rice is soft. Remove from heat. Whisk egg yolk in small bowl. Add egg yolk, vanilla extract. and corn flour. Mix with whisk until well blended. Ladle rice pudding into cups. Let cool at room temperature for 15 minutes, then in refrigerator for another 45 minutes. Sprinkle with cinnamon.

TIDBITS

1) There is quite a bit of stirring in this recipe. Doesn’t that all that stirring get tiring? Yes, it does. Which is why the Greek Aeronautics and Space Agency (GASA) has developed an autonomous robot designed for voyages to the asteroid belt.

2) Greek astronauts can’t afford to take their eyes off their rocket’s window for even one minute as asteroids and space rocks could crack their window. Whoosh! The astronauts would be sucked out by the vacuum of space. That would be horrible. So, you can see why GASA puts a rizogalo-making robot (RMR) on all missions.

3) RMRs are expensive. It needs enough artificial intelligence (AI) to make rizogalo without human aid. I also needs to cook in zero-gravity. Have you ever tried preparing rizogalo in outer space? It isn’t easy. The last time a human tried this the International Space Station was closed while Greek cleaning women were shuttled in. Getting all those globules with mops proved frustrating. The women had be trained for six months. The clean up took seven months. The Greek government ran up such a debt paying for this that it had enormous difficulties meeting its international obligations. Massive infusions of cash from Germany and other governments saved off default. Even so, the Euro almost collapsed. This would have destroyed the world economy. No one would have had money to buy clothes and most food. We would have been running around naked and eating lutefisk! So again, you can see why RMRs are essential on lengthy space flights.

– 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 Pulique

Posted on August 2, 2013 by pauldelancey

Guatemalan Entree

CHICKEN PULIQUE

INGREDIENTSChickenPuli-

3 chicken breasts
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic
2 brown potatoes
4 fresh tomatillos
2 dried guajillo peppers
1 medium onion
4 Roma tomatoes
2 cups chicken broth

2 cloves
3 peppercorns
2 teaspoons annatto seed
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cumin
3 tablespoons epazote

SPECIAL UTENSIL

spice grinder
Dutch oven

PREPARATION

Cut chicken into 1/2″ cubes. Coat chicken with olive oil. Add to Dutch oven and sauté on medium-high heat for 10 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink inside. Stir. occasionally.

While chicken sautés, cut potatoes into 1/2″ cubes. Add chicken stock and potato to soup pot. Cook on medium heat for 20 minutes or until potato is tender.

While chicken bakes and potato cooks, remove husks from tomatillos, and seed guajillo peppers. Mince tomatillo, garlic, guajillo peppers, onion, and tomatoes. Grind cloves and peppercorns. (Whew, work fast! Have a Roy Rogers drink to give you the necessary caffeine. ☺)

Pour potato/chicken broth over chicken cubes in Dutch oven. Add tomatillo, garlic, guajillo peppers, onion, tomatoes, cloves, peppercorn, annatto, cinnamon, cumin, and epazote to Dutch oven. Cook at medium-low heat for about 10 minutes. Stir occasionally.

TIDBITS

1) Oh crudness, my internet connection is out. I can’t look up fun facts about pulique. I’m jump starting my brain. Okay, here goes.

2) Pulique is quite popular in Guatemala.

3) It is not as popular where there is zero gravity such as the International Space Station.

4) Cooking involves much mincing of garlic. On Earth, garlic mincing means little garlic bits scatter millimeters into the air and fall all over the cutting board.

5) Only in zero gravity, those garlic bits keep rising in the air and fly all over the place until they hit the ceiling and the walls where they bounce and bounce up and down the corridors.

6) If the chef on the Space Station is mincing up a heap of garlic, pretty soon a cloud of garlic bits fills every corridor, floating and bouncing away for a long time.

7) Everything on the station soon reeks of garlic, even the billion-dollar experiments.

8) On the other hand, vampires hate garlic. The Space Station would be guaranteed to be vampire free.

9) Even if the vampires somehow built a rocket to propel them into outer space..

10) And as of going to press, vampires have shown no such technological skill.

11) Nor do they enough money to pursue such a monumental undertaking.

12) Nor do vampires have any real access to the global capital market.

13) Bankers everywhere no longer loan to vampires. Not for any project.

14) These financiers once lent to vampires, but the loans came back to bite them in the ass.

– 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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