Posts Tagged With: Irish

Mulligatawny Soup

Posted on May 15, 2021 by pauldelancey

Irish Soup

MULLIGATAWNY SOUP

 

INGREDIENTS

2 carrots
2 stalks celery
1 pound chicken breasts
2 garlic cloves
1 medium onion
3 tablespoons olive oil
2½ tablespoons curry powder
2½ tablespoons flour
4½ cups chicken broth
1 green apple
⅓ cup rice
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
⅔ cup cream

SPECIAL UTENSIL

Dutch oven

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour minutes.

PREPARATION

Dice carrots and celery stalks. Cut chicken into ½” cubes. Mince garlic cloves and onion. Add carrot, celery, garlic, onion, and olive oil to Dutch oven. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently.

Add chicken cubes, curry powder and flour. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 3 minutes. Stir frequently. While chicken and veggies simmer, peel and core apple. Chop apple into ½” cubes.

Add chicken broth, apple cubes, rice, pepper, and salt. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir occasionally. Cover and reduce heat to low for 20 minutes or until rice is tender. Stir enough to prevent burning. Add cream. Simmer for 1 minute, stirring occasionally.

TIDBITS

1) When Ireland’s bunny population exploded in 1903, they ate up all the land’s carrots, celery, and apples. It became impossible to make delicious mulligatawny soup. This culinary disaster enraged the Irish. They turned concentrated this simmering anger on their foreign, British rulers. “When Ireland was Irish,” they said, “we always had all the ingredients to make mulligatawny soup.” Other resentments were brought up and from that year on, the Irish actively planned for independence.

 

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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Gibanica (Serbian Cheese Pie)

Posted on March 3, 2021 by pauldelancey

Serbian Dessert

GIBANICA
(Cheese Pie)

INGREDIENTS

6 eggs
2 cups cottage cheese
1 cup crumbled feta cheese
1 cup sour cream
¾ cup (1½ sticks) butter
1 pound filo (phyllo) dough

SPECIAL UTENSILS

9″-x-13″ baking pan or casserole dish

Serves 8. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Separate eggs. Beat egg whites until fluffy. Add egg yolks, cottage cheese, feta cheese, and sour cream to mixing bowl. Blend thoroughly with whisk or fork. Fold in egg whites. Preheat oven to 360 degrees. Melt butter using low heat. Brush baking pan with 2 tablespoons melted butter.

Place 2 sheets filo dough in baking pan. Drizzle 2 tablespoons melted butter over filo. Spread ¼ cup egg/cheese mix on top. Gently crinkle 2 filo sheets into accordion-like balls. Dip accordion balls into cheese/egg mix from bowl until lightly coated. Place coated accordion-like filo balls over flat filo sheets in pan. Repeat until you have 2 filo sheets remaining.

Top with remaining 2 filo sheets. Brush top filo sheets with remaining butter and cheese/egg mix. Bake in over at 360 degrees for 50 minutes or until top is reddish, golden brown. Serve warm or let cool.

TIDBITS

1) Many different groups of people settled America’s Old West. The most obvious types were men and women. It’s obvious now, but no historian before me had ever mentioned it.

2) Chinese settled Western America, but Irish, Swedes, and Germans left Europe to come to the New World’s eastern shores and kept going until they hit the Great American Plains. For a body in motion tends to stay in motion. Long-ago settled Americans from the east pulled up stakes and joined those traveling west. For such a drastic measure as the only way to avoid house calls from salesmen offering to extended their wagon’s extended warranty.

3) However, Serbian cheese pie makers did not participate in the Great Western Movement as their eggs, cottage cheese, feta cheese, and sour cream never survived the months-long journey.

– 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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Pumpkin Pie

Posted on November 28, 2013 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

PUMPKIN PIE

INGREDIENTSPumpkinPie-

2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon cardamom, ground
1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves, ground
3/4 teaspoon ginger, ground
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
1 15 ounce can pumpkin mashed or puree
1 12 ounce can evaporated milk
2 8″-to-9″graham-cracker pie shell or 1 9″ deep dish graham-cracker pie shell
whipped cream for topping

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Add eggs, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, salt, and sugar to large bowl. Beat eggs with whisk. Add pumpkin. Mix with whisk. Add evaporated milk. Mix again with whisk. Pour mixture into pie shell. Put filled pie shell in oven and bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees. Bake an additional 40-to-50 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the pie’s center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 2 hours. Serve with whipped cream. Yum.

TIDBITS

1) Pumpkins are grown on every continent except Antarctica.

2) Morton, Illinois is the Pumpkin Capital. Go visit its Pumpkin Festival in mid September.

3) Pumpkin seeds have been used to remove freckles.

4) Linus from the comic strip Peanuts believed in the Great Pumpkin. See the lyrics for “I’m dreaming of the Great Pumpkin” and other pumpkin songs.

6) In 2009, motorcyclists in Nigeria wore dried pumpkin shells on their heads to circumvent laws making them wear helmets.

7) Irish lore says Stingy Jack was too miserly to get into Heaven. But Jack had tricked the devil so he wasn’t welcome there either. Jack roamed the darkness between Heaven and Hell with a lit, carved pumpkin. This is probably the basis for pumpkin carving on Halloween. That and freckle fear.

– 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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One World, One Movie Proudly Presents “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”

Posted on July 12, 2013 by pauldelancey

Today’s the day the entire world watches a single movie, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. May we all enjoy it. May the mere act of watching it and perhaps talking about it bringSalmonFish2 about world peace and a shared Nobel Peace Prize for all of us. Or maybe we’ll just enjoy the movie, but that’s not bad either. In honor of this great event I’ll be making salmon with dill. It’ll be my contribution to Yemeni, or Yemenite, cuisine.

And now a few quotes to inspire you to greatness:

“A trout in the pot is better than a salmon in the sea.”salmonFish5
– Irish saying.

“You piss me off, Salmon… You’re too expensive in restaurants.”
– Eddie Izzard

Now enjoy the movie.

– 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

Posted on March 1, 2013 by pauldelancey

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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Simple Corned Beef Recipe

Posted on February 22, 2013 by pauldelancey

Irish Entree

SIMPLE CORNED BEEF

INGREDIENTSCornBee-

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

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. Serve to adoring guests.

This is an astoundingly versatile dish. See the following two recipes for delightful meals made out of this recipe’s leftovers.

Tell your spellbound guests corned-beef takes 10 days to prepare. This, of course, is the do-it-yourself corned-beef version. You used ready-to-eat corned beef brisket. But you needn’t tell them that.

TIDBITS

1) Potatoes make great French fries.

2) They’re nutritious and a great source of calories too.

3) They grow in the ground where they can’t be seen by hungry, foraging armies marching back and forth across peasants’ fields.

4) On July 14, 1689 Madame Farine du Blé of Poulet sur Marne noticed invading Bavarians ransacking the granary of her neighbors, the Herbes, while leaving her own field of potatoes completely untouched.

5) This fact kinda excited the peasantry of France who relied almost exclusively on food for eating.

6) Frederick the Great of Prussia noticed this fact as well. He insisted that all the Prussian peasants plant potatoes.

7) And boy, those peasants were glad they did. Massive French, Austrian, and Russian armies crisscrossed the Prussian kingdom from 1756 to 1763 carting off all the wheat they could find. But the Prussian peasants didn’t starve.

8) Why? These farmers simply waited for the invading soldiers to leave, dug up their potatoes, and cooked them. And if the peasants also had the proper spices and deep fryers, they dined on papas rellena, Peruvian stuffed potatoes.

9) When individual peasants don’t starve, the country as a whole doesn’t starve. A well-fed nation can afford to feed it armies in the field. And those Prussian armies did really well earning both victory and survival at the end of the Seven Years War.

10) Prussia united Germany in 1871. A united Germany caused World War I. A united Germany caused World War II. Both wars were unarguably unpleasant.

11) So think about that when you are asked, “Do you want fries with that?”

– 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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Potato-Leek Soup

Posted on July 17, 2012 by pauldelancey

American Soup

POTATO-LEEK SOUP

INGREDIENTS

1 pound leeks
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 cups celery stalks
4 medium potatoes
3 cups water
3 cups milk
3/4 teaspoon Vegetable MagicTM spice
1/4 teaspoon celery salt
1/4 teaspoon parsley
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
up to 1 cup grated cheese, optional

PREPARATION OF THE LEEKS

Cut off and remove the tough dark, green parts. Remove the bottom part with the little roots. Cut the leeks into pieces and swirl them in water to remove bits of dirt. Pat down the pieces with a towel to dry them. Put leeks into a food-processor and mince them.

PREPARATION OF THE SOUP.

Melt butter in pan. (Note it is much easier to measure 3 tablespoons from a stick of butter than from a tub.) Mince the celery. Add leeks and celery to melted butter.

Saute on low heat and stir frequently for about 6 minutes or until onions are soft. (Reading War and Peace is not advised at this point.)

Chop up potatoes until they are small enough to put into a blender. Blend the heck out of them. Put 3 cups water into pot. Heat water to boiling. Cook for about 15 minutes this way or until potato bits are tender. (Note you should gradually turn down the heat. The soup will still boil and you will avoid painful geysers of hot potato water. (A great reason not to cook in the nude.)

Dice cilantro until you have 1/2 cup. Add sauteed leeks, celery, milk, cilantro, vegetable spice, celery salt, parsley, and salt. Cover and cook at low heat for 20 minutes. Taste soup. Sprinkle in other spices if you wish. Some people love onion salt, garlic salt, or Tabasco sauce in everything. If you are that kind of cook, go for it!

Add grated cheese to taste.

EATING OF THE SOUP

Nom, nom, nom.

TIDBITS

1) The potato was cultivated by the Incas. The Spanish took it back to Europe and gave little in return.

2) The potato revolutionized warfare. Previous to widespread cultivation of this amazing tuber, armies on the move stripped the conquered territories of any food growing above ground. Farmers could now wait until the invading hordes left and dig up enough potatoes to survive. Armies could also feed themselves on the potatoes they brought along. There is a sketch of the great French general Napoleon asking a foot soldier for a potato.

3) The Irish depended quite heavily on the potato for their nutritional needs. When the potato crop failed in 1848, many Irish starved and large numbers of them migrated to America.

4) Indeed, loud guffaws never swirled around the humble potato.

5) Until HasbroTM created Mr. Potato HeadTM in 1962. Now we can all eat the potato or play with it.

6) Mr. Potato HeadTM seems so obvious now. That’s why genius is genius.

– 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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