Posts Tagged With: Italian

Recipe Pictures From Forthcoming Cookbook

Posted on November 28, 2012 by pauldelancey

From my cookbook.

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Picture Of Entrees, Desserts, And Appetizers From My Forthcoming Cookbook

Posted on November 26, 2012 by pauldelancey

Ice cream soda to lemongrass chicken to niter kibeh to pepper pot.

 

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Spinach Ravioli

Posted on November 3, 2012 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

SPINACH RAVIOLI

INGREDIENTS

PASTA

3 cups or more of flour (1/4 cup more later in FINAL STAGE)
2 eggs
3/4 cup water or more
1 tablespoon olive oil (1 tablespoon more used later)
1 teaspoon salt (Used 3 times for a total of 2 teaspoons)

FILLING

2 garlic cloves
1/2 pound fresh spinach
1 1/2 teaspoons parsley
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt (Used 3 times for a total of 2 teaspoons)

MARINARA SAUCE

6 Roma tomatoes
1/2 large white onion
2 garlic cloves
2 teaspoons basil
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt (Used 3 times for a total of 2 teaspoons)
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1 6 ounce can tomato sauce

UTENSILS

rolling pin
cutting board

FINAL STAGE

water
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil (1 tablespoon more used earlier)
1/4 cup flour (3 cups more earlier in PASTA)

Makes about 40 ravioli.

PREPARATION OF PASTA

Combine flour, eggs, and cup water. Mix with hands. Make a ball of the mixture. It should just be able to come off your hand. If some of the ball sticks to your hand, then add a bit more flour, mix again, and try the new flour. If the flour ball is powdery, it is too dry. Add a bit more water, mix again, until the consistency of the next ball is just right.

Sprinkle a generous amount of flour on your cutting board and rolling pin. Roll flour ball out until it is NO THICKER than 1/4-inch. Frequently sprinkle the rolling pin to keep the dough from sticking. Let rolled-out flour sit for AT LEAST 4 hours. It should be nearly dry.

PREPARATION OF FILLING

While rolled out flour dries, peel and mince 2 garlic cloves. Dice spinach. Put garlic, spinach, parsley, Parmesan cheese, and salt in frying pan. Cook on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. Put contents of frying pan into bowl. Mix and put spinach filling in fridge.

PREPARATION OF MARINARA SAUCE

Mince Roma tomatoes. Peel and mince 1/2 onion (Wouldn’t it be nice if you could buy a 1/2 onion at the store?) and 2 garlic cloves. Add tomato, onion, garlic, basil, marjoram, oregano, salt, thyme, and tomato sauce to sauce pot. Cook ingredients on medium-high heat until it boils, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 20 minutes with the lid on. Stir occasionally.

FINAL PREPARATION

Dust cutting board with flour. Use knife to make 1 1/2-inch wide strips in the flour. Cut these strips into rectangles every 3 inches. Dust strips with flour. Put a 1/2 teaspoon or so of the filling on the right side of the 1 1/2-inch by 3-inch flour rectangle. (Did you know there is cutting board that has all sorts of measurements and angles on it if you want to make an exact 1 1/2-inch square ravioli? You can order it on line.) Fold the left side over the filling. Push down on the open sides with the tines of the fork to seal the spinach ravioli.

Fill pot with enough water to cover ravioli. Add salt and olive oil. Boil water. Add ravioli and cook for 20 to 30 minutes. Ravioli should float to the top and the dough should be completely soft.

While your ravioli boils itself to perfection, cook pasta sauce in pot on medium heat until it is warm. Put ravioli in bowl and add pasta sauce.

TIDBITS

1) There are a lot of Italians in Italy.

2) There are a lot outside Italy as well. This is why Italian cuisine is so easy to find.

3) But Caesar’s salad isn’t Italian. This salad is often considered to be American though it was actually first made at Caesar’s Hotel in Tijuana, Mexico.

4) I recently went to a dentist in Tijuana for my teeth. Dentist’s in Mexico are much cheaper than in America. Caesar’s Hotel was only a block away.

5) The savings from seeing the Mexican dentist vastly outweighed the cost of the meal.

6) Indeed, there are “surgery” cruises and vacation packages to Mexico. People enjoy the cruise ship, the sights of the Mexican ports, and have a surgery for less than the cost of the same surgery in the United States.

7) There are a lot of ordinary American tourists in Mexico as well.

8) And there are certainly a lot of Mexicans in Mexico.

– 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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Beef Lasagna

Posted on October 26, 2012 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

BEEF LASAGNA

INGREDIENTS

water
1/4 teaspoon salt (1/2 teaspoon more later)
12 ounces lasagna noodles
3 garlic cloves
1 white onion
8 ounces mozzarella cheese
1 cup ricotta cheese
1/2 cup fresh Parmesan cheese (2 tablespoons more later)
4 peppercorns
1 pound ground beef
1/3 cup red wine
1 26 ounce jar spaghetti sauce
1 15 ounce can diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon basil
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon Meat MagicTM spice
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt (1/4 teaspoon more earlier)
1/2 teaspoon thyme
2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese (1/2 cup more earlier)

UTENSILS

9-inch x 13-inch baking dish
cooking scissors (If your baking dish is 8-inches x 8-inches, for example)
spice grinder
no-stick spray

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Boil water in large pot. Add salt and lasagna noodles. Cook noodles according to directions on package or for about 9 minutes on high heat. Remove noodles and set aside. Make sure the lasagna noodles are all separate after you do this. (If not, you’ll need to add another chunk of time separating the noodles that cling to each other with a tenacity rivaling a salesman pitching to a hot prospect.)

Peel and mince onion and garlic cloves. Grate, chop, fold, mutilate, and spindle mozzarella cheese and Parmesan cheese. Mix these cheeses together along with the ricotta cheese. Use spice grinder to well, grind peppercorns. (If you don’t have a spice grinder you can gnash your teeth in rage, use 1/4 teaspoon pepper, or shrug your shoulders in the belief that no one will notice.)

Add ground beef, onion, and garlic to frying pan. Cook at medium heat for about 5 minutes or until meat is no longer pink.
Add red wine, spaghetti sauce, diced tomatoes, basil, bay leaf, meat spice, oregano, salt, thyme, and peppercorns. Cook on medium heat for about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Use no-stick spray on baking dish. Put a layer of lasagna, most likely 3 side-by-side noodles on the dish. If the noodles are longer than your baking dish, snip off the excess length with your scissors.

In this recipe, 9 noodles will make one lasagna dish with 2 layers of meat sauce. Reserve about 1/2 cup meat sauce. Divide remaining meat sauce and cheese equally between layers.

Cover this first layer of noodles with a layer of meat sauce and a layer of cheese. Add a second layer of noodles, meat sauce, and cheese. Add a third layer of noodles. Spoon just a little meat sauce atop the top layer along with 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese. Put glass lid or aluminum foil on top of baking dish.

Cook lasagna in covered baking dish in oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. Cook uncovered for an additional 15 minutes or until bubbly. Remove and let sit for 5 minutes more.

Serve to adoring guests. Become lifelong friends with any who offer to clean up.

TIDBITS

1) Lasagna was first developed in England in the 14th century.

2) The English version had cinnamon and saffron instead of tomatoes.

3) Saffron is incredibly expensive. It runs about $170 an ounce today. Tomatoes cost $2 to $3 a pound.

4) This price differential put an incredible pressure on English cooks to substitute tomatoes for saffron.

5) Many more tomatoes are widely grown in France and Italy. English cooks turned there eyes to these regions.

6) Most historians believe England under Edward III invaded France  in 1347 for various dynastic reasons.

7) But there was pressure on King Edward by his kingdom’s cooks to secure a source of lasagna ingredients far cheaper than saffron.

8) The Hundred Years War lasted until 1453, which shows just how fiercely people will fight for their tomatoes.

9) I fear a war over saffron.

– 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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Italian Pork Chops

Posted on October 21, 2012 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

ITALIAN PORK CHOPS

INGREDIENTS

4 pork loin chops
1 red bell pepper
2 garlic cloves
1 onion
1 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons butter
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
1 14.5 can diced tomatoes, Italian style
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon rosemary
1/2 teaspoon sage
1/2 teaspoon thyme
8 ounces mozzarella cheese

PREPARATION

Remove bone from pork loins. (My wife doesn’t like bone in pork. Good enough for me.) Remove seeds and whitish stuff from inside of red bell pepper. Cut pepper into 8 rings. Mince garlic cloves and onion. Cover both sides of pork loins with pepper. Melt butter in frying pan. Saute pork in frying pan on medium heat until both sides are brown and inside is no longer pink.

(Unless you’re experienced, the best way to see if the inside of the pork is pink is to cut off a piece and see. If the piece has turned white inside then the best thing to do is eat it. If it tastes great, try tasting the other pork loins. You might want to sample the other side of the loins as well. And if your diligent sampling gets out of hand and the pork loins in the pan are shrinking visibly, that is why we chefs cover everything in sauce. No one need ever know how much you ate.)

Add tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, basil, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme, and onion to the pork loins. Bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer with lid on for about 8 minutes.

Put 2 red bell pepper rings on top of each pork loin. Put about 1 ounce of mozzarella inside each bell pepper ring. Put lid back on and cook at medium-high heat for about 4 minutes or until cheese starts to melt.

TIDBITS

1) This recipe has sage, rosemary, and thyme in it.

2) Dagnab it. No parsley! I was so close to making a dish with “parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.”

3) This line is from the famous Simon and Garfunkel song, which was also a medieval ballad.

4) Much thought has gone in the meaning of the four spices in this song.

5) Three schools of thought predominate.

6) First school believes mixing parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme together makes a love charm. Before you stampede the local supermarket, remember that we no longer believe this… Oh what the heck, go for it!

7) Second school notes that these ingredients were used in Four Thieves Vinegar to ward off the Plague.

8) The third school of thought says, “I dunno.”

– 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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Margherita Pizza

Posted on September 16, 2012 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

MARGHERITA PIZZA

INGREDIENTS

PIZZA CRUST (If you have a bread maker)

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup water
2 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3/4 teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
no-stick cooking spray

TOPPING

3 garlic cloves
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Roma tomatoes
2 ripe red tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
8 ounces mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon thyme

UTENSILS

1 16-inch pizza dish or 2 12-inch dishes
bread machine
no-stick spray

PREPARATION.

Measure out the flour and set aside. Pour the water into the bread maker. If you measure the water before the flour, the flour will stick to the sides of the measuring cup. Egads!

Add oil, sugar, salt, and yeast to the bread maker. Do not put the yeast directly on top of the salt. Salt is bad for yeast and yeast makes the dough rise. (I debated putting a comment here, but decided not to.)

Set the timer or the menu on the bread maker to “Dough.” Wait the required time, probably a bit more than an hour. In the meantime liberally spray the pizza pan with no-stick spray. This will prevent the crust from forming a glue-like bond with the pan.

While bread making is whizzing away, mince garlic cloves. Slice Roma tomatoes and ripe red tomatoes. Put garlic, olive oil, and sea salt. Mix with whisk. Coat all tomato slices in mixture and set aside.

Take the dough out of the bread maker and roll it out until the dough covers the pizza pan. If you do not possess a rolling pin, any canned food can will do as long as it is at least 6 inches tall. It is best to spray the can or coat it with a thin layer of flour before spreading the dough.

After rolling, let the dough sit and rise for 30-to-60 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Coat pizza crust with garlic/tomato mix. Put Roma tomato and ripe red tomatoes slices evenly on pizza crust.

Mix Mozzarella cheese, Parmesan cheese, basil, oregano, pepper, and thyme in small mixing bowl. Sprinkle cheese/spice mixture evenly on pizza crust.

Bake pizza in oven at 400 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes or until cheese is golden brown.
TIDBITS

1) This margherita is a pizza. Eating it will not get you drunk or even give you a buzz. Jimmy Buffet was not “wasting away in Margheritaville.”

2) Okay, you could assemble the sugar and the other ingredients that go in the bread machine and let them ferment until you get alcohol. But I suspect you’d only get a sour tasting alcoholic glob.

3) Margherita Pizza was named after the Queen of Naples sometime ago.

4) It’s difficult to remember to type in that “h” in “Margherita.” My spell checker doesn’t like it either. Why, why couldn’t that queen have been named something easy such as, “Maria” or “Sophia?”

5) My two sons have simple names just in case they create a world-famous pizza.

6) Italy was unified during the years 1860 to 1870. This event, thank goodness, put an end to Neapolitan queens bestowing their weirdly spelled names on perfectly good pizzas.

– 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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Italiano Pigs In A Blanket

Posted on September 14, 2012 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

ITALIANO PIGS IN A BLANKET

INGREDIENTS

1 16 ounce package jumbo biscuit dough
2 slices provolone cheese (12 slices in 8 ounce bag)
4 teaspoons pasta sauce
8 links pork sausage

UTENSIL

cookie sheet

PREPARATION

This is a treat on Italian camping trips.

Defrost sausage links. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Separate the dough into eight pieces. Elongate each dough piece with a rolling pin dusted with flour or simply roll a frozen sausage link along the dough if any are remaining.

Cut the two cheese slices into eight pieces. Put one piece onto each of the eight dough circles. Add a 1/2 teaspoon pasta sauce on each biscuit. Smooth the sauce with a spoon. Put a sausage link near one end of a dough piece and wrap the dough around the link. Put this masterpiece on a cookie sheet so that the dough overlaps on the bottom. Otherwise, the dough will brake apart and you will have Italiano Pigs As Ground Cover.

Bake in oven at 350 degrees until biscuits are golden brown or for about 10 to 15 minutes. Be sure to monitor your Italiano Pigs in a Blanket to make sure they don’t burn or cook unevenly. It’s discouraging to have part of a baked dish be burnt on one side and doughy on the other. You might need to rotate the Pigs at least once. Heat escapes each time you open the oven, so in these cases you might need to cook the dish a minute longer.

Remember, vigilance when baking. It’s darn difficult to unburn something.

TIDBITS

1) The Italian Peninsula was fragmented into various states until 1494 and then, more or less, under the thumb of Spain, France, or Austria, until 1870, when Italy was completely united.

2) In 1983 I bicycled from The Hague, Netherlands to Nice, France. I put my bike on a train going to Genoa. I made it to Genoa. My bicycle never showed.

3) I’ve gone camping in France, but never in Italy.

4) I did the hokey pokey in Saint Mark’s Square in Venice. This occurred during the city’s big carnival. A lot of other people were putting their left foot in, so it was all right.

5) My gosh, there aren’t many free public toilets in Venice. And at many restaurants there is a fee to sit down at the dining table. Even Ryan Air, Spirit, and American Airlines have yet to do these things.

6) Napoleon, the emperor of France, was almost Italian. Genoa sold Corsica, his birthplace, to France only one year before his birthday.

– 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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Pasta Salad

Posted on September 12, 2012 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

PASTA SALAD

INGREDIENTS

6 ounces tri-colored Rotelle pasta
1/2 head iceberg lettuce
1 green bell pepper
1 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup mayonnaise

PREPARATION

Cook pasta according to instructions, or boil pasta for about 7 minutes. Shred lettuce. Dice bell pepper. Do not drain diced tomatoes. Drain pasta. Let it cool. Add all ingredients to large salad bowl. Mix ingredients.

(Almost as simple as cooking a Pop TartTM but with the virtuous feeling that can only come from eating fruits and vegetables.)

TIDBITS

1) Apparently a Roman general saw a goat eating lettuce. He said, “Like lips, like lettuce” and burst out laughing for the only time in his life.

2) My Roman History professor in college laughed for the only time over this one as well.

3 My friend and I tried to get a t-shirt made for the professor, with the apparently hilarious joke written in Latin.

4) But it cost too much money, so he didn’t get the shirt.

5) I had a superstition about tests.

6) If I studied enough, I would get an “A.”

– 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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Spaghetti And Meatballs

Posted on August 16, 2012 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 pounds of ground turkey meat
2 big garlic cloves
1 cup of sourdough bread crumbs
2 jars of spaghetti sauce
12 ounces of spaghetti

COOKING THE SPAGHETTI

Follow the instructions on your bag of spaghetti. Different sizes and types of spaghetti have different cooking instructions.

PREPARING THE MEATBALLS

This dish is relatively forgiving. If it’s too spicy, add some water or tomato sauce. If it isn’t spicy enough add some more. If it’s too “liquidy”–-“liquidy” is a legitimate cooking term–-cook the sauce a little longer. If there isn’t enough sauce add more.

Begin defrosting the turkey meat overnight. This way saves electricity and is better for the environment than defrosting by microwave. Sometimes, however, you just don’t have the time. It’s a good idea to take the meat out of the microwave and remove the defrosted outer meat. If you don’t, you will end up cooking the outer part of your block of turkey meat, making it extremely difficult to make meatballs.

Mince the garlic cloves. Take a slice of sourdough bread and make crumbs out of it. I suggest a food processor as it can make smaller crumbs than you can and it won’t get bored doing it either. Sourdough is the chosen bread in this recipe as it goes well with the garlic and spaghetti sauces.

Mix the meat, cloves, and crumbs together. Make meatballs that are at least 1 inch in diameter and less than two. Meatballs that are more than 2 inches across stand a good chance of resembling a model of the Earth–-a hard crust on the outside, gray in the middle with a reddish core.

Put the meatballs in the pan. Actually, this recipe will make two pans worth, giving a huge, delicious meal or wonderful leftovers that your kids will eat the next day before you get up.

Cook on medium heat. Gradually add spaghetti sauce until the medium balls are covered. Reduce heat to low and cover. You won’t have to turn over the meatballs more than a few times as the sauce atop will keep the moisture in.

You’re ready with your sauce at this point. However, if your noodles are not, if you can’t get your kids to log off Wizard 101 or if your sweetheart is in the middle of a Wii Fit session, it is an extremely good idea to set the heat to warm at most or even shut it off. Stir occasionally and gnash your teeth. Your anger will evaporate with the compliments your hungry brood or guests will give you for this meal.

TIDBITS

1) Pasta was eaten by the Chinese seven-thousand years ago.

2) Cortez brought tomatoes back to Spain from Mexico in 1519. So his conquest of Mexico, while bad for the Aztecs, was a positive boon for the culinary world. No tomato sauces for spaghetti noodles for 5,500 years! Ugh.

3)Pasta was not brought back from China by Marco Polo. Ancient Romans ate this food as well. Dang, yet another example of how boring history can be.

4) Pasta was considered to be peasant food by Italian nobility until around the 19th century.

5) Pasta is an anagram for “pa sat.”

– 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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Basil Pesto

Posted on July 28, 2012 by pauldelancey

Italian Appetizer

BASIL PESTO

INGREDIENTS

3 tablespoons ground walnuts
4 garlic cloves
3/4 cup Parmesan
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
6 tablespoons basil
1/4 teaspoon white pepper

PREPARATION

Dice garlic cloves. Put walnuts, garlic, Parmesan, basil, white pepper, and olive oil in sauce pan. Saute for about 5 minutes on medium high.

Put pesto sauce on pasta or on French bread.

Simple is good.

TIDBITS

1) Walnuts are the best non-fish source of omega-3.

2) Whatever happened to omega-1 and omega-2?

3) Can you get omega-3 by adding together omega-1 and omega-2?

4) Omega is a Greek letter.

5) Greek letters are used in really complicated mathematics.

6) I would like to see a Greek crossword puzzle.

– 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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