Nearly fifty of the world’s finest authors contributed to Bump Off Your Enemies.
Available on Amazon Kindle. Free days are May 5, May 12, May 18, May 19, and May 26.
Oh, this is a work of fiction.
– 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.
French Soup
INGREDIENTS
3 medium brown potatoes
1/2 onion
1 medium carrot
3 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 1/4 cups vegetable broth
3/4 cup milk
2 teaspoons chervil
1/2 teaspoon French four spice (Muntok white pepper, nutmeg, ginger, powdered cloves)
1/4 teaspoon parsley
PREPARATION
Peel potatoes. Dice potato, onion, and carrot. Put potato, onion, butter, and olive oil in large pot. Sauté potato and onion on medium heat for about 10 minutes or until potato and onion begin to soften. Stir frequently.
Add diced carrot, vegetable broth, milk, chervil, French four spice, and parsley to the pot. Cook for 20 minutes. Start at medium heat reducing to low when soup starts to boil. Stir occasionally.
TIDBITS
1) People use chervil a lot more during the Lenten season than other times as it symbolizes new life and rebirth.
2) People often give up foods for Lent.
3) I always give up lutefisk.
4) Successfully.
5) During all the non-Lenten times as well.
4) I looked up fun facts for chervil on the internet. I found chervil improves the taste of radishes growing next to it.
5) Fun fact, you bet.
– 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.
Irish Entree
INGREDIENTS
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
more 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 as much water as your crock pot will allow. Cook on low setting for about 2 hours or until vegetables are tender.
If you do not have enough water to make soup, boil more water in a separate pot. Combine ingredients from crock pot with hot water from pot in soup bowl. Alternatively, put leftovers from corned-beef meal in large soup. Add water to achieve desired thickness. Cook on high heat until soup boils then turn off heat. Stir occasionally. If people have been asking for 14 hours, “Is it ready, yet?” you can now say yes. Resist the temptation to clock them. You are a gracious host.
TIDBITS
1) This recipe uses lots of water.
2) Water is good for you. Your body needs it to live. You can go maybe three days without drinking water.
3) Water is also used for showering. You can go indefinitely without showering.
4) I wouldn’t recommend it though. You’ll probably lose your job and all future invitations to neighborhood weenie roasts.
5) And who could live without a weenie roast, especially since the invention of veggie hot dogs?
6) Don’t forget the therapeutic value of showers. Shower spray pounding on one’s shoulders washes away one’s tension and anger.
7) If you don’t release your tension and anger, you’re much more likely to bump someone off.
8) Water. Good for your body. Good for your outlook. Good for your criminal record.
– Chef Paul
My cookbook, Eat Me: 169 Fun Recipes From All Over the World, and novels are available in paperpack or Kindle on amazon.com
As an e-book on Nook
or on my website-where you can get a signed copy at: www.lordsoffun.com
Lithuanian Entree
KUGELIS
(Potato Pudding Recipe)
INGREDIENTS
5 pounds russet potatoes
12 ounces bacon
1 1/2 large white onions
1/4 cup butter
6 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 12 ounce can evaporated milk
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 cup farina
SPECIAL UTENSILS
1 9″*13″ baking dish
or
2 8″*8″ baking dishes
or
127 1″*1″ baking dishes
Serves a lot of people. We’re talking about 7 pounds of rich food here.
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel potatoes. Grate or shred potatoes. (This is some debate about the authenticity of shredding potatoes for Kugelis. After noting how long it took to merely peel the potatoes, I fired up the trusty food processor and shredded away. Yep, I’m a rebel. Born to be Wild.)
Dice bacon. Shred onions. Put bacon, onions, and butter in frying pan. Cook on medium-high heat until bacon is done to your desired level of crispness and the onions soften. Stir frequently. Hold the pan at an angle away from you while stirring. You really want bacon splatter to head away from you.
Put eggs in large mixing bowl and beat the heck out of them. Add potato, bacon/onion sauté, milk, evaporated milk, salt, pepper, and farina. Mix thoroughly with spoon.
Bake in oven at 350 degrees for 1 hour 20 minutes or until golden brown on top. Remove baking dish from oven and let cool for 5 minutes before serving. Enjoy the national dish of Lithuania.
TIDBITS
1) Pepper is used in this recipe. It is a happening spice. Pepper was first widely used in India over two millennia ago. India is one of the world’s oldest civilizations One of every seven people in the world is Indian. India has lots of trains, great food, nuclear weapons, and customer-service reps. Okay, the last one is bad.
2) Pepper traded westward to ancient Egypt. Black peppercorns were found stuffed up the nose of the mummified body of Pharaoh Ramses II. Snorting, perhaps? Egypt was the dominant power in that region for hundreds of years. It’s chariots raced all over the countryside. Perhaps they wouldn’t have had to race all over if they had bothered to ask for directions, but you know men.
3) Some think Rome conquered great swaths of North Africa, Europe, and the Near East because the Romans were really cranky from constantly sneezing snorted pepper. The Roman Empire lasted so long because its subject were so down with the taste explosion pepper brought that they really didn’t mind constant taxation and civil wars.
4) Then around the 5th century AD, barbarians invaded and destroyed the Roman Empire for no good culinary reason. Lutefisk crazed Vikings pillaged everywhere. People stashed their pepper. The Vikings killed the stashers. Knowledge of pepper disappeared. The Dark Ages descended.
5) Around 13th century or so the Venetians started trade routes with India. Indian pepper once again flowed westward to Europe. Venice became the richest and mightiest city in Europe. Then they started making blinds and their economy tanked.
6) Portugal started the Great Age of Exploration. It sent fleets around Africa and to the Americas and sooner than you can say heteroskedasticity pepper graced the tables of people around the world.
7) Life’s been pretty good since then. Even the occasional global war was made tolerable by proper amounts of peppers in soldiers’ meals.
– 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.
Israeli Breakfast Soup
IINGREDIENTS
1 sweet red pepper
2 hot green chiles
1 white onion
2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
24 ounces tomato sauce
1 tablespoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
PREPARATION
Mince red pepper, green chiles, onion, and garlic. Put in skillet along with olive oil. Sauté on medium high heat for about 5 minutes or until onion is tender.
Add tomato sauce, oregano, and salt. Heat on high until sauce begins to boil, stirring frequently. Turn heat down to low. Add eggs. Cook until eggs are done to your satisfaction. Stir occasionally. This soup is often eaten directly from skillet.
Simple and quick with an impressive sounding name.
TIDBITS
1) People made soup as early as 6,000 BC.
2) Even then kids said, “Is it ready, yet?”
3) In 1772 BC Hammurabi of Babylon set down his famous set of 282 laws. Most of them dealt with business contracts and the family. None of them dealt with soup.
4) Current Nebraska law states a bar owner must be making soup at the same time beer is being sold.
5) So we’ve addressed the glaring soup admission in Hammurabi’s Code.
6) It took humanity over 3,700 years to do this.
7) In the meantime we’ve: discovered America via the land bridge from Asia, invented the printing press, and witnessed the creation and demise of the Twinkie.
– 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.
French Soup
INGREDIENTS
1 white onion
2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 russet potatoes
6 Roma tomatoes
32 ounces chicken broth
1 tablespoon red wine
1 1/2 tablespoons herbes de Provence
PREPARATION
Mince onion and garlic. Put onion, garlic, and olive oil into frying pan. Sauté on medium high for 3-to-5 minutes or until onion is tender. Put onion and garlic into soup pot.
Peel and chop potatoes into cubes small enough to go into food processor. Mince potatoes. Mince tomatoes. Add to soup pot: potatoes, tomato, chicken broth, red wine, and herbes de Provence. Cook soup on high until it starts to boil. Turn down heat to warm and simmer for 40 minutes.
TIDBITS
1) The world’s best tomato festival, La Tomatina, is held in Bunol, Spain. It occurs on the last Wednesday in August. Up to 100,000 people attend. Why? Because it’s fun!
2) The festival hosts the world’s biggest tomato fight. Yippee. Up to 30,000 people participate, hurling some 200,000 overripe tomatoes at each other.
3) But just try throwing a rotten tomato at home or at the school cafeteria. Or at your local mayor or police officer for that matter.
4) And you get to eat fantastic tomato-based dishes before this culinary melee.
5) I wanna go there. I wanna go there. I wanna go there.
– 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.
American Breakfast
INGREDIENTS
15 slices bacon (about 1 pound)
1/2 cup butter
1 cup cultured buttermilk blend
4 cups water
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
You can, of course, buy buttermilk instead of buttermilk blend, but your buttermilk will go bad if you don’t use it right away.
SPECIALTY UTENSILS
electric mixer
griddle or skillet
PREPARATION
Cut bacon strips in half. Fry bacon on medium-high heat until it starts to get crispy. Put bacon on towel-covered plate.
Melt butter. Use “batter” setting on electric mixer, or beater, to combine buttermilk blend, water, eggs, and butter. Combine in a second large mixing bowl: flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Pour the contents of the second bowl into the first mixing bowl. Mix together with fork until just blended.
Fire up the griddle to 350 degrees. Use a 1/2-cup ladle to pour your batter onto the griddle. Put two half bacon strips in batter. Cook for 1 3/4 minutes on the first side and for 1 1/2 minutes on the second side or until brown on both sides.
Makes about 16 8-inch diameter pancakes. Come join bacon mania.
TIDBITS
1) Bacon makes you smart.
2) The choline, whatever that is, in bacon stimulates fetal brain development.
3) China began preserving and salting pork bellies around 1,500 B.C.
4) China was one of the first places on Earth to develop a complex, thriving civilization. It is the most populous nation in the world.
5) The Greeks were one of the first peoples in the West to preserve and salt pork. The Greeks developed modern Western philosophy.
6) The Romans preserved and salted pork. They built the largest empire Europe and the Mediterranean world has ever seen. America’s founding fathers consciously based our system of government on the Roman model.
7) Americans eat bacon all the time. America’s economy is the largest in the world.
8) But other countries’ economies are catching up. Their peoples are eating more bacon.
– 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.
Chinese Entree
INGREDIENTS
4 boneless and skinless chicken breasts
MARINADE
2 teaspoons peanut oil
1/2 cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ginger powder
1/2 cup honey
4 teaspoons corn starch
2 teaspoon malt vinegar
MAIN
2 cups cashews
1 stalk green onion
4 green bell peppers
1 medium white onion
3 teaspoons soy sauce
3/4 cup water
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
2 1/2 teaspoons sugar
2 1/2 malt vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1 cup rice
PREPARATION
MARINADE
Cut chicken breasts into 1-inch cubes. Place cubes in mixing bowl. Add soy sauce, chili powder, ginger powder, corn starch, and malt vinegar. Mix thoroughly with hands or until chicken cubes are completely coated with this mixture. Let marinate from 30 minutes to several hours, the longer the better. (That is if your stomach stimulated by the wonderful aroma received by your nose will let you.)
MAIN PART
While waiting for chicken to marinate, add cashews to saucepan and cover with water. Bring water to boil and simmer for about 6 minutes until cashews become soft. Remove pan from heat, drain water, and set softened cashews aside. Dice green onion.
Mince green bell peppers and white onion. Sauté bell peppers and onion in saucepan until onion become soft and clearer. Add in: marinade, soy sauce, water, white pepper, sugar, malt vinegar, and sesame oil. Heat on medium high until all the chicken cubes are no longer pink inside. Determine the color by cutting a cube open. (Unless, of course, you are SupermanTM and have x-ray vision.) Stir frequently.
While chicken is cooking, prepare rice according to instructions shown on bag. Combine chicken cubes, marinade, green onion, and cashews. Serve on top of rice and enjoy.
TIDBITS
1) Ancient Babylon’s women ate sesame seeds and honey to prolong health and beauty.
2) Ancient Roman’s soldiers ate the same things to get strength and energy.
3) I wonder how many times the sesame seed/oil mixture gave beauty to the Roman soldiers and strength to Babylonian women. I mean sesame seeds and oil aren’t smart at all. I could very see how these inanimate objects could confuse these two missions.
4) Danged ants keep running across my keyboard. What do they expect to find here? There’s no food here. Stupid ants.
5) Great! Now, I’ve lost my train of thought. Stupid ants.
6) I wish I could make a deal with them. Stay out of my house forever and I’ll dump every morsel of food that doesn’t get cooked–such as fat, yum–-or eaten.
7) But ants aren’t that smart. That’s why they sometimes crawl over my keyboard looking for food. Stupid ants. Whap! One fewer ant. One fewer ant for Paul’s office, one great victory for picnickers everywhere.
– 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.
Paul De Lancey's Blog 