LEMON HAIKU
Dear yellow lemon,
You so look like a grenade,
But make lemonade.
– 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.
Malaysian Soup
INGREDIENTS – PASTE
1 large shrimp (1 pound more later in SOUP)
5 garlic cloves
4 macadamian nuts
6 fresh red chiles (remove seeds to make less spicy)
5 shallots
2 teaspoons coriander
½ teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon curry powder
2 lemongrass stalks
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons sugar
INGREDIENTS – SOUP
1 pound shrimp
6 ounces boneless chicken
8 ounces hard tofu
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (¼ cup more later)
¼ cup vegetable oil
6 ounces yellow egg noodles
8 ounces rice sticks or vermicelli
4 cups chicken stock
1 15 ounce can coconut milk
1 tablespoon lime juice
INGREDIENTS – TOPPINGS
3 ounces bean sprouts
2 hard-boiled eggs
1 lime
SPECIAL UTENSILS
1 pan
3 pots
makes 6 bowls
PREPARATION – PASTE
Peel and devein1 large shrimp. Let dry. Add 1 large shrimp, garlic cloves, macadamian nuts, red chiles, shallots, coriander, cumin, curry powder, lemongrass, salt, and sugar to food processor. Grind ingredients until paste is smooth.
PREPARATION – SOUP
Peel and devein 1 pound shrimp. Cut chicken and tofu into ½” cubes. Put tofu and 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in pan. Sauté tofu at medium-high heat until tofu turns golden brown.
Add ¼ cup vegetable oil to pot. Warm oil using medium heat. Add paste. Cook for 3 minutes or until paste darkens and become fragrant. Add chicken stock, coconut milk, and lime juice to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add chicken, shrimp and tofu cubes. Continue simmering on low heat for another 10 minutes. Stir occasionally.
While chicken stock/coconut milk mix simmers, cook egg noodles and rice stick according to instructions on packages. (Will you need extra pots? Will you be cleaning pots after this meal? Yes, you will!) Drain noodles after they are done.
Place an equal amount of noodles into serving bowls. Add an equal amount of chicken stock/coconut oil/shrimp/tofu mix into bowls. Peel hard-boiled eggs and cut them into halves. Cut lime into 6 slices. Top bowls with hard-boiled egg halves, lime slices, and bean sprouts.
TIDBITS
1) Curry noodles is an anagram for cloudy snorer, uncool dryers, and nosy cod ruler.
2) Dryers are uncool because they steal our socks.
3) Dryers are actually alive. They are all aliens from the planet Rohoho.
4) Rohohans love socks, any planet’s socks.
5) But they love socks from Earth most of all.
6) That’s why the Rohohans come in the middle of the night, zap your clothes dryer into another dimension, and take its place. So, that clothes dryer in your home is actually an alien.
8) But it’s no big deal. Rohohans really don’t mind drying your clothes. In fact, they are rather good at it. They just eat one of your socks occasionally.
9) Why do they eat only one sock from a pair? No one knows for sure. The best guess is that they crave variety, just like we hate to eat 1,722 hot dogs in a row.
10) If you fill your socks with lutefisk, the Rohohans won’t touch them.
11) Of course, you won’t want to touch any of your lutefisk-scented clothes either. Life is hard.
– 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.
Angolan Entree
CHICKEN STEW
(muamba de galinha)
INGREDIENTS
3 pounds boneless chicken (Probably separate parts. If you can find a farm that raises organic boneless chickens, go for it.)
1 Scotch bonnet, habañero, or red chili pepper
3 garlic cloves
3 onions
3 tomatoes
1 pound pumpkin or butternut squash
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup red palm oil or olive oil
½ pound okra (See note below for substitutes)
1 cup chicken broth
3 tablespoons cornstarch (only if you don’t use okra)
SPECIAL UTENSIL
Dutch oven
sonic obliterator
OKRAPHOBIA
A lot of people just can’t stand okra or will only eat fresh food, but can only find okra in cans. What to do? Relax, have an ice-cold root beer. Now that you’re refreshed, consider substitutes for okra. The top contenders are: asparagus, eggplant, green beans, and spinach. These don’t taste quite the same as okra. This might be a plus for you. However, if you want the okra taste, try adding a tablespoon of gumbo file (Oh gosh, gumbo file is another one of those hard herb/spice mixes that are just plain hard to find in supermarkets. In this case, bluff your guests. How many will know if you don’t have gumbo file in your chicken muamba? However, if they do know and they complain loudly, zap them with your sonic obliterator. You don’t need that kind of stress in your life.)
Anyway, okra thickens stews. So if you don’t use okra, you should add cornstarch as a thickening agent. However, cornstarch alters the taste somewhat from the authentic Angolan chicken muamba. (See above paragraph for resolving this problem.)
PREPARATION
Cut chicken into 1″ cubes. Seed and mince chili pepper. Mince garlic cloves. Dice onions. Cut each tomato into eight pieces. Seed and peel pumpkin. Cut pumpkin into 1/2″ cubes.
Add chicken, lemon juice, chili pepper, garlic, pepper, salt to large mixing bowl. Mix by hand until chicken cubes are well coated. Marinate for 1 hour.
Add coated chicken, onion, and red palm oil to Dutch oven. Sauté using medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until chicken cubes are browned on all sides and onion softens. Stir frequently. Add pumpkin, tomatoes, okra (or its substitute and cornstarch), and chicken broth. Bring stew to boil. Cover Dutch oven, reduce heat to low, and simmer for 25 minutes or until chicken and pumpkin are tender. Stir occasionally.
Goes well with rice or cassava. Whew.
TIDBITS
1) Do not worry about your fresh-okra finding problems as life is about to get a whole lot better as you can see in the following tidbits.
2) In 2023, Amos Keeto, will invent the Sonic Obliterator. This invention will be a godsend to be who hate being disturbed by door-to-door salesmen. People who hate plowing their way through the crowds surrounding the free-sample stations at CostcoTM or are too shy to ask people to move will also appreciate this device.
3) I mean can’t you see the shopper’s face as she pushes her cart through a suddenly vacant path on her way to pick up a large package of ribs for her family. Her family loves ribs and isn’t making families happy what’s it all about?
4) In 2019, Sarah Bellum, will invent the time machine. This will be invaluable for people with overdue library books and for those who can never file their taxes on time. Be sure to buy one, well, whenever.
5) In 2021, Barry Sax will invent the Orphan Socks Reuniter. No longer will your dryer be able to present you with orphan socks. The Reuniter will find the missing sock whether it will be sticking to the top of the dryer, vacationing in Poway, California, rafting down the Amazon River, performing against its will in a shocking sock-puppet show, or simply transported to a parallel universe. Barry Sax will win a Nobel Prize in 2023 for his service to humanity.
6) In 2017, just around the corner, Hal E. Kahn, will invent the organic TwizzlerTM by being the first to successfully graft the tasty snack onto strawberry plants.
7) In 2031, Ms. Terri Good, will markedly improve mornings for all people for all time by inventing the Coffee Humidifier. The CF, as it will soon be called, will emit coffee molecules all through the night. You will be inhaling 100% pure arabica bean while you sleep. You will not wake up tired and wanting to kill the first person who talks to you. No! You will be so awake, so full of energy that you will paint the house and make school lunches for your kids for the entire year.
8) In 2019, Mel Ifluous will invent UTeleport. This nifty invention will be able to teleport any item of any size over any distance. The Uteleport will be a life saver to all those still half-asleep souls who pour a bowl of cereal in the morning only to find they are out of milk. Life will be good.
– 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.
I write a lot of fiction but sometimes I have to take my hat off to life. Click on http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/south/10010615198552/police-assault-prompted-by-too-many-pickles/
to see more about the woman who went beserk over pickles in her sandwich. She’s gonna be famous.
Laundry
O pile of laundry.
O pile of laundry.
Lying securely in
The walk-in closet.
Walk out, laundry
I say, walk out.
Clean yourself.
Come back clean.
But the laundry
never listens.
Bad laundry,
Go to your room.
There will be laundry
Until we die.
Does life cause laundry
or does laundry cause life?
– 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 