Posts Tagged With: luck

Spanish Shrimp in Crispy Batter (Gambas en Gabardina)

Posted on January 30, 2022 by pauldelancey

Spanish Appetizer

SHRIMP IN CRISPY BATTER
(Gambas en Gabardina)

INGREDIENTS

1 egg
½ cup water
1 cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
⅛ teaspoon saffron (or ¼ teaspoon safflower)
¾ pound jumbo shrimp (20-25 count, peeled and deveined)
2 cups oil (vegetable or olive)

SPECIAL UTENSIL

deep fryer or skillet with tall edges

Serves 8. Takes 25 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add egg and water to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add flour and salt. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add baking soda and saffron. Mix batter with whisk until well blended.

Add oil to deep fryer. Heat oil using medium heat. until a little bit of batter starts to dance in the oil. Roll shrimp in batter until they are completely covered. Shake off any excess.

Carefully drop shrimp one at a time into the hot oil. Do not let them touch each other. Let shrimp deep fry for 2 minutes they become crispy and turn golden brown. Remove shrimp with slotted spoon or regular spoon and let dry on plate covered with paper towel. Goes well with parsley and lemon wedges.

TIDBITS

1) Shepherds use sheep dogs to move their flocks of sheep. No other animal does this job as well. Similarly, clover drovers use shrimp to corral their herds of clover. (An unattended clover is prone to wander off anywhere and get into all sorts of mischief.)

2) Four-leaf clovers are more than worth their weight in gold. For these clovers will provide good luck as long as you keep them on your person. (Take that genies, with your paltry three wishes.) So, four-leaf clover drovers employ shrimp in crispy batter. Culinary veterinarians tell us this is because the whole process toughens up the shrimp something considerable, making them more than a match for the wily four-leafers. Just like boot camp toughens up marine recruits.

 

– 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.

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tahini Almond Cookies

Posted on June 25, 2021 by pauldelancey

Israeli Dessert

TAHINI ALMOND COOKIES

INGREDIENTS

⅔ cup butter
¾ cup sugar
⅔ cup almond meal or almond flour*
2 cups flour
1 cup tahini
⅛ teaspoon salt
½ tablespoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons water (perhaps a bit more)
2 tablespoons almond slivers

* = Found online or in ethnic or specialty supermarkets. Or simply grind blanched, slivered almonds until you get the consistency of almond meal or almond flour.

SPECIAL UTENSILS

electric beater
2 cookie sheets
parchment paper
food processor or spice grinder (If you can’t find almond meal.)

Makes 48 cookies. Takes 45 minutes to make plus 15 minutes to cool.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Add butter and sugar to large mixing bowl. Blend with electric beater set on medium. Add flour and almond meal. Blend with electric beater set on medium. Add tahini and vanilla extract. Add salt, vanilla extract, and water. Blend again until you a soft, thick dough. (Add a little water at a time if dough is crumbly.)

Form 48 dough balls about 1″ across. Flatten dough balls until they become ½” thick circles. Gently press 2 almonds into the top of each dough circle. Place parchment paper on each cookie sheet. Add 24 dough circles to each cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes at 325 degrees or until cookies turn golden brown. Cool completely before serving to prevent them from falling apart.

TIDBITS

1) Four-leaf clovers are lucky, but, they’re hard to find. So maximize your good fortune by doing the following instead: place a clover on a plate or use a plate with a clover design, point the clover to the right, and surround the clover with four tahini-almond cookies. Like in the above picture. Doing all this but with four leaves on your clover, will make you the luckiest person ever. Now you know.

 

Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D., fashionisto

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.

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Beninese Peanut Sauce

Posted on December 12, 2016 by pauldelancey

Beninese Appetizer

PEANUT SAUCE

INGREDIENTSpeanutsauce

1 small tomato
1 small onion
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1½ tablespoons chili powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cube MaggiTM beef bouillon*
1 cup water
10 tablespoons smooth peanut butter

* = While other boullion cubes work fine, Maggi’s are incredibly popular in Africa.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

blender

Makes 1½ cups. Takes 35 minutes.

PREPARATION

Puree tomato in blender. Mince onion. Add onion and peanut oil to pot. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add tomato puree, chili powder, and salt. Reduce heat to low and sauté for 3 minutes. Stir frequently.

Crush boullion cube. (This makes it dissolve quicker.) Add bouillon and water. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Add peanut butter. Reduce heat to low. Simmer for 15 minutes or until sauces thickens to your liking. Stir frequently. This is served in Benin with boiled yam. It also goes well with rice.

TIDBITS

1) Peanut Sauce is, of course, an anagram for Tuna Ape Cues. Queen Mary I hated the theater, thinking it immoral. She tried fervently to ban it altogether, but succeeded only in driving theater going underground. People attended ribald plays in people’s attics where such animalistic passions such as hand holding and improv comedy took place. Mary I could not abide this licentiousness, so she imposed hateful regulations, such as having all roles played by gorillas holding tuna.

2) It’s important to realize that Joe Ape’s vocabulary was, and still is, quite limited, making line memorization challenging. And as with humans, line retention goes down while holding tuna. So, stage hands constantly cued the tuna holding apes. Hence, “Tuna Ape Cues.” The next queen, Elizabeth permitted human actors. To honor his new patron, Shakespeare, playwright, chef, and anagrammatist, turned Tuna Apes Cues into Peanut Sauce. His peanut sauce was tasty. What luck!

 

– 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.

Categories: cuisine, history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.