Posts Tagged With: Mexican

Olé Baked Potatoes

Posted on March 3, 2023 by pauldelancey

Mexican Entree

OLÉ BAKED POTATOES

INGREDIENTS

6 medium brown potatoes
14 ounces diced green chiles
2 medium white onions
3 cups grated Four Mexican cheeses
3 tablespoons butter

PREPARATION – POTATOES

Gently scrub the potatoes to remove dirt. Cut out the potatoes’ eyes. This is not an act of barbarity. The eyes are those little rooty things that grow out of the potato when you leave them in the potato bin for too long.

You might want to stab each potato a few times. (Okay, let out your aggression here.) This prevents steam from building up to the point your potato explodes. Boom!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put the potatoes in the oven and bake for about 50 minutes. (You do need to plan ahead. Watch two episodes of Man Versus Food while waiting.) Jab a fork into the taters. The fork should slide in easily. This step is essential. Baking with multiple potatoes or multiples of any food can increase the baking time. Also the sizes of the potatoes vary with each baking. And who knows if the temperature of the dial on your oven is accurate? My experience is that most real oven temperatures are less than what the oven’s gauges would have you believe.

Oh, don’t forget to remove those potatoes when done.

PREPARATION -SAUCE

While the potatoes bake, melt the butter. Mince onions in your food processor. Mince onions by hand and you’ll cry. Pour the minced onion and the diced green chiles into the butter. Cook on medium high, stirring constantly. Periodically taste, it’s your kitchen, and stop when you’re satisfied or as soon as the onion changes color. Add in the grated cheese and stir until it melts.

Cut the potatoes open and cover both sides with the sauce. Note, both this sauce and baked potatoes taste much better hot than cold.

Although time consuming, this dish is easy to make and tastes great. When serving this dish to guests, stress the time this dish took and omit the ease of making it.

TIDBITS

1) People from Wisconsin are often called “cheeseheads.”

2) There are about 2,000 varieties of cheese. Cheese will grow moldy. Clean your refrigerator periodically. Cheese can be made from camel’s milk. Never tried it.

 

– 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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Carl La Fong’s Cooking Mishap #1, Quesadilla

Posted on February 26, 2023 by pauldelancey

The sticker says, “Two tortillas.”

I like to cook. So does my friend, Carl La Fong*. Although a really good cook, Carl occasionally makes mistakes. Sometimes they’re doozies. In the spirit of helping fledgling chefs, he’s agreed to share his mistakes.

Carl started off well. He sprayed the top and bottom of the quesadilla maker**. He put a flour tortilla on the bottom of the grill. He topped the tortilla with avocado salsa, diced chiles, and a generous amount of grated Mexican cheeses. He closed the lid. The quesadilla maker started cooking.

“You know,” Carl said, “in retrospect, I should have placed a second flour tortilla on top of the fixings. The modern mind cannot comprehend the mess made by leaving that ingredient out. Fortunately, I worked quickly and cleaned the quesadilla maker is just a scant hour. In my defense, I was pondering the clauses in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. It can happen to anyone.”

Carl says, “Hi” and invites you to share your friends’ cooking mishaps. He als

* =No, Carl La Fong is not my alter ego. Why do you ask?
** = Doesn’t the quesadilla maker look like a space alien?

 

– 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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Moctezuma Cheese Soup

Posted on February 19, 2023 by pauldelancey

Mexican Soup

MOCTEZUMA CHEESE SOUP

 

INGREDIENTS

10 ounces queso quesadilla jalapeno (queso = cheese)
½ cup Crema Mexicana (sour cream)
¼ cup grated Four Mexican cheeses
¼ cup water
½ tsp cumin
¼ tsp cayenne

PREPARATION

(Wave your wand and ask that this home-cooked meal be magically cooked by the mythical tomtes of Sweden. Nothing will happen. There are no tumptes and if there were, they would be busy conjuring up Swedish dishes. So you’re on your own. Fortunately, this dish is easy. Are you? I’m too much of a gentleman to ask.)

Anyway, crumble the queso quesadilla jalapeno and put it in a soup pot. Add Crema Mexicana, Four Mexican Cheeses, water, cumin, and cayenne. As mentioned in other parts of this cookbook, you might not have the exact ingredient or don’t want to go to the store again. Again, substitute, substitute, substitute. For example, you can use plain sour cream instead of Crema Mexicana and a can of nacho cheese soup for queso quesadilla jalapeno.

Cook soup on medium-high heat until hot and thoroughly blended. This also makes a nice dip.

TIDBITS

1) This soup is named after the hometown of my grandmother. She married my grandfather who was a surveyor and a lieutenant with the engineers in World War I.

2) My grandfather and his fellow surveyors accidentally started a forest fire in northern Mexico. I would love to have heard the whole story on that one.

3) My grandmother’s grandfather was a doctor who came to Mexico from Missouri after the Civil War. He couldn’t cotton to the Union victory.

4) Her son, my father, and his friends from college went to Mexico during Spring break. Somehow mattresses in the back of their pickup truck caught on fire and kept catching on fire.

5) I went to Calexico with a friend of mine from grad school. An hour after we crossed back into the U.S., a candidate for the Presidency of Mexico was assassinated in Tijuana. I would like to stress I had been in Calexico, not Tijuana, and had been in America already for one hour.

 

– 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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Mexican Pizza

Posted on February 13, 2023 by pauldelancey

Mexican Entree

MEXICAN PIZZA

INGREDIENTS

PIZZA CRUST (If you have a bread maker or buy at store)

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup water
2 ½ tablespoons vegetable oil
¾ teaspoon sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
2 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast
no-stick cooking spray

TOPPING

1 cup or ½ pound ground beef
1 teaspoon cumin
½ small onion
⅓ green bell pepper
½ cup diced green chile
1 cup diced tomatoes in sauce
1 cup grated Four Mexican cheeses.
Pasta sauce (½ cup or more)

SPECIAL UTENSIL

pizza pan

PREPARATION OF PIZZA CRUST
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.

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, organize your tax-receipts, preheat the oven to 400 degrees and liberally spray the pizza pan with no-stick spray. This will prevent the crust from forming a glue-like bond with the pan.

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 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.

PREPARATION OF TOPPING

While the bread maker is making the dough, dice the onion (Does anyone juggle onions professionally?) and green pepper. Don’t liquefy them. The green and white of these ingredients along with the red of the tomatoes will give you the colors of the Mexican flag. Olé.

Cook the ground beef on medium-high heat until it is no longer pink. Taste and see if you want to add more spice.

Apply tomatoes in sauce to pizza crust slowly and spread evenly until you have a thin layer of sauce over the whole pizza. Remove any excess as too much sauce will make your pizza soggy.

Spoon ground beef, onion, bell pepper, chile, tomatoes, and cheeses evenly over the pizza.

Bake pizza for about 20 minutes or until cheese is golden brown. Depending on the efficiency of your oven you will probably want to check your pizza after 12 minutes and every few minutes after that.

Arriba. Arriba.

TIDBITS

1) The ancient Greeks covered their bread with oil, herbs, and cheese.

2) The first time I saw Mexican pizza was about ten years ago at a Taco Bell(tm).

3) Cinco de Mayo, May 5, celebrates a Mexican victory over a French army. It is a minor holiday in Mexico. However, in America, it has become a major “Drink Mexican Beer” day.

4) My birthday is May 5. When I was little, I was always quite grateful to Mexicans everywhere for celebrating my birthday. One of the greatest illusions of my life. I still hang onto this one, a little.

 

– 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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Mexican Green Onion Dip

Posted on February 7, 2023 by pauldelancey

Mexican Appetizer

MEXICAN GREEN-ONION DIP

INGREDIENTS

1 cup Crema Mexicana (Mexican sour cream)
¼ cup green onion
1½ tablespoons parsley
1 garlic clove
½ teaspoon Vegetable MagicTM spice
½ cup Cotija cheese

PREPARATION

Mince green onion and garlic clove. Crumble Cotija cheese. Mix all ingredients in bowl. Serve as a dip or on baked potatoes.

Wow! Wow! Wow! Two lines of instruction. It doesn’t get much easier than this or tastier.

(The following three blank lines are reserved for tic-tac-toe games.)

 

 

TIDBITS

1) According to a GoogleTM search there are no fun facts about sour cream, only interesting ones.

2) Further investigation showed the information that was supposed to be listed here to be false. So, it was deleted.

3) That is why the following tidbit now makes no sense.

4) I’m guessing a year is way more than sufficient.

5) I told you above that tidbit 4) no longer makes sense. Did you listen?

6) Russians use sour cream in cold, salted potato fish soups.

7) Yum.

8) Not.

9) It is unlikely that there will ever be a movie about sour cream as there was about FacebookTM.

 

– 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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Beer Brats en una Cobija

Posted on December 23, 2022 by pauldelancey

Fusion Entree

BEER BRATS EN UNA COBIJA

INGREDIENTS

1 serrano pepper
1 jalapeno pepper
1 red bell pepper
½ medium onion
1 avocado
½ cup fresh cilantro

1 tablespoon peanut oil (1 tablespoon more later)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (1 tablespoon more later)
½ tablespoon lime juice

4 beer bratwursts
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 16 ounce packages of jumbo biscuit dough
½ cup Monterrey Jack cheese
No-stick spray

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. (350 degrees is normal for most dishes. We are throwing caution to the wind today.)

Remove seeds from serrano pepper, jalapeno pepper, and red bell pepper. Dice serrano pepper, jalapeno pepper, red bell pepper, onion, and avocado. Chop cilantro. Cut bratwursts into four pieces, one cut by length and another by width.

Cook peanut oil and vegetable oil in frying pan at medium heat. Add serrano pepper, jalapeno pepper, bell pepper, onion, avocado, and cilantro. Continue cooking for about 10 minutes or until vegetables soften. Stir periodically. Remove sautéed vegetables.

Cook peanut oil and vegetable oil in frying pan at medium heat. Add bratwurst. Cook for about 5 minutes at medium heat or until bratwurst begins to brown. Make sure to turn over bratwurst so that all sides cook evenly.

Flatten individual pieces of biscuit dough to get a larger surface. Put bratwurst piece in center, bottom part of biscuit dough. Put about a tablespoon sautéed vegetable on top of the bratwurst. Sprinkle biscuit dough with Monterey Jack cheese. Roll up dough from the bottom until the tops and the bottoms meet.

Spray biscuit sheets with no-stick spray. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 to 16 minutes or until the biscuits are golden brown on the outside and no longer doughy on the inside. Note times needed to bake biscuits can vary wildly given the oven’s size, age, and nearness of the biscuits to a heating coil. So it’s best to keep a careful eye on the biscuits closest to a heating coil.

TIDBITS

1) This is a classic German-Mexican-American, breakfast-dinner cuisine.

2) This was almost called Fiery Brats In a Blanket.

3) There are 17.88 milligrams of magnesium in 100 grams of bratwurst. I don’t see how this fact could help you.

4) Madison, Wisconsin, holds the annual “World’s Biggest Brat Fest.”

5) I went to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in the early 80s. I don’t ever recall seeing the festival. I must have been studying.

6) About sixty years earlier, Hitler tried to overthrow the German government by taking over a beer hall.

7) German beer halls serve beer and bratwursts.

8) German bratwursts are excellent.

 

– 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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Mexican Stuffed Bell Peppers

Posted on September 16, 2022 by pauldelancey

Mexican Entree

STUFFED BELL PEPPERS

INGREDIENTS

4 bell peppers
¼ cup fresh cilantro (1 tablespoon more later)
1 16-ounce can refried beans
¼ cup cooked rice
¼ cup sour cream
½ tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon lime juice
½ teaspoon pepper
⅔ cup Mexican blend or Cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon fresh cilantro

Serves 4. Takes 55 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut tops off bell peppers. Seed bell peppers. Dice ¼ cup cilantro. Add refried beans, cooked rice, sour cream, ¼ cup diced cilantro, cumin, lime juice, and pepper to mixing bowl. Mix with fork or spatula until bean mix becomes creamy.

Use spoon to stuff bell peppers with creamy beans. Add stuffed bell peppers to baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until bell peppers start to soften. Remove bell peppers and sprinkle cheese on refried beans. Bake again for 3 minutes or until cheese melts.

Dice 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro. Garnish bell peppers with cilantro.

TIDBITS

1) The thrusters on NASA’s rockets look remarkably like Mexican Stuffed Bell Peppers as the pictures to the right show.
.
2) This is no accident as NASA’s scientists love Mexican food. They’ve always have.

3) This is why NASA incorporates so much that is Mexican food into their rockets, space stations, and excursion modules.

4) Using this dish as the design for rocket thrusters was such a brilliant idea that when one scientist looked down on his Mexican Stuffed Pepper, he said, “Let’s use the shape of this bell pepper for our thrusters.” His luncheon pals threw up their hands in agreement. “Yea, why not.” And so, the quest to conquer space began.

 

– 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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Chocolate Frosting

Posted on August 10, 2022 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

CHOCOLATE FROSTING

INGREDIENTS

1¾ cups heavy whipping cream
1¾ cups (10 ounces) semi-sweet chocolate chips
3¼ cups confectioners’ sugar

Makes 4½ cups. Takes 1 hour 15 minutes.

FROSTING NEEDED

Dessert Type Needs Cups of Frosting
—————– —————————–
2 layer cake                       3
3 layer cake                       4
12 cupcakes                      2
13″ * 9″ cake                     2

PREPARATION

Add heavy whipping cream to pan. Heat whipping cream at medium heat until cream just starts to bubble. Stir constantly. Remove from heat. Add chocolate chips. Stir with spatula or fork until all chips melt. Transfer to large mixing bowl. Keep in refrigerator until cooled and still pourable, about 40 minutes. Gradually add confectioners’ sugar.

Mix with whisk or fork. Lasts for 7 days in refrigerator when stored in Mason jar or other airtight container.

TIDBITS

1) Chocolate has pleased billions of people for thousands of years. Just saying “chocolate” puts even the most stubborn people in a good mood. This is why chocolate figures prominently in peace treaties, legislation, and court cases.

2) If only there were enough chocolate to dispel all disagreements, the world would be perfect.

3) But there isn’t. Powerful people try to secure the globe’s chocolate supply for themselves. The Aztec nobility monopolized Mexico’s chocolate. This bred fierce resentment among the poor Aztecs and in all of the surrounding tribes. So, when Cortés and his fellow conquistadors set out in 1519 to conquer the Aztecs, the chocolate-lacking Mexicans said, “Sure, why not? Go ahead.”

4) The gold-lusting Spanish then went onto conquer the Incans in Peru for its gold. Spanish gold financed over a hundred years of wars in Europe. And all this happened because the Aztec elite wouldn’t share its chocolate. So when people ask for part of your chocolate bar, give them some. Oh look, I have an extra line left. Let’s use this space to daydream about chocolate. Mmm.

 

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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Misheard Lyrics of Santana

Posted on June 30, 2022 by pauldelancey

I really thought Santana sang the following lyrics. Changed the song more than a bit.

 

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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Crabmeat Stuffed Avocados

Posted on April 16, 2022 by pauldelancey

Chilean Entree

CRABMEAT STUFFED AVOCADOS

INGREDIENTS

2 large avocados
6 ounces crabmeat
2 tablespoons minced bell pepper
2 tablespoons minced celery
2 teaspoons lemon juice
¼ cup mayonnaise
⅛ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon minced shallot or onion
4 leaves lettuce
6 olives

Serves 4. Takes 35 minutes.

PREPARATION

Peel avocados and cut them in half lengthwise. Remove pits. Add crabmeat, bell pepper, celery, lemon juice, mayonnaise, pepper, salt, and shallot to mixing bowl. Mix with fork until crab mix is well blended. Shred lettuce.

Arrange lettuce evenly over 4 plates. Fill avocado hollows with crab mix. Top avocado halves with neat little mounds of remaining crab mix. Cut olives in half. Garnish each avocado half with 3 olive haves. Place filled-and-topped avocado halves on shredded lettuce.

TIDBITS

1) The early peoples of Central America subsisted on avocados. The tribes living along the Pacific coast of South America lived on potatoes. Naturally, no one likes to eat only potatoes or even just avocados. So, soon a lively avocado-potato trade developed. Then culinary ingenuity propelled these peoples into a golden age with the harnessing of corn into tortillas. Before long a brilliant mind, Chef Ozomatli, constructed the first potato taquito with guacamole sauce.

2) This golden age didn’t last. Robbers ambushed the potato and avocado traders. To meet this threat, the great Aztec empire arose around Mexico. Its armies threw volley after volley of avocado pits at the heads of the robber gangs until the thieves broke and fled. The Incan warrior, however, was invulnerable in his suit of potatoes. These innovations were enough to maintain the great empires until the arrival of the musket carrying, metal-armor wearing Conquistadors.

3) In desperation, local chieftains attempted to attack the Spanish fleets by making canoes out of gigantic avocados. Unfortunately, crabs ate these vessels as soon as they put out to sea. Resistance collapsed. Spain would rule this corner of the world for 300 years. This dish commemorates the destruction of the avocado fleets by the crabs. So some good came out of all this turmoil.

 

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, history, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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