Posts Tagged With: peasants

Simple Corned Beef 2

Posted on May 22, 2023 by pauldelancey

Irish Entree

SIMPLE CORNED BEEF 2

INGREDIENTS

6 russet potatoes
3 large carrots
1 large white onion
1 4- pound ready-to-cook corned beef brisket
½ head cabbage

SPECIAL UTENSIL

crock pot

Serves 6. Takes 8 hours using low setting on crock pot and 14 hours using high setting.

PREPARATION

Clean potatoes and carrots. Cut potatoes in two. Cut carrots and onion into slices no thicker than ½”. Add potato, carrots, onion, and corned beef to crock pot. You may need to cut the corned beef into smaller pieces depending on the size of your crock pot. Add water to crock pot until it covers the corned beef. If using low setting on crock pot, cook for 12 hours, possibly overnight. If using high setting, cook for 8 hours (or 2 hours per pound.) Either way, cook until brisket is tender.

Now that you have lots of time, let’s play tic-tac-toe.

 

 

 

 

 

45 minutes before corned beef is ready, cut cabbage into slices no thicker than ½”. (1 hour 30 minutes before if using low heat.) Add cabbage to crock pot. Add water until it covers the cabbage. Cook on high setting for about 45 minutes or on low setting for 1 hour 30 minutes or until everything is tender. Serve to adoring guests.

Tell your spellbound guests corned-beef takes 10 days to prepare. This, of course, is the do-it-yourself corned-beef version. You used ready-to-eat corned beef brisket. But you needn’t tell them that.

TIDBITS

1) Potatoes make great French fries.

2) They’re nutritious and a great source of calories too.

3) They grow in the ground where they can’t be seen by hungry, foraging armies marching back and forth across peasants’ fields.

4) On July 14, 1689 Madame Farine du Blé of Poulet sur Marne noticed invading Bavarians ransacking the granary of her neighbors, the Herbes, while leaving her own field of potatoes untouched.

5) This fact kinda excited the peasantry of France who relied almost exclusively on food for eating.

6) Frederick the Great of Prussia noticed this fact as well. He insisted that all the Prussian peasants plant potatoes.

7) And boy, those peasants were glad they did. Massive French, Austrian, and Russian armies crisscrossed the Prussian kingdom from 1756 to 1763 carting off all the wheat they could find. But the Prussian peasants didn’t starve.

8) Why? These farmers simply waited for the invading soldiers to leave, dug up their potatoes, and cooked them. And if the peasants also had the proper spices and deep fryers, they dined on papas rellena, Peruvian stuffed potatoes.

9) When individual peasants don’t starve, the country as a whole doesn’t starve. A well-fed nation can afford to feed its armies in the field. And those Prussian armies did really well earning both victory and survival at the end of the Seven Years War.

10) Prussia united Germany in 1871. A united Germany caused World War I. A united Germany caused World War II. Both wars were unarguably unpleasant.

11) So think about that when you are asked, “Do you want fries with that?”

 

– 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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Posole Rojo

Posted on March 12, 2021 by pauldelancey

Mexican Soup

POSOLE ROJO

INGREDIENTS – PORK

3 pounds pork shoulder or leg
60 ounces canned-garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas)
2 bay leaves
7 garlic cloves (4 more later)
3 quarts water

INGREDIENTS – RED SAUCE

6 guajillo chiles or ancho chiles
3 ancho chiles or guajillo chiles
3 cups water
½ small onion (½ more later)
4 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon Mexican oregano or marjoram or oregano
½ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt

INGREDIENTS – FINAL

2 avocados
¼ head cabbage
4 red radishes
½ small onion
1 cup tortilla chips

SPECIAL UTENSIL

electric blender

Serves 16. Takes 2 hours 30 minutes.

PREPARATION – PORK/GARBANZO BEANS

Cut pork into 1″ cubes. Drain garbanzo beans. Cut 7 garlic cloves in half. Add pork, garbanzo beans, bay leaves, 7 garlic cloves, and 3 quarts water to 1st, large pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir occasionally. Reduce heat to low. Simmer for 1 hour or until pork cubes can be pulled apart easily with a fork. Skim off foam with spoon. Stir enough to prevent burning. Remove and discard bay leaves. Remove pork and garlic. Keep water in pot. Shred pork completely using 2 forks. Smash garlic bits with fork. Return pork and garlic to pot.

PREPARATION – RED SAUCE

While pork simmers, add 3 cups water to 2nd pot. Bring to boil. Seed guajillo and ancho chiles to pan. Roast at medium heat for 8 minutes until they start to soften. Stir occasionally . Add chiles to 2nd pot. Cover and remove from heat. Let chiles sit in water for 15 minutes or until they have completely softened. Cut ½ small onion into 4 pieces. Add guajillo chiles, ancho chiles, 4 garlic cloves, 4 onion pieces, and water from 2nd pot to blender. Set blender to puree and blend until pureed. This is the red sauce. Add red sauce, Mexican oregano, pepper, and salt to the pot containing pork and garbanzo beans. Simmer on low heat for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally.

PREPARATION – FINAL

Add red sauce/pork/garbanzo beans to bowls. Cut avocados into 16 pieces each. Shred cabbage. Mince ½ small onion. Slice radishes as thinly as possible. Spread avocado, cabbage, onion, radish, and tortilla chips evenly over bowls of red sauce/pork/garbanzo beans.

TIDBITS

1) The Italian peninsula in 1848. Peasants rioted against the nobles. The nobles suppressed the peasant uprising. Italians took up arms against their foreign masters. The foreign masters fought back. Bullets were positively whizzing everywhere.

2) Then the Second War for Italian Independence began in 1859. Armies marched all over the place. Bullets and cannonballs streaked against the sky. It was all too much for the simple chef, Fabio Marinara who determined to leave for America. His customers pleaded for him to stay. “No,” said Fabio at length.

3) So, the plucky Italian sold all his possessions and bought a ticket to New York on the SS Seaweed.

4) But he boarded instead the SS Flan to Veracruz, Mexico. But that was okay, for Mexican food was love at first sight for Fabio. “Tacos, where have you been all my life?” thought Chef Mariana.

5) Well, across the Atlantic Ocean. But anyway, Chef Fabio opened up a restaurant on the Gulf of Mexico. Within weeks, he perfected this soup, the posole rojo.

6) People loved his soup. They’d burst out singing, “Posole Rojo” everytime this food of the gods went by their tables.

7) A Italian lyricist, Giovanni Capurro heard these outbursts of ecstasy. He thought they were referring to Veracruz’s magnificent red sunsets. He interpreted them to say, “O sole rojo” or “O my red sun.”

8) But Capurro found that the song burgeoning within his heart flowed much easier when he tweaked the words to “O solo mio” or “O my sun.”

9) He took his song back to Naples. Capurro’s song has been an enduring global hit ever since. “O Sole Mio” has even been sung twice on Sesame Street. Now you know.

– 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, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Pumpkin Seed Meatballs (Kanda)

Posted on July 30, 2019 by pauldelancey

Central African Entree

PUMPKIN SEED MEATBALLS
(Kanda)

INGREDIENTS

3½ cups shelled, lightly toasted pumpkins or squash seeds
6 garlic cloves
1 medium onion (1 more later)
1¼ pounds ground beef
½ cup water (if needed)
1 medium onion
4 tomatoes
1 cayenne chile pepper or chile pepper
6 tablespoons palm oil or peanut oil
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1 cup fresh parsley

SPECIAL UTENSILS

food processor
mandoline (optional)

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 50 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add pumpkin seeds to food processor. Grind seeds until they become a powder. Mince garlic and 1 onion. Add pumpkin-seed powder, garlic, and onion to large mixing bowl. Blend with hands. (If needed to form a moist round meatball, gradually add up to ½ cup water, blending each time water is added.) Form mix into 1″ meatballs and chill in refrigerator for 30 minutes.

While meatballs chill, use mandoline to cut 1 onion into ¼” strips. Dice tomatoes. Seed and mince cayenne pepper. Add palm oil to large pan. Heat oil at medium-high heat or until a little bit of onion in oil starts to dance. Add onion slices, tomato, and cayenne chile pepper. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion slices soften. Stir frequently. Add pepper and salt. Stir.

Add 1 cup water. Bring water and sauce to boil using high heat. Stir occasionally. Gently add meatballs to pan. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for 20 minutes. Stir gently and occasionally. Reduce heat to warm-low and simmer for another 30 minutes. Stir gently and occasionally. Dice parsley. Garnish meatballs with parsley. This entree goes well with rice.

TIDBITS

1) Pumpkins are round. Balloons are also round.

2) This similarity is no coincidence; Louis XVI loved pumpkin seeds.

3) What the king of France wanted, the king of France got.

4) So great merchant fleets set out from France to import pumpkins from the Spanish territory of Peru. These Peruvian pumpkins cost the royal treasury a million francs every year.

5) Disaster struck in 1777. Pirates based from British Jamaica captured the French fleet bound for Peru, along with its many chests of gold. This loss proved such a blow to French finances that its treasury wouldn’t recover until the next tidbit.

6) King Louis hired Jacques Necker to handle France’s money matter. For Monsieur Necker knew how to get the best price for everything, centuries before AmazonTM even. Many even said he’d able to count up to six billion if given enough time. And that is how many francs he borrowed.

7) The French navy could now buy enough ships to escort their pumpkin fleets to and from France. Then boom! The American Revolution started. France went to war with the British. The French fleet helped America gain its independence.

8) However, French naval expenditures trained the French treasury. Its navy wouldn’t put to sea for decades. This left King Louis’ annual pumpkin fleets unescorted, easy prey for British ships of the line.

9) What to do? Louis XVI having scooped out all the pumpkin seeds, looked down at the empty pumpkin and had an epiphany. Why not carry Peru’s pumpkins seeds back using giant, balloons made from empty pumpkins?

10) Well, of course, the Peruvian pumpkins of 1781 were not big enough to make balloons or even the baskets beneath them. So France bought up an enormous pumpkin farm in Peru dedicated to making enormous pumpkins. No franc was left unspent in pursuit of the venture.

11) By 1789, Louis XVI had no money. His finance minister asked the French nobility if it would accept new taxes. It said, “Na, na, na, poo, poo.” So Necker asked all of France for a gigantic weenie roast to discuss ways to raise revenue. Fine suggestions were made, then disaster struck. A nobleman cut in front of a long line of peasants waiting for weenies. Words were said. Knives with drawn. Before you could say François’s your uncle the French Revolution began.

12) King Louis would lose his head in the ensuing kerfuffle. Napoleon would seize power and discontinue the bigger-pumpkin experiment in Peru. So bummer.

13) However, so good came out of Louis’ misfortune. America borrowed the idea of France’s Great Weenie Roast of 1789 to celebrate every Fourth of July. And Peru’s big pumpkins are still the envy of the world.

– 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, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Potato Waffle with Hot Dog, Wars, and Manners

Posted on April 17, 2014 by pauldelancey

Norwegian Entree

POTATO WAFFLE WITH HOT DOG
(potetvafler met pølse)

INGREDIENTSPotatoWaffles-

5 russet potatoes or 2 pounds brown potatoes
4 tablespoons butter
12 hot dogs or hot-dog shaped sausages
4 eggs
3 cups milk
2 ½ cups flour
½ tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
no-stick spray

makes 12 potato waffles with hot dog

SPECIAL UTENSIL

waffle maker

PREPARATION

Peel potatoes. Cut each potato into eight pieces. Put potato pieces into large pot. Add enough water to cover potato bits. Bring water to boil on high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 20 minutes or until potato is tender. Drain potato bits. Add butter to pot with potato pieces. Mash potatoes with potato masher.

While potato bits simmer, add hot dogs to pot with enough water to cover them. Boil on high heat for 5 minutes. Turn off heat.

Also while potato bits are simmering, add eggs and milk to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add flour and baking powder to pot. Mix with whisk. Add egg/milk mixture, salt and sugar to pot. Mix with whisk until smooth.

Spray waffle maker with no-stick spray. Fry waffles according to instructions with waffle maker or until waffles are golden brown. Remove waffle. Wrap waffle around hot dog. Smaker godt (Tastes great.)

TIDBITS

1) An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

2) Garlic keeps vampires away.

3) Garlic infused apples would keep vampires doctors away.

4) There are no vampire doctors in Norway.

5) Thus, the Norwegians may eat whatever food they want and still feel safe.

6) Waffles are great comfort food. So are hot dogs.

7) Eating a waffle-wrapped hot dog will make you quite happy. Ecstatic even. Best not to overdo it. All things in moderation.

8) Potatoes, not pancakes as was once believed, enabled the Prussian kingdom survive the Seven Years War, 1756 – 1763. Invading armies destroyed the crops that grew above ground, such as wheat, but couldn’t find the potatoes lurking underground. The Prussian peasants simply waited for the marauders to leave, dug up the potatoes, ate them, and survived.

9) However, you cannot hide waffles or even hot dogs in the ground for any length of time and expect to find them edible. Which is why peasants never planted waffles.

10)) The Seven Years War of tidbit 8) fame really did take seven years.

11) However, the Hundred Years War, which ran from 1337-1453, took 116 years.

12) Similarly, Panama hats do not come from Panama.

13) They come from Ecuador.

14) Ecuador is not that far from Chile.

15) In Chile. It is impolite to eat using your hands.

16) So if you are carrying a potato in your Panama hat, because you never know when a ruffian soldier frisks you for a loaf of rye bread, be sure to eat it with a fork.

17) It might be hard to eat a raw potato with a fork. Eating mashed potatoes would be easier.

18) However, your Chilean friends will think that coming to their houses with mashed potatoes on your head is also impolite. And they will tell you so.

19) However, your Chilean hosts might forebear from social criticism if you are a vampire doctor.

20) It’s all so confusing. It’s why we have etiquette experts.

– 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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Simple Corned Beef Recipe

Posted on February 22, 2013 by pauldelancey

Irish Entree

SIMPLE CORNED BEEF

INGREDIENTSCornBee-

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

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 water until it covers the brisket and vegetables. Cook on low setting for about 2 hours or until vegetables are tender. Serve to adoring guests.

This is an astoundingly versatile dish. See the following two recipes for delightful meals made out of this recipe’s leftovers.

Tell your spellbound guests corned-beef takes 10 days to prepare. This, of course, is the do-it-yourself corned-beef version. You used ready-to-eat corned beef brisket. But you needn’t tell them that.

TIDBITS

1) Potatoes make great French fries.

2) They’re nutritious and a great source of calories too.

3) They grow in the ground where they can’t be seen by hungry, foraging armies marching back and forth across peasants’ fields.

4) On July 14, 1689 Madame Farine du Blé of Poulet sur Marne noticed invading Bavarians ransacking the granary of her neighbors, the Herbes, while leaving her own field of potatoes completely untouched.

5) This fact kinda excited the peasantry of France who relied almost exclusively on food for eating.

6) Frederick the Great of Prussia noticed this fact as well. He insisted that all the Prussian peasants plant potatoes.

7) And boy, those peasants were glad they did. Massive French, Austrian, and Russian armies crisscrossed the Prussian kingdom from 1756 to 1763 carting off all the wheat they could find. But the Prussian peasants didn’t starve.

8) Why? These farmers simply waited for the invading soldiers to leave, dug up their potatoes, and cooked them. And if the peasants also had the proper spices and deep fryers, they dined on papas rellena, Peruvian stuffed potatoes.

9) When individual peasants don’t starve, the country as a whole doesn’t starve. A well-fed nation can afford to feed it armies in the field. And those Prussian armies did really well earning both victory and survival at the end of the Seven Years War.

10) Prussia united Germany in 1871. A united Germany caused World War I. A united Germany caused World War II. Both wars were unarguably unpleasant.

11) So think about that when you are asked, “Do you want fries with that?”

– 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, food, history, humor, international, recipes | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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