Posts Tagged With: recipes

Shrimp Tempura

Posted on August 27, 2016 by pauldelancey

Japanese Appetizer

SHRIMP TEMPURA

INGREDIENTSShrimpTempura-

2½ cups vegetable oil (or enough to cover shrimp)
1½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ cup cornstarch
¼ teaspoon salt
1 egg yolk
1 cup ice-cold water
1 pound shrimp, 21-30 count, peeled, deveined, with tails left on*

* = Don’t worry if you removed the tails. This dish will taste as good. You’ll need forks; it will be hot.

SPECIAL UTENSILS                                                                         Oops, I removed the tails. I was distracted

deep fryer or electric skillet                                                                        by earthquakes and T-Rexes.
Bushnell 303 Hand Held Time MachineTM.

Serves 6. Takes 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add oil to deep fryer. (Make sure there is enough to cover shrimp.) Preheat oil to 375 degrees. While oil heats, add flour, baking powder, cornstarch, and salt to large mixing bowl. Beat egg yolk in small bowl with whisk. Add beaten egg yolk and ice-cold water to large mixing bowl. Mix with fork until combined mixture turns to batter and is still slightly lumpy. Dredge shrimp though batter until completely coated. Don’t batter shrimp tails.

Add shrimp to deep fryer. Don’t let the shrimp touch each other. Fry shrimp at 375 degrees for 1½-to-2 minutes or until golden brown. Drain on paper towels. Repeat for successive batches.

TIDBITS

1) So many recipes tell you to preheat. What if you don’t have time to preheat? What if your sweetie is coming over? What if you see monstrous, rolling earthquakes just outside your window and you had wanted to make something special for him on his birthday, probably the last one by the looks of it? Simply use your Bushnell 303 Hand Held Time MachineTM to travel back in time and preheat your oven. How far back? As far as the Cretaceous Period if you like**.

2) ** = Be sure to look out for carnivorous dinosaurs. Also, hold onto your oven when you time travel. Otherwise, it won’t go with you and you’ll will have risked by eaten by a T-Rex for nothing. And then, won’t you feel foolish? Oh, and your electric bill will be high.

– 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, humor | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Fried Green Tomatoes

Posted on August 21, 2016 by pauldelancey

American Appetizer

FRIED GREEN TOMATOES
With Dipping Sauce

INGREDIENTS – DIPPING SAUCEFriedGreenTomatoesCornmeal-

2 stalks green onions
⅔ cup Dijon mustard
½ cup mayonnaise
⅓ cup sour cream
1 teaspoon white pepper

INGREDIENTS – TOMATOES

4 large or 2 pounds green tomatoes*
½ tablespoon salt (1 teaspoon more later)
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup flour
¾ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
up to 2 cups vegetable oil

* = WARNING. This really is a lot of work if you’re using many tiny green tomatoes. If it takes more than 8 green tomatoes to make 2 pounds, consider cutting the amount of ingredients in half. Certainly, you’ll only get to eat only 1 pound of tomatoes this way, while people living in the land of big tomatoes get 2 pounds. However, you won’t be muttering to yourself and looking in the garage for an axe. Alternatively, move to the land of the big tomatoes. Oh, and leave your axe behind.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

electric skillet
3 mixing bowls

Serves 8. Takes 1 hour 20 minutes to 2 hours 30 minutes depending on the size of the tomatoes. Bigger tomatoes take less time. They really do.

PREPARATION – DIPPING SAUCE

Mince green onions. Add dipping sauce ingredients to mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended. Cover and chill until tomatoes are deep fried.

PREPARATION – TOMATOES

Cut tomatoes into ¼” slices. Pat tomato slices dry with paper towel. Put slices on wire racks over plates. Sprinkle slices evenly with ½ tablespoon salt. Let sit for 30 minutes to draw out water.

While tomato slices sit, add cornmeal, flour, pepper, and 1 teaspoon salt to large, second mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended. Divide this cornmeal/flour mixture onto 3 plates. (This will keep the cornmeal/from clumping up from the moisture of buttermilk laden tomato slice.) Add buttermilk to third mixing bowl. Dip tomatoes slices in buttermilk. Dredge buttermilk-covered slices one at time through cornmeal/flour mixture until they are well coated.

Set skillet to 375 degrees. Add enough oil to coat tomato slices to skillet. Oil will be hot enough when a tiny bit of flour added to skillet will dance in the oil. Add as many tomato slices as possible to skillet without them touching each other. Fry 3 minutes on each side or until they turn golden brown. (Cooking time tends to go down a little with each successive batch.) Additional batches might be necessary. Drain on paper towels. Serve with dipping sauce.

TIDBITS

1) Tomatoes can be cut with a regular knife. But not with any uniformity. Sure, you’ll get the occasional .25″ thick slice, but more often than not you’ll get slices with widths of .28″ or even .35″. However if your neighbors know that your make half-inch wide slices, you will be shunned.

2) In cases like these, it’s best to bolt all the doors and pull down all the shades until you have gotten rid of your deformed tomato slabs. Thieves know that houses with drawn shades and bolted doors mean that desperate knife-wielding, tomato-disposing folks are at a home and leave them at home. So when you leave the homestead, bolt your doors and draw their shades. Thieves won’t know if you’ve stepped out or are destroying culinary crimes. They won’t take the chance.

3) So don’t slice tomatoes with a knife. Then with what? A mandoline. This kitchen device makes uniform tomato slices. Now you can raise your shades and go out into your anal retentive, tomato-loving neighborhood. Be accepted, even.

4) How did the mandoline get started? Renaissance mandolin players loved sliced tomatoes. But the knives way back were even less precise than the ones we use today. Thick-tomato-slice shame ran rampant. Frustrated mandoliners took to smashing their tomatoes with their mandolins. This is how pasta sauce got invented. This is how spaghetti with marinara sauce came about. This is how Italy became the culinary capital in the world.

5) Folk music became popular in America during the 19th century. Folk guitarists took over the role of pasta-sauce makers. However, wooden acoustic guitars were amazing fragile. Just a few tomato smashings would break them. So, the pasta-sauce industry invented the sturdy electric guitar. Those things could smash tomatoes forever.

6) In 1968, a word-changing event occurred. The band Iron Butterfly released the song “In a Gadda Da Vida.” It was great. It was immensely popular. Rock bands started earning big bucks playing music of all things.

7) Rich electric guitarists gave up making pasta sauce. Italian restaurants all over the world were in danger on closing. But they didn’t, Mandy Linne, lead singer for Beefsteak had a drug-induced vision. “Why not insert a blade into a fixed surface, couple that with an adjustable upper surface, slide the tomato along the adjustable surface until it meets the blade resulting in uniform slices?” Mandy L. passed out. Her idea did not. We are living in a golden age of uniformly sliced tomatoes.

– 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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Codfish Cakes

Posted on August 17, 2016 by pauldelancey

British Entree

CODFISH CAKES

INGREDIENTSCodfishCakes-

1 pound cod fillets
2 large potatoes
½ teaspoon salt
1½ tablespoons butter
1 small egg
1½ tablespoons minced onion
1 teaspoon parsley
⅛ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon tarragon
1 large egg
¼ cup vegetable oil
½ cup breadcrumbs

Makes 6 codfish cakes. Takes 2¼ hours, more if you spill the bowl with beaten egg on yourself and you need to change clothes and beat another egg.

PREPARATION

Cut cod into 1″ squares. Peel potatoes and cut them into fourths. Add potato and salt to large pot. Add enough water to cover. Bring to boil using high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes or until potato fourths are almost tender. Drain water. Mash potato fourths with potato masher or fork. Remove from heat.

Add cod to pan and cover with water. Simmer on low heat for 5-to-10 minutes or until cod becomes soft and begins to flake. Stir frequently. Drain water.

While cod simmers, beat small egg. Add cod, potato, butter, beaten small egg, onion, parsley, pepper, and tarragon to large mixing bowl. Mix with hands until well blended. Form mixture into 6 round, flat cakes.

Add large egg to second mixing bowl. Beat with whisk. Add breadcrumbs to plate. Dredge codfish cakes through breadcrumbs until completely coated. Dip coated codfish cakes into beaten egg. Refrigerate codfish cakes for 45 minutes or until they are firm.

Add oil to pan. Heat on medium-high heat until a little breadcrumb starts to dance in the oil. Add as many codfish cakes as possible to pan. (You might need to cook the cakes in batches.) Sauté cakes for 3-to-5 minutes on each side or until golden brown. (The time needed to cook the codfish cakes tends to go down with successive batch.) Serve via catapult or, more traditionally, on a plate. Goes well with tartar sauce.
TIDBITS

1) The codpiece was a bag, or piece of clothing, that was sown into men’s pants. Men kept their lunch in it. Most of the time, the lunch was the ever popular cod. Hence, the codpiece.

2) Pause and reflect how amazing that tidbit 1) is true. I thought I had made something up but no, it’s all factual.

3) Renaissance women, having noses, objected to the foul smell emanating from their husbands’ fish-laden groins. It got so bad, that women went on a sex strike in 1454. This was a great opportunity for the porn industry to start. However, the lack of hand-held cameras, the internet with its downloading capabilities, and DVD daunted even the most entrepid entrepreneurs.

4) The DVD-deprived House of York favored giving into their spouses’s demands. The House of Not York favored keeping their fish lunch near their manhood. Tempers rose. Thing were said and soon civil war broke out between the two houses. From 1455 to 1485. Biff! Biff!

6) Thank goodness, that bloody civil war is over. The House of Not York won. Men everywhere cheered.

8) Not so, with their wives. Fishy groins still stank. Intimacy between spouses remained intermittent.

9) However, the husbands still wanted their bed dancing. This need proved to be an opening for enterprising prostitutes. And so, prostitution became a thriving industry along with chocolate chip cookies. Such cookies placed on the bordellos’s window sills lured customers in again and again. Kinda like S&H Green StampsTM during the 1950s and 1960s or even like frequent-flier miles now.

11) How did these horizontal entrepreneurs stand the codfish stench of their customers? By smoking tobacco. Smoking deadens the sense of smell.

12) The wives soon found out this secret and took up smoking as well. Men came back to their wives. Relations were resumed. Babies were born. The population soared. The supply of jobs didn’t. Men became restless and rioted. Monarchs fear revolutions. Monarchs feared losing their heads.

13) Kings everywhere enrolled angry, aimless youth into their military. Armies expanded. So, did the opportunities for conflict. Soon, vast armies of armed, cod-stuffing youths fought each other all over Europeans for centuries.

14) Refrigeration came to America in 1911. American men no longer needed to keep cod in their shorts. Men and women no longer need to deaden their noses with cigarettes. People could smell flowers again. Gardening became America’s national pastime. All was well in the USA.

15) Tragically, refrigeration did not come to Europe until 1915, too late to stop World War I. Nasally impaired leaders all over the continents sent an entire generation to its doom. If only they had been able to stop and smell the roses.

16) Thanks to refrigeration and the calming ability to smell roses there has not another major conflict to speak off aside from the Unpleasantness of 1939-1945 and a few other spats. Yay.

– 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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Crispy Fish Taco

Posted on August 11, 2016 by pauldelancey

Mexican Entree

CRISPY FISH TACO

INGREDIENTSFishTaco-

⅓ cup mayonnaise
1½ cups coleslaw mix or shredded cabbage
2 tablespoons oil (2 additional tablespoons later)
8 corn tortillas
2 tablespoons butter
2 garlic cloves
1 pound cod, tilapia, or orange roughy fillets
½ tablespoon lime juice
½ teaspoon cumin
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup melon salsa (See above recipe) or mango salsa

SPECIAL UTENSILS

electric skillet
9″ loaf pan

Makes 8 tacos. Takes 35 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add mayonnaise and coleslaw mix to mixing bowl. Mix with fork. Add 2 tablespoons vegetable oil to skillet. Heat oil to 375 degrees. The oil is hot enough if it sizzles when a tortilla is added. Add 1 tortilla at a time. Suté tortilla for 20 seconds on each side or until tortilla is crispy but still flexible enough to be folded. Fold tortilla in half and place it upright in loaf pan. Put a paper towel on each side of tortilla to drain off grease. Repeat for 8 remaining tortillas.

Melt butter in pan using medium heat. Dice garlic cloves. Add fish and lime juice to mixing bowl. Turn fish until well coated. Add garlic and cumin to bowl. Turn fish fillets until well coated with garlic and cumin.

Add 2 tablespoons vegetable oil to pan. Cook on medium heat until a few bubbles appear. Carefully add fish fillets to pan. (Holding the pan’s lid between you and the pan with our other hand is often a good idea in these situations.) Sauté for about 3 minutes on each side or until fish fillets flake easily with fork. Remove from heat. Put ⅛ of the fish flakes in a crispy tortilla. Add 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise/coleslaw mix to tortilla. Top with 2 tablespoons of melon salsa. Repeat for each taco.

TIDBITS

1) Psychic factors are afoot.

2) How do I know this?

3) An anagram for “crispy fish taco” is “psychic factors.”

4) Would I have gotten the same anagram with “crispy beef tacos?”

5) No, in that cash the anagram would have been “pbycee factors.”

6) There is no such thing as pbycee factors, although there are crispy beef tacos. Spooky.

7) So, what inspired me to make up a recipe for crispy beef tacos or even for the throw-caution-to-the wind crispy chicken tacos?

8) Psychic factors. Proof you cannot deny.

10) Who or what are responsible for these psychic factors making me make crispy fish tacos, specifically using cod as the seafood of choice?

11) Crayfish optometrists. Their organization is called Crayfish OpticsTM. Crayfish Optics wants to drive every human optician and optometrist in Louisiana out of business.

12) Why? There’s much more money to be made treating human eyes than those of crayfish. Always has been.

13) There’s also an urgent, ugly side to the crayfish optometrists desire to make people like me post recipes like this one. The crayfish know people will always will eat seafood. They want their cod brethren to give up their lives for our recipes, not themselves. It’s a fish eat fish world down there.

14) Why don’t cod notice these deadly attempts by the crayfish? I know there’s really no room for advancement for cod as such, but still, why not resist?

15) The cod don’t have time to notice how their being substituted into more and more recipes and menus. They obsess over every little detail in their little fish world. Cod are OCD. OCD is an anagram for cod. Proof you cannot deny.

16) Why hasn’t the vaunted Louisiana Marine Outreach and Intelligence Investigation Agency (LMOIIA) caught onto the nefarious plans of Crayfish Optics?

17) Simple, most Louisianans refer to crayfish as crawfish. So, the LMOIIA is only looking for activity from crawfish.

18) But how can the grate LMOIIA, try saying that real fast, be thrown off by such a simple trick as changing the “w” in crawfish?

19) Sad to say, Louisiana’s budget woes have affected all its agencies, none more than LMOIIA. LMOIIA’s people just don’t have the people or the resources to see through such a simple trick. The crawfish know this. They keep up on the state’s finances. Cod-killing bastards.

Chef Paul

LutheranCookbook

My cookbook, Eat Me: 169 Fun Recipes From All Over the World,  and my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, are available in paperback or Kindle on amazon.com

The cookbook is also available as an e-book on Nook

or on my website-where you can get a signed copy at: www.lordsoffun.com

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

Shrimp Ceviche

Posted on August 4, 2016 by pauldelancey

Ecuadorian Appetizer

SHRIMP CEVICHE

INGREDIENTSCeviche-

8 limes or ¼ cup fresh lime juice
3 oranges or 1 cup fresh orange juice
1 large red onion
3 tomatoes
2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
¼ cup fresh cilantro
⅓ cup ketchup
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Squeeze limes and oranges to get juices. Cut red onion into long, thin strips. Dice cilantro and tomato. Add enough water to cover shrimp to pot. Bring water to boil using high heat. Add shrimp to pot. Boil until shrimp turns slightly pink, about 2-to-3 minutes. Do not overcook, letting it turn completely red, as it will make the shrimp mushy. Remove shrimp with slotted spoon and let cool. Add lime juice, orange juice, red onion, cilantro, tomato, ketchup, pepper, salt, and vegetable oil to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add shrimp once it has cooled. Mix with hands until shrimp is well coated. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.

TIDBITS

1) Shrimp ceviche is reddish-pink and tasty. Many Vikings had reddish hair and loved good tasting food. However, Vikings ate oatmeal all the time, bowl after bowl. This drove the Norsemen crazy. They started cheating at checkers and saying, “Sez you” to everyone they met.

3) The Viking women took to cooking lutefisk. the foulest smelling, most evil dish ever rather than cook another yet bowl of oatmeal. Some wives had even thrown themselves into fjords instead of doing that. Fortunately, lutefisk’s horrible smell drove the menfolk to raid foreign lands for tasty food and even gold, sometimes. The women stayed at home and played Runeble, basically ScrabbleTM with runes, and ordered Chinese takeaway.

4) In 1284, Bjorni Thorvald, discovered Ecuador, while looking for a Pokemon GoTM character. This news electrified all Scandinavia. Whole clans of blood-thirsty Vikings moved to Ecuador. This is why there are so many blue-eyed redheads there.

5) Thus, the Viking raids stopped. Relieved Europeans came out of hiding to build the Renaissance.

– 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, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Beef Jerky

Posted on August 1, 2016 by pauldelancey

American Appetizer

BEEF JERKY

INGREDIENTSBeefJerky-

1 pound flank steak, London broil or round steak
¼ teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon pepper (Freshly ground is best)
¾ teaspoon liquid smoke
6 tablespoons soy sauce
5 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar

Serves 4. Takes 13-to-20 hours.

SPECIAL UTENSILS

wire rack
baking sheet

PREPARATION

Slice beef across the grain into strips ¼” thick. Add all other ingredients to large mixing bowl. Mix ingredients with whisk until well blended and brown sugar dissolves completely. Add beef strips to bowl. Mix by hand until strips are well coated. Cover bowl or put in large, sealable plastic, bag. Place in refrigerator for 8-to-12 hours. Stir at least once.

Preheat oven to 160 degrees. Remove meat from marinade and pat dry with paper towels. Put wire rack on top of baking sheet. Place marinated strips on top of wire rack. Do not let strips touch each other. Bake at 160 degrees for 5-to-7 hours or until strips are ready. Strips will be ready when jerky is dry enough to easily tear off a piece, yet will not snap when bent. Preserve jerky strips from air and humidity by storing them in mason jars or sealable plastic bags.

TIDBITS

1) Origami flourished in Texas during the dark, final months of the Confederacy. The Union blockade ships had deprived the state of all sorts of fun things: fine linen, playing cards, refrigerators*, baseball bats, anything that reeked of fun. All they had left was paper. Which was used for spitwads and even sent to the front lines, where they proved utterly useless in thwarting the bluecoat advance. Soon however, the thriving art colony of Tyler, Texas experimented with making animals out of paper. The Texas Art of Origami was born. Drovers, far from sources of paper, turned to making thin strips of cooked beef for their origami material. And so, beef jerky was born.

2) *Culinary historians are at a loss to explain these apparent artifacts in the Texas of 1865.

– 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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Camarones Enchilados

Posted on July 28, 2016 by pauldelancey

Cuban Entree

CAMARONES ENCHILADOS

INGREDIENTSCamaronesEnchilados-

2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
3 tablespoons lime juice
½ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup fresh cilantro
4 garlic cloves
1 large onion
¼ cup fresh parsley
1 cubanelle, Anaheim pepper or yellow bell pepper
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 bay leaf
½ teaspoon TabascoTM sauce
¾ cup tomato sauce
½ cup white wine

Makes 4 bowls. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add shrimp, lime juice, pepper, and salt to large mixing bowl. Mix together with hand or fork until shrimp is thoroughly coated. Cover and marinate in refrigerator for 1 hour. While shrimp marinates, mince cilantro, garlic cloves, onion and , parsley. Seed and dice cubanelle. Remove shrimp and keep marinade from mixing bowl.

Add olive oil, cubanelle, garlic, and onion to frying pan. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add cilantro, parsley, marinade, bay leaf, Tabasco sauce, tomato sauce, and white wine. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add shrimp and simmer for 5 or until shrimp turns pink or orange and is no longer translucent. Remove bay leaf. Goes well with rice.

TIDBITS

1) Nes Enchila sold shrimp on a stick from the back of his Chevy Camaro in the Little Miami section of Havana during the 1950s. His food was so good that the Spanish speaking people, of which there were many in Havana, would ask for two or “dos.”

2) In 1959, hungry Cuban revolutionaries hailed Nes as he drove by. Nes remembered how Dictator Bautista had just stiffed him on a big catering order and fed them all. Their energy restored, Castro and his men ousted Bautista in two days. Later, Castro invited the Russians over for Nes’s shrimp. They brought missiles with them and the world almost had a nuclear war. Nes’s food was that 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.

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

Danish Millionbøf

Posted on July 23, 2016 by pauldelancey

Danish Entree

MILLIONBØF

INGREDIENTSMillionBof-

1 pound potatoes
1 large onion
2 teaspoons butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 pound ground beef (85% lean is best)
2 tablespoons flour
1¾ cups beef stock
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons gravy browning or dark gravy

Makes 4 bowls. Takes 50 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel potatoes. Cut potatoes into fourths. Put potato fourths in large pot. Boil on high heat for 20 minutes.

While potatoes are boiling, dice onion. Add onion, butter, and vegetable oil to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until it starts to brown or BEGINS TO SOFTEN. Stir frequently. Add ground beef. Reduce heat to medium. Cook for 3-to-5 minutes or until beef starts to brown. Stir occasionally.

After potatoes have been boiled for 20 minutes, remove them from pot. Put potatoes in large mixing bowl. Mash them. Add flour to pan with ground beef. Stir until well blended. Add beef stock, pepper, and salt.. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 20 minutes or until less than half of the liquid is left. Stir occasionally. Add gravy browning. Stir until well blended. Serve over mashed potatoes.

TIDBITS

1) Bøf is Danish for beef. Bøf is also a palindrome for føb. Føb isn’t Danish for anything, although the Danes do have a word for everything that exists. Føb is just a reserve word the Danes have just in case something really new is discovered, such as a carnivorous, ambulatory fig looking tree on Mars. (CAMFLTOM)

2) The Danish Official Word Naming Association (DOWNA) would then look down their list of approved new words. If føb were at the top of the list, then the CAMFTOM would be called “føb.”

3) There’s more. Take the first letter away from føb and you get øf, the Danish word for oink. Now you know both of Denmark’s really necessary words. Remember the song, “If I could talk to the Danes?” Well, now you can. Go visit Denmark. Visit today, before you lose your vocabulary.

– 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, humor, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Simple Jordanian Hummus

Posted on May 6, 2016 by pauldelancey

Jordanian Appetizer

SIMPLE HUMMUS

INGREDIENTSHummus-

2 cans chick peas (keep liquid)
2 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ cup olive oil
¾ cup tahini
¼ teaspoon cumin
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt

SPECIAL UTENSIL

blender

Makes 5 cups. Takes 10 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add all ingredients to blender. Blend on medium setting until smooth. If your hummus is watery, add tahini. If it is too thick, add water and olive oil. This is a forgiving recipe. You can add more of each ingredient until the hummus is the way you like it. Hummus goes well with pita bread.

TIDBITS

1) It’s more authentic to smash up the chick peas with a mortar and pestle. If guests complain about you using a blender, point to the title of this dish, “Simple Hummus.” Suppose your guests also say, “You shouldn’t use canned chick peas. You need to boil dried chick peas.” Warn them. Right away. “I am the cook. You are in my kitchen.” This proclamation invokes culinary law which is superior to civil law. (See Courgette v Rhode Island.) This decision empowers you to mete out any punishment necessary to restore order in all rooms in the house dealing with food.)

2) Your death defying quests might continue with, “Why didn’t you make your own tahini?” You know have three choices.

3) One. Back down. Please don’t this. The prestige of the entire culinary community world will suffer irreparable damage. Customers will charge into a restaurant’s kitchen armed with the steak knives found on their table every time their rib eyes aren’t done to their liking.

4) Two. Force them out of your house with an electric cattle prod. This is a safe, respectable, middle-ground response.

5) Three. Zap the clods into oblivion with your sonic obliterator, an essential item in any serious kitchen. A strong response to be sure, but these unruly guests will never again bother any chef. Yay.

– 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, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

South African Bobotie

Posted on May 4, 2016 by pauldelancey

South African Entree

BOBOTIE

INGREDIENTSBobotie-

2 slices bread
⅔ cup milk (½ cup more later)
1 Granny Smith or other sour apple
1 large onion
3 tablespoons butter
2 pounds ground beef
2¼ tablespoons lemon juice
1½ tablespoons curry powder
½ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
¾ teaspoon turmeric
2 cups almonds, quartered or slivered
½ cup raisins
5 bay leaves
1 egg
½ cup milk

SPECIAL UTENSIL

8″ x 8″ casserole dish

Makes 8 plates. Takes 1 hour 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add bread and ½ cup milk to small bowl. Let bread soak. Peel, core, and dice apple. Mince onion. Add butter, onion, and beef to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens and beef browns. (The universe is continually expending, things are getting farther apart from each other, hence the extra two blank lines after this paragraph.)

Add beef, onion, diced apple, soaked bread, lemon juice, curry powder, pepper, salt, turmeric, almonds, and raisins to casserole dish. Evenly insert bay leaves, tips standing up, throughout casserole dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

Remove casserole dish. Add egg and ½ cup milk to mixing bowl. Beat with whisk. Ladle egg/milk mix over casserole. Bake for another 15 minutes or until golden brown. Bobotie goes well with rice. However, it goes really, really well with chutney. Omit the chutney and you’ll risk a visit from the culinary police.

TIDBITS

1) There are no gourmet restaurants in space. There once was that orbiting fast-food restaurant called The Outer Limits. It relied heavily on drive-through traffic. It failed. You probably never heard of it.

2) New owners reopened the eatery. This time they added space ports, hoping to get dock-in business from space-shuttle pilots and passengers to and from the International Space Station.

3) It failed as well. Indeed, it never opened. Costs did in this project. The parts necessary to building an up-to-date space docks surprised the eager entrepreneurs. And my gosh, the transportation costs for the materials. Out of this world! Who knew that NASA charged so much to blast off with even the most modest kitchen appliances?

4) Oh, and here is a tip for would be extraterrestrial restarauteurs. When hiring a private company to carry your culinary supplies to your orbiting eatery, don’t hire the shuttle on a mileage basis. The cost will eat you alive. Overtime wages for the shuttle operator are pretty horrific as well.

5) Anyway, there’s a hamburger joint, up there that is fully equipped and ready for business. Make an offer to the bank holding the mortgage. you’ll find it quite easy to work with.

6) I fear I’ve dwelt too long on the costs of operating an off-Earth restaurant.. There are benefits as well. You really don’t need a refrigerator. Simply place your meat, ice cream, etc. outside. The food won’t go bad; the temperature is nearly absolute zero out there. Your restaurant being the only thing of any size in the neighborhood will generate enough gravitational field to carry the food all with it.

7) I do recommend putting all your food in a giant mesh. Picture this. You’re trying to bring inside a rack of ribs. Instead of hooking the ribs you poke them away. The ribs fall out of orbit and hurtle to Earth. Except the ribs don’t make it to Earth. They crash into a satellite on the way down.

8) Only it’s not just any satellite. It’s the one people use to transmit photos of babies, kittens, and puppies to each other. Deprived of their cute pictures, billions of distraught people get into their cars to get the one thing that can ease their pain, a really good burger. And if billions of people turn on their cars at once, the resulting exhaust will cover the world asphyxiating everyone.

9) Social media companies have a reserve satellite permanently on call on a launching pad for this very occasion. They can get a new satellite functioning in space in fifteen minutes.

10) People will probably realize this. Enough of them to avoid suffocating the world. Probably, but do you want to take that chance? So for the future of all of us, please place your out-of-shuttle food in a secure mesh net. Thank you.

11) In the meantime, those wishing to enjoy a fine meal far from the madding crowd, might want to consider heading north, way north. The culinary scene in Svalbard, Norway is vibrant despite being in the land of four-month-long nights and having only 2,642 people. Indeed, the town of Longyearbyen has thirteen fine restaurants. According to TripAdvisorTM, the highest rated restaurant is Huset. It’s also the northernmost gourmet restaurant.

– 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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