Posts Tagged With: ricotta

Valentine’s Day Feast

Posted on February 14, 2024 by pauldelancey

I’m way too tired and my back is too sore to be clever on this post. So, I’ll just describe what I made.

Beverage: Arrowroot custard from St. Vincent

Ingredients were: arrowroot powder, milk, sugar, vanilla extract, and egg yolks.

Dinner: Cheese lasagna

Ingredients were: flour, eggs, egg yolk, water, garlic cloves, white onion, mozzarella cheese, Parmesan cheese, ricotta cheese, red wine, olive oil, spaghetti sauce, diced tomatoes, basil, bay leaf, Italian seasoning, oregano, pepper, salt, and thyme.

Dessert: Angel Food Cupcake with Whipped Cream Frosting

Ingredients were: cake flour, sugar, salt, cream of tartar, egg whites, vanilla extract, water, confectioners’ sugar, heavy whipping cream, vanilla extract, and sprinklies.

Whew.

I hope had a good day.

– 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, what I did | Tags: angel food, arrowroot, cheese, cupcake, custard, feast, frosting, lasagne, mozzarella, Parmesan, ricotta, sprinkles, St. Vincent, Valentine's Day, whipped cream | Leave a comment

Beef Lasagna

Posted on September 3, 2023 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

BEEF LASAGNA

INGREDIENTS – PASTA

3 cups flour*

2 eggs

1 egg yolk

½ cup water or more

* = More might be needed for dusting, texture.

INGREDIENTS – BEEF & CHEESE

3 garlic cloves

1 white onion

½ cup fresh Parmesan cheese (2 tablespoons more later)

½ pound mozzarella cheese

1 cup ricotta cheese

1 pound ground beef

⅓ cup red wine

1 26-ounce jar spaghetti sauce

1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes

1 teaspoon basil

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

1 teaspoon oregano

¼ teaspoon pepper

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon thyme

INGREDIENTS – ASSEMBLY

2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese

SPECIAL UTENSILS

9-inch x 13-inch baking dish

no-stick pastry mat
rolling pin
hand crank pasta machine
cooking scissors (If your baking dish is 8-inches x 8-inches, for example)

no-stick spray

Serves 12. Takes 3 hours 10 minutes.

PREPARATION – DOUGH

Combine 3 cups flour, eggs, egg yolk, and water into large mixing bowl. Knead with hands for 15 minutes. Make a ball of the mixture. It should be only slightly sticky and should just be able to come off your hand. If some of the ball sticks to your hand, then add a bit more flour, mix again, and try the new flour. If the flour ball is powdery, it is too dry. Add a bit more water, mix again, and try the consistency of the next ball. There may be a number of these iterations but it must be done. Divide dough ball into 3 equal mini-dough balls. Wrap mini-dough balls with plastic wrap and let sit in refrigerator for 1 hour.

PREPARATION – BEEF & CHEESE

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mince garlic cloves and onion. Grate, Parmesan cheese. Add mozzarella, Parmesan, and ricotta cheeses to medium mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended

Add ground beef, onion, and garlic to frying pan. Cook at medium heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Add red wine, spaghetti sauce, diced tomatoes, basil, bay leaf, Italian seasoning, oregano, pepper, salt, and thyme. Cook on medium heat for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

PREPARATION – PASTA

This preparation needs to be done 3 times. Dust no-stick pastry mat with flour. Remove 1 dough ball from refrigerator. Keep remaining amount in fridge until needed. Put this ¼ dough ball on pastry mat. Dust rolling pin. Roll out dough into oval shape 5½” wide and ¼” thick. (Anything thicker inhibits dough from going through hand-crank pasta machine.)

Use pasta machine’s thickest setting. (#1 on mine.) Hold dough vertically and straight as possible over pasta machine’s roller. Turn crank slowly to feed dough oval through roller. Fold resulting dough sheet in half. Cut about ¼” off each side to make it rectangular and thus easier to feed into roller. (This also makes for uniform dough sheets.) Run this folded sheet through roller.

Dust dough sheet. Set pasta’s setting the next narrower setting. (#2 on mine.) Again, hold dough sheet vertically and straight as possible over pasta machine’s roller. Repeat process, selecting a narrower setting each time, until final pasta sheet is about 1/16″ thick. Repeat entire pasta-sheet preparation until all dough is used. Trim pasta sheets to be 13″ * 4½”. The cutoff pieces of dough can be used to make another sheet.

PREPARATION – ASSEMBLY

Grate 2 teaspoons Parmesan. Use no-stick spray on baking dish. Put a layer of lasagna, 2 side-by-side noodles on the dish. If the noodles happen to be longer than your baking dish, snip off the excess length with your scissors. In this recipe, 6 noodles will make one lasagna dish with 2 layers of meat sauce. Reserve about ½ cup meat sauce. Divide remaining meat sauce and cheese equally between layers.

Cover this 1st layer of noodles with a layer of meat sauce and a layer of cheese. Add a 2nd

layer of noodles, meat sauce, and cheese. Add a 3rd layer of noodles. Spoon just a little meat sauce atop the top layer along with 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese. Put glass lid or aluminum foil on top of baking dish. Cook lasagna in covered baking dish in oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. Cook uncovered for an additional 15 minutes or until bubbly. Remove and let sit for 5 minutes more.

TIDBITS

1) Beef lasagna with homemade noodles takes a lot preparation. I believe it’s worth it. The texture of the homemade noodles far surpasses what you would get from using dry, premade noodles.

2) Still, it’s lot of continual work. So, be nice to the chef who makes this dish. In fact, lavish gifts would be appropriate.

3) You might even proposing marriage to the chef who makes this entree. Could you do better with any other eligible bachelor or bachelorette? No, I didn’t think so.

4) This dish is also complicated for the restaurant. Add in the cost of the beef and cheeses and you can see why can be expensive to order lasagna.

5) Humor break!

Q: Why did the chicken cross to the other side?

A: It didn’t. It was on a Mobius strip.

Ha! Ha! Ha!

6) The following are dishes that I’ve made that require a fair amount of preparation or regular monitoring.

7) Tamales. Why that’s just a lot of corn floury stuff and lead pencil’s worth of filling. Should be cheap. Then you try to make it by hand.

8) Mincemeat pies. As with this dish, Beef Lasagne, there’s a lot of fuss make the pastry.

9) Ravioli. Lasagna’s cousin. You make the pasta the same way. However, you still have to form the individual raviolo–Yes, that is indeed the singular form of ravioli–one way or another from the pasta sheets.

10) Enough of the complicated dishes. Let’s have something easy. Okay, peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That surely is the simplest thing to make. Or is it?

11) Peanut butter sandwich.

12) Two slices of bread.

13) One slice of bread.

14) Nothing on a plate. The virtue of the this dish arises from its utter simplicity in preparation and ingredients. You will never, I guarantee it, need to dash off to the store for a missing ingredient. You might never have on hand some rare herb, but you will always have something of nothing on hand and that’s something. Also, there’s no greater friend to the would-be dieter. There’s literally no calories in nothing.

15) There’s one more simplification. Dispense with the plate. Serve your nothing on nothing. Nothing on nothing remains the most transportable dish ever devised. There you go.

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

Categories: cuisine, international, observations | Tags: beef, cookbook, homemade, Italian entree, lasagna, mincemeat pies, Mobius strip, mozzarella, noodles, Parmesan, pasta, red wine, ricotta, tamales, thriller | Leave a comment

Chicken Sour Cream Soup

Posted on January 17, 2023 by pauldelancey

American Soup

CHICKEN SOUR CREAM SOUP

INGREDIENTS

½ red onion
2 ripe red tomatoes
3 red bell peppers
2 pounds chicken breasts
1½ tablespoons peanut oil (1½ more tablespoons later)

1½ tablespoons peanut oil
1 teaspoon Poultry MagicTM spice
2 teaspoons coriander
2 tablespoons paprika
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon parsley
1 pound sour cream
1 pound chicken broth
½ pound Ricotta cheese

SPECIAL UTENSIL

Dutch oven

PREPARATION

Dice red onion. Remove seeds and stems from tomatoes. Chop tomatoes and bell peppers into ½-inch squares. Chop chicken breasts into 1-inch cubes.

Put 1½ tablespoons peanut oil in Dutch oven. Add chicken cubes. Add poultry spice, coriander, paprika, salt, and parsley. Cook on medium heat for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Put 1½ tablespoons peanut oil in saucepan. Add red onion, tomato, and bell pepper. Cook on medium heat for about 6 minutes or until red onion becomes tender or translucent.

Combine red onion, tomato, and bell pepper with chicken in Dutch oven. Add sour cream, chicken broth, and Ricotta cheese. Cook for 12 minutes on medium heat, stirring occasionally.

Serve in bowls. (If the guests arrive late enough that some of the liquid boils off, don’t worry. Cheerfully, serve them Chicken Sour Cream Stew and Tabasco cocktails.)

TIDBITS

1) My father once came up with a similar dish. He asked my mother what to call the food. She said, “Bruno.” His dish has been “Chicken Bruno” ever since.

2) Saint Bruno was a statesman, chancellor, and brother to the first Holy Roman Emperor Otto I.

3) He is remembered for his eloquence and his refusal to become bishop.

4) However, we don’t know if Saint Bruno liked sour cream on his chicken or not.

6) So, liking sour cream on chicken won’t necessarily help you become a saint.

7) You must perform four miracles to become a saint.

8) It’s a miracle to me how chocolate doughnuts can jump into my shopping cart quite unaided.

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

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: American, apocalyptic, Chef Paul, chicken, Comic Chef, cookbook, Holy Roman Emperor, Lutheran, miracles, murders, Paul DeLancey, Paul R. De Lancey, ricotta, soup, sour cream, thriller | Leave a comment

Käsknöpfle (Cheese Pasta) from Liechtenstein

Posted on October 23, 2021 by pauldelancey

Liechtensteiner Entree

KÄSKNÖPFLE
(Cheese Pasta)

INGREDIENTS

2¼ cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
⅔ cup water
1 medium onion
1½ tablespoons butter
6 cups water
5 ounces Gruyère, Emmenthaler, or Appenzeller* cheese
2 ounces sour cheese: ricotta, cottage, Limburger, goat, Harzer*, or other

* = Appenzeller and Harzer cheeses are your first choices, but they are powerful hard to find in supermarkets. Better luck will be found online.

Serves 4. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add flour and salt to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk. Add eggs and ⅔ cup water to small mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork. Add watery eggs to large mixing bowl. Knead with hands until you get a firm, smooth dough ball. Dough should be thin enough to be pushed through holes in slotted spoon. If not, add a little more water and knead once more. Cover with damp cloth and let sit for 15 minutes.

While dough sits, grate or crumble Gruyère and sour cheeses. Mince onion. Add onion and butter to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently.

Add 6 cups water to large pot. Bring water to boil using high heat. Push dough ball through holes in slotted spoon into boiling water. You should be getting teeny, tiny bits of dough falling in the pot. Stir enough to keep dough from sticking to bottom of pan. Using slotted spoon, skim off dough bits as they float to the surface and add them to a serving bowl.

Add Gruyère and sour cheese to serving bowl. Mix dough bits and cheese with fork until well blended. Top with sautéed onion. Serve with applesauce or green salad.

TIDBITS

1) This is a Liechtensteiner entree. Liechtenstein is a tiny country. It needs a tiny tidbit. Indeed, if you were to spread out a picnic towel, part of the towel would spill over into neighboring Austria. To avoid international incidents, the Treaty of Vaduz forbids expressly picnics in Liechtenstein.

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

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: apocalyptic, Appenzeller, Austria, cheeses, Comic Chef, cookbook, emmenthaler, entree, goat, good food, Gruyere, Harzer, incidents, international, Liechtenstein, Liechtensteinern, Limburger, Lutheran, mushrooms, Paul De Lancey, picnic, recipes, ricotta, thriller, treaty, Vaduz | Leave a comment

Khachapuri (Georgian cheese roll)

Posted on June 15, 2015 by pauldelancey

Georgian Entree

KHACHAPURI

INGREDIENTS

¾ cup milk
1 teaspoon sugar
2½ teaspoons yeast
1 tablespoon olive oil
2⅔ cups flour (4 additional tablespoon later)
¾ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon flour (3 additional tablespoons later)
1 tablespoon butter (2 additional tablespoons later)
1 pound Muenster or mozzarella cheese
½ pound feta cheese
¼ pound ricotta cheese
2 eggs (2 additional eggs later)
2 tablespoons flour (1 additional tablespoon later)
1 tablespoon flour
2 eggs
2 tablespoons butter

SPECIAL UTENSILS

parchment paper or at least, no-stick spray
food processor
2 x 9″ pie tins
clothes dryer

Makes 2 loaves. Takes 2¾ hours.

PREPARATION

Add milk and sugar to small pot. Cook on low-medium heat until mixture is lukewarm. Stir constantly. Remove from heat and add yeast. Stir until well blended. Let cool for 10 minutes. Add olive oil, 2⅔ cups flour, and salt. Stir until mixture becomes a lumpy dough ball. Let sit for 30 minutes.

While dough ball sits, dust a flat surface with 1 tablespoon flour. Add dough ball to flat surface. Knead dough by hand until you are at peace with the world or 8 minutes. Grease large mixing bowl with 1 tablespoon butter. Add knead dough ball to greased, first mixing bowl. Turn dough ball around until it’s coated with butter. Cover bowl and let sit for 1 hour.

While dough rises, cut Muenster and feta cheeses into ½” cubes. Add grated Muenster, feta, and ricotta cheeses to food processor. Blend until only a few cubes remain. Add 2 eggs and 2 tablespoons flour. Blend until mixture is smooth. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

After dough has risen, dust flat surface with 1 tablespoon flour. Add dough ball to flat surface. Flatten dough ball with hands. Divide dough ball in half. Flatten dough halves until they are 11″ wide and about ⅛” thick. Add parchment paper or no-stick spray to pie tins. Add flattened dough halves to pie tins. Add half of cheese/egg/flour mixture to center of each dough half. Pull edges of dough to the center until there is only a round 1″ hole in the middle. Pinch edges together.

Bake for 15 minutes at 375 degrees or until bread loaves are starting to brown. Use spoon or shot glass to press a 3″ hole in the center of the loaves. Add an egg to each 3″ hole. Bake at 375 for 15 minutes or until loaves turn golden brown and eggs are slightly set. (The eggs will continue to cook after being removed from the oven.) Remove from oven and brush each loaf with 1 tablespoon butter.

Serve hot to adoring guests. Put pairs of unappreciative guests in pairs of matched socks. Put sock-clad guests in clothes drier. When one of the matching socks disappears, as often happens, it’ll take one of the complainers with it. Repeat until your home has only happy people in it.

TIDBITS

1) This entree is from the country called Georgia. This Georgia is near Russia and Iran. There is also a state in America called Georgia. It is near Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina.

2) Both Georgias are named after Madamoiselle Georgia Chat. We know little about Mlle. Mousse save that she was born in Tours, France about 708. She was also extraordinarily beautiful. Okay, we know that. Oh, she was also fabulously rich. All right, we know that as well. So, you’d think she’d be a hot marriage prospect for all the local barons. Why did she never marry?

3) Mademoiselle Georgia never considered giving up her independence and she had a giant, pet rabbit Snuggles to protect her. How gigantic? Sources yield varying heights from twelve feet tall to the preposterous sixty-seven feet. Given the fact that Snuggles was also a ninja, you can see why the local nobility thought twice before courting her. On it went. Georgia performed scientific experiments. She even invented the briquette for barbecuing while Snuggles swung his one-ton hammer. at local lords and door-to-door salesmen.

4) Then in 732, Abd Al-Raman with his Berber tribesmen invaded the Frankish kingdom. The Franks assembled their forces at Tours under Charles the Pippinid. The Muslim Berbers were famed for their cavalry. The Franks had the fiercest infantry in all of Europe. Unfortunately, the Franks at the time were notorious for their allergy to horses.

5) The Muslims should have won. Europe should now be eating koushry instead of croissants. What happened? Snuggles happened. He shoved his way past the sneezing Frankish infantry and swung his mighty hammer over and over again at the massed Berber cavalry. Soon, the overmatched Berbers fled, but not before one of them shot an arrow through Snuggles’ heart.

6) Two bards saw the battle and would travel the world singing Snuggles’ praises. One settled in America, the other near Russia. Locals impressed by Snuggle’s deeds wanted to renamed their lands after him, but balked at his cutesy name. They settled on Georgia instead and there you have it.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, history, humor, international | Tags: Alabama, America, Berber, briquette, Chef Paul, cookbook, De Lancey, entree, Europe, feta, Florida, France, Frankish, Franks, Georgia, Georgian, hammer, infantry, Iran, khachapuri, marriage, Muenster, olive oil, rabbit, recipes, ricotta, Russia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Tours | Leave a comment

Beef Lasagna

Posted on October 26, 2012 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

BEEF LASAGNA

INGREDIENTS

water
1/4 teaspoon salt (1/2 teaspoon more later)
12 ounces lasagna noodles
3 garlic cloves
1 white onion
8 ounces mozzarella cheese
1 cup ricotta cheese
1/2 cup fresh Parmesan cheese (2 tablespoons more later)
4 peppercorns
1 pound ground beef
1/3 cup red wine
1 26 ounce jar spaghetti sauce
1 15 ounce can diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon basil
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon Meat MagicTM spice
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt (1/4 teaspoon more earlier)
1/2 teaspoon thyme
2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese (1/2 cup more earlier)

UTENSILS

9-inch x 13-inch baking dish
cooking scissors (If your baking dish is 8-inches x 8-inches, for example)
spice grinder
no-stick spray

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Boil water in large pot. Add salt and lasagna noodles. Cook noodles according to directions on package or for about 9 minutes on high heat. Remove noodles and set aside. Make sure the lasagna noodles are all separate after you do this. (If not, you’ll need to add another chunk of time separating the noodles that cling to each other with a tenacity rivaling a salesman pitching to a hot prospect.)

Peel and mince onion and garlic cloves. Grate, chop, fold, mutilate, and spindle mozzarella cheese and Parmesan cheese. Mix these cheeses together along with the ricotta cheese. Use spice grinder to well, grind peppercorns. (If you don’t have a spice grinder you can gnash your teeth in rage, use 1/4 teaspoon pepper, or shrug your shoulders in the belief that no one will notice.)

Add ground beef, onion, and garlic to frying pan. Cook at medium heat for about 5 minutes or until meat is no longer pink.
Add red wine, spaghetti sauce, diced tomatoes, basil, bay leaf, meat spice, oregano, salt, thyme, and peppercorns. Cook on medium heat for about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Use no-stick spray on baking dish. Put a layer of lasagna, most likely 3 side-by-side noodles on the dish. If the noodles are longer than your baking dish, snip off the excess length with your scissors.

In this recipe, 9 noodles will make one lasagna dish with 2 layers of meat sauce. Reserve about 1/2 cup meat sauce. Divide remaining meat sauce and cheese equally between layers.

Cover this first layer of noodles with a layer of meat sauce and a layer of cheese. Add a second layer of noodles, meat sauce, and cheese. Add a third layer of noodles. Spoon just a little meat sauce atop the top layer along with 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese. Put glass lid or aluminum foil on top of baking dish.

Cook lasagna in covered baking dish in oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. Cook uncovered for an additional 15 minutes or until bubbly. Remove and let sit for 5 minutes more.

Serve to adoring guests. Become lifelong friends with any who offer to clean up.

TIDBITS

1) Lasagna was first developed in England in the 14th century.

2) The English version had cinnamon and saffron instead of tomatoes.

3) Saffron is incredibly expensive. It runs about $170 an ounce today. Tomatoes cost $2 to $3 a pound.

4) This price differential put an incredible pressure on English cooks to substitute tomatoes for saffron.

5) Many more tomatoes are widely grown in France and Italy. English cooks turned there eyes to these regions.

6) Most historians believe England under Edward III invaded France in 1347 for various dynastic reasons.

7) But there was pressure on King Edward by his kingdom’s cooks to secure a source of lasagna ingredients far cheaper than saffron.

8) The Hundred Years War lasted until 1453, which shows just how fiercely people will fight for their tomatoes.

9) I fear a war over saffron.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, food, history, humor, international, recipes | Tags: cookbook, cooks, Edward III, entree, France, Hundred Years War, Italian, Italy.English, lasagna, Meat Magic, Parmesan, ricotta, saffron, tomatoes | Leave a comment

Posts Tagged With: ricotta

Valentine’s Day Feast