Posts Tagged With: rosemary

Turkey Salisbury Steak With Pasta

American Entree

TURKEY SALISBURY STEAK WITH PASTA

.
INGREDIENTS

2 garlic cloves
2 eggs
1 cup bread crumbs
½ teaspoon rosemary
½ teaspoon marjoram
½ teaspoon thyme
1½ pounds ground turkey
1½ tablespoons olive oil

4 tablespoons flour
2 cups chicken broth
3 teaspoons tomato sauce
3 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

½ pound little-shell pasta (or another variety, if you prefer.)
brick for keeping this cook book open to this page

Makes 6 to 8 Salisbury steaks.

PREPARATION

Mince garlic cloves. Use hands to mix minced garlic, eggs, bread crumbs, marjoram, rosemary, thyme, and turkey in large mixing bowl. Form 6 to 8 patties.

Cook pasta according to instructions on package, or boil it for 5-to-7 minutes.

Meanwhile back at the range, pour oil into first of two frying pans. Add patties. Fry on medium-high heat for about 3 minutes on each side or until meat is no longer pink. Cover and keep warm.

While pasta and patties are cooking, add flour, chicken broth, tomato sauce, and Worcestershire sauce to another frying pan. Fry for about 5 minutes at medium-high heat, or until the sauce starts to boil. Stir frequently. Add cooked patties to this frying pan. Cook patties and sauce at low-medium heat for about 3 minutes.

Serve patties and sauce on top of cooked pasta. Yum.

TIDBITS

1) Salisbury steak was one of my favorites at the university cafeteria.

2) Liver and onions was my least favorite. They weren’t prepared well, so no one ever ate them. Well, maybe a few desperate vampires, but they usually dropped out of the university in their freshmen year due to most classes taking place in the daytime.

3) I rapidly learned never, NEVER, to eat the “Chef’s Surprise.” The only surprise about this dish is why people ever ate it. It was usually some gross dish that the chef had left over from the previous dinner. I owe my hold on sanity to forgetting the specifics of these meat masses.

4) On “Chef Surprise” nights, we usually ate at the University’s burger and hot-dog joint.

5) Pancakes at the university tasted well enough, but they were powerful hard to digest. I think some of them could have doubled as cannon balls.

 

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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Stifado (Stew from Cyprus)

Cypriot Entree

STIFADO
(Stew)

INGREDIENTS

2 pounds stewing beef
2 pounds frozen pearl onions*
½ tablespoon fresh rosemary
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 bay leaves
3 cups beef stock
3″ cinnamon stick
2 cloves
¾ teaspoon pepper
1½ cups red wine
2½ tablespoons red wine vinegar
water, if liquid cooks away too soon

* = Fresh pearl onions will taste a bit better than frozen ones. But my gosh, the fresh ones have to be peeled. You can speed up the peeling process by boiling, plunging them into cold water, and squeezing the pearl onion out of its skin. This peeling took me 40 minutes the one and only time I tried. I’d rather join the French Foreign Legion than do it again. Buy the frozen ones.

Serves 4. Takes 2 hours 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cut stewing beef into 1″ cubes. Peel pearl onions, if necessary. Dice rosemary. Add olive oil and beef cubes to large pan. Sauté at medium-high heat until all sides brown. Stir occasionally. Add pearl onions. Sauté at medium heat until onions soften. Stir frequently.

Add remaining ingredients. Stir until completely blended. Put lid on pan. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 1 hour 40 minutes or meat becomes quite tender and the liquid reduces to a thick sauce. Stir occasionally. (Add water as necessary, if liquid evaporates completely before beef cubes become tender.) Remove bay leaves and cinnamon stick.

TIDBITS

1) America’s Prohibition banned the selling and consumption of alcohol. If you were a barkeep and sold a customer a large whiskey, you were liable to arrest by a lurking cop. And your bar would be shut down. So customers took to calling a large whiskey, a stiff one. Such subterfuge, fooled the police only for a bit. They were naturally suspicious that a liquid that looking like whiskey, and being sold in a speakeasy was, in fact, whiskey. So, whiskey dens took to injecting avocados with whiskey. They called the new concoction “stifado,” a combination of “stiff one” and “avocado”. A visiting chef from Cyprus so loved the stifado, that he named his signature stew, “Stifado.” Now you know.

– 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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Herb Substitutions

HERB SUBSTITUTIONS

There comes a moment in every chef’s life when he or she simply doesn’t have every herb needed for that devastatingly delicious recipe and guests are arriving in 10 minutes and my gosh, oh my gosh. Fret not, simply consult the below list of herb substitutions and restore serenity to your life.

Basil – Italian seasoning, marjoram, oregano, thyme
Chervil – parsley, tarragon
Chive – green onion, leek, onion
Cilantro – chervil, parsley
Italian seasoning – basil, marjoram, oregano, parsley, red pepper (ground), rosemary, sage, savory, thyme
Mint – basil, marjoram, rosemary
Marjoram – basil, Italian seasoning, oregano, savory, thyme
Mustard, powder – horseradish powder, wasabi powder (1/4 times as much), prepared mustard (3 times as much)
Oregano – basil, Italian seasoning, marjoram, thyme
Parsley – basil, chervil, cilantro, Italian seasoning
Poultry seasoning – marjoram, rosemary, savory
Rosemary – Italian seasoning, poultry seasoning, thyme, tarragon
Sage – marjoram, poultry seasoning, rosemary, savory,
Savory – Italian seasoning, marjoram, poultry seasoning, sage, thyme
Tarragon – chervil, fennel seed, aniseed
Thyme – basil, Italian seasoning, marjoram, oregano, savory

According to my Webster’s New World Dictionary, an herb is, “any seed plant whose stem withers away to the ground after each season’s growth, as distinguished from a tree or shrub whose woody stem lives from year to year.”

Hot stuff, you betcha.

– 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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Suaasat – Greenlander Soup

Greenlander Soup

SUAASAT

INGREDIENTSSuaasat-

1 chicken breast (1 pound reindeer if you can get it)
1 onion
1 carrot
1 quart water
1/2 cup pearl barley
1/4 cup millet
1/4 teaspoon coriander
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon rosemary
1/2 teaspoon sage
1/2 teaspoon thyme

Makes 6 bowls

PREPARATION

Chop reindeer meat or chicken into 1/2″ cubes. Dice onions and carrots. Add cubes, onions, carrots, water, barley, millet, coriander, salt, pepper, rosemary, sage, and thyme to large pot. Cook soup on medium heat for about 1 hour or until chicken or reindeer cubes are fully cooked and barley and millet are tender.

TIDBITS

1) A Viking called Gunnbjorn discovered Greenland in 876.

2) Why does Gunnbjorn get all the credit for discovery when thousands of Eskimos had been living there for hundreds of years?

3) Because Gunnbjorn sounds a lot like GummiTM bears and everyone likes those.

4) Leif Erikkson discovered North America in 1000.

5) Why did Leif get all the credit when North America was discovered thousands of years by peoples crossing the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska thousands of years before?

6) Because Leif sounds exactly like leaf. The maple leaf grows on the maple tree. Maple trees produce maple syrup. Everybody loves maple syrup.

7) Proper branding is a must for all discoverers.

8) Erikkson is variant of Erickson. Erickson is the name of my Swedish born grandparents who settled in America about 100 years ago.

9) I don’t believe the Erikksons and Ericksons ever relinquished their claim of discovery.

10) So North America quite possibly belongs to me.

11) As long as North Americans love maple syrup.

– 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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La Daube Provencale

French Entree

LA DAUBE PROVENÇALE

LaDauPr-

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 pounds stewing steak or better
2 yellow onions
8 whole cloves
1 carrot
4 garlic cloves
1 10 ounce can diced tomatoes
4 tablespoons olive oil
4 ounces bacon strips
1 bay leaf
6 peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon orange zest
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon parsley
1 teaspoon sage
1 teaspoon rosemary
1 teaspoon thyme
1/4 cup red wine

PREPARATION

Cut the steak into 1/2-inch cubes. It is all right to use a better grade of steak than stewing. (As I write this recipe, my local supermarket is having such a sale on top sirloin it’s cheaper than the fattiest ground beef. Go figure. Now if they would only have a sale on gold.)

Peel the 2 onions and cut each of them into 4 wedges. Stick a whole clove into each of the 8 onion wedges. Scrape off the surface of the carrot. Cut the carrot into round pieces no more than 1/2-inch thick. Peel and mince garlic cloves.

Put olive oil and bacon strips in skillet. Heat at medium-heat until bacon begins to brown. (Some versions of this recipe call for strips or slices heavily marbled with fat. This is no problem at all. Simply pick the package of bacon that is on top of the others. Some good Samaritan has gone before you, heroically going through all the bacon packages looking for the meatiest and leaving you exactly what you wanted.)

Back at the range it is time to add to the skillet: steak cubes, onion wedges with cloves in them, carrot pieces, garlic,
diced tomatoes, bay leaf, peppercorns, orange zest, sea salt, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. (“Are you going to Scarborough Fair?” Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

Cook on medium heat until steak cubes start to brown. Add red wine. Bring to boil. Lower temperature to between off and warm. Cover with lid and let stew simmer for 2 1/2 hours.

This is great. Give it only to loved ones or a boss at promotion time.

TIDBITS

1) Insects don’t like the scent of onions. So, cut open an onion and rub the two halves all over your body before crossing a mosquito-infested swamp.

2) The French tried to build the Panama Canal before the Americans did. They failed because too many of their workers succumbed to malaria.

3) The Americans succeeded because they discovered malaria was borne by mosquitoes. We destroyed the pesky critters by destroying their swamps.

4) Mightn’t it have been simpler to have the canal workers rub their bodies with onion halves before going to work each day?

5) Of course, the thousands of sweaty, oniony workers would have had problems convincing beautiful ladies to dance with them after work.

6) But just how many spiffed-up young ladies could the workers have found in the middle of a mosquito-riddled swamp?

– 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

Italian Pork Chops

Italian Entree

ITALIAN PORK CHOPS

INGREDIENTS

4 pork loin chops
1 red bell pepper
2 garlic cloves
1 onion
1 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons butter
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
1 14.5 can diced tomatoes, Italian style
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon rosemary
1/2 teaspoon sage
1/2 teaspoon thyme
8 ounces mozzarella cheese

PREPARATION

Remove bone from pork loins. (My wife doesn’t like bone in pork. Good enough for me.) Remove seeds and whitish stuff from inside of red bell pepper. Cut pepper into 8 rings. Mince garlic cloves and onion. Cover both sides of pork loins with pepper. Melt butter in frying pan. Saute pork in frying pan on medium heat until both sides are brown and inside is no longer pink.

(Unless you’re experienced, the best way to see if the inside of the pork is pink is to cut off a piece and see. If the piece has turned white inside then the best thing to do is eat it. If it tastes great, try tasting the other pork loins. You might want to sample the other side of the loins as well. And if your diligent sampling gets out of hand and the pork loins in the pan are shrinking visibly, that is why we chefs cover everything in sauce. No one need ever know how much you ate.)

Add tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, basil, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme, and onion to the pork loins. Bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer with lid on for about 8 minutes.

Put 2 red bell pepper rings on top of each pork loin. Put about 1 ounce of mozzarella inside each bell pepper ring. Put lid back on and cook at medium-high heat for about 4 minutes or until cheese starts to melt.

TIDBITS

1) This recipe has sage, rosemary, and thyme in it.

2) Dagnab it. No parsley! I was so close to making a dish with “parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.”

3) This line is from the famous Simon and Garfunkel song, which was also a medieval ballad.

4) Much thought has gone in the meaning of the four spices in this song.

5) Three schools of thought predominate.

6) First school believes mixing parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme together makes a love charm. Before you stampede the local supermarket, remember that we no longer believe this… Oh what the heck, go for it!

7) Second school notes that these ingredients were used in Four Thieves Vinegar to ward off the Plague.

8) The third school of thought says, “I dunno.”

– 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

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