Posts Tagged With: soup

Shua Yang Jou – Mongolian Hot Pot

Posted on April 11, 2016 by pauldelancey

Mongolian Soup

SHUA YANG JOU
Mongolian hot pot

INGREDIENTS

5 ounces cellophane noodles or bean threads
1″ ginger root
3 green onions
1 onion
¼ cup parsley, fresh
1 pound bok choy or Chinese cabbage
10 cups lamb or beef stock
24 ounces freshly-made dough or 8 sesame rolls
3 pounds deli-sliced lamb (thin as you can get it)
1 cup spinach
2½ tablespoons rice wine
2½ tablespoons sesame oil
⅓ cup soy sauce
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1½ tablespoons red bean curd or fermented bean curd*
* = or plain bean curd or tofu, not authentic but gosh, the fermented stuff can be hard to find.

SPECIAL UTENSILS

chopsticks (for dipping and cooking the lamb in the hot pot)
something that acts as a hot pot, a pot with a fire under it, that goes in the middle of the table Slotted spoons or strainers (for dipping and retrieving the veggies in the hot pot)
sonic obliterator to use on anyone who says, “I want a big Big MacTM,” after all this preparation.
spice grinder.
wire rack, if you are using sesame rolls

Serves 8. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes if you use sesame rolls, 2 hours 30 minutes if you make your own dough. This is designed to a leisurely dinner and can take up to two hours, unless of course, you have teenage boys.

PREPARATION

Soak noodles in hot water for 30 minutes. While noodles soak, peel ginger root and grind into powder. Dice green onions, onion, and parsley. Separate bok choy into separate leaves into 2″ squares. Leave spinach leaves as is.

Add lamb stock to large, regular pot. Bring to boil using high heat. While lamb stock comes to boil, tear freshly-made dough into 8 pieces and shape them into balls. Add dough balls to pot. Remove dough balls when they puff up into absorbent dumplings. (If you are using sesame rolls, place rolls on wire rack. Place wire rack on pot. Remove steamed rolls when they soften.) Add stock to hot pot. Set level of heat so that the stock is kept comfortably hot.

Place sliced lamb in large serving bowl. Put ginger, green onion, onion, parsley, bok choy, and spinach in second serving bowl and mix together with fork. Add rice wine, sesame oil, soy sauce, cayenne pepper, and fermented bead curd to second mixing bowl and whisk together. Add noodles to third serving bowl. Place a dumpling on a small plate for each guest.

Guests should pick up slices of lamb, veggies, and bean curd with chopsticks and dip food the bowl with the wine/oil/sauce. They then put these items in the part of the hot pot nearest to themselves until the meat and veggies are done to desired levels. Add extra wine/sesame oil/soy sauce mix and their dumpling to individual bowls as desired.

After the lamb, veggies, and dumplings are eaten, the hot lamb stock, enhanced with the flavor of the dipped lamb, veggies, and dipping sauce, is ladled into the individual bowls. This meal is really a two-course feast in disguise.

TIDBITS

1) As correctly noted above, fermented bean curd, or red bean curd can be powerful hard to find. It was especially hard to find in the fragmented Mongolia of 1205. Without fermented bean curd, a tribal leader could not offer his guests shua yang jou. No Mongolia hot pot, no guests. No guests, no tribesmen willing to support you as chief. No support, you get deposed. A deposed chief dies.

2) So finding fermented bean curd (FBC) became of paramount importance. Drought struck Mongolia in the summer of 1205. The bean plant crop failed on a cataclysmic scale. Whatever bean plants survived could not be put in water to ferment. No fermented beans, no FBC.

3) It’s worth noting that fermented plants stink. They increase in stinkiness with each successive day. The yurts, tent homes of the Mongols, could really reek if the dwellers were soaking a lot of beans.

4) Fermenting bean stench was a just as much a turnoff to lovemaking then as it is now. This is why the Mongol population had always been low compared to its neighbors. But with the disappearance of the bean crop in 1205, fermented in the tents stopped. Love making soared. Babies popped out like tennis balls from an automatic serving machine. The Mongols needed more land for their burgeoning families. The tribal chiefs had scant supplies of FBC necessary to make shua yang jou. The loyalty of their tribesmen began melting away.

5) Tribal chief after tribal chief launched devastating raids in neighboring tribal lands, carrying off whatever FBC they could find. Thousands died, banquets went unplanned. It was horrible.

6) Along came Genghis Khan. “Whoa dudes,” he said in fluent Mongolian as he was a Mongol, “there is some gnarly badness going on.” Yes, he was a surfer at heart. “China has lots of FBC. Iran has lots of FBC. Why kill ourselves for it, when we can totally kill them.” He pointed his finger to the south. “Are you with me?” The Mongols roared their approval. He was their one leader.

7) And so the Mongols, conquered, killed, and enslaved entire towns, cities, and regions which is admittedly bad. However, their conquests paved the way for the vibrant Asia-to-Europe spice trade. So some good came out of all this.

– 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, humor, international | Tags: babies, Big Mac, cellophane noodles, Chef Paul, China, Chinese, cookbook, De Lancey, enslaved, fermented, Genghis Khan, hot pot, hunks, Iran, lovemaking, Luthean, Mongolian, Mongols, recipes, soup | Leave a comment

Yellow Pea Soup With Pork (Ärter med fläsk)

Posted on November 30, 2015 by pauldelancey

Swedish Soup

YELLOW PEA SOUP WITH PORK
(Ärter med fläsk)

INGREDIENTS

1¼ pounds yellow split peas
6½ cups water
8 ounces salt pork
1 carrot
1 large yellow onion
¾ teaspoon fresh ginger (about ⅔”)
3 cloves
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon marjoram
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon thyme
¼ teaspoon white pepper

Makes 8 bowls. Takes 3 hours in addition to the time spent soaking peas overnight.

PREPARATION

Rinse peas in colander to remove grit. Add peas to large pot. Add enough water to cover with 1″ to spare. Let peas soak overnight.

Drain and rinse peas. Add peas and 6½ cups water back to large pot. Add pork to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Let boil for 2 minutes. Stir occasionally, enough to keep peas from sticking to bottom of pot. Reduce heat to warm, cover, and simmer for 1 hour. Stir gently and occasionally. Skim off any form and pea skins.

While peas and pork simmer, dice carrot. Mince ginger. Divide onion in three. Stick cloves into each onion third. Add carrot, onion, ginger, bay leaf, and cloves. Let soup simmer for another 1 hour. Stir occasionally. Add bay leaf, marjoram, salt, thyme, and white pepper. Cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 30 minutes more or until peas are completely soft. Stir occasionally.

Remove pork and onion from pot using slotted spoon. Dice about ¼th of the pork. Cut remaining pork into slices ¼” thick. Remove cloves from onion. Mince onion. Return diced pork and minced onion back to pot.. Stir with whisk until well blended. Remove bay leaf.

Add ⅛th of the pork slices to each serving bowl. Ladle soup from pot into serving bowls. This soup goes well with potatoes and Swedish mustard.

TIDBITS

1) The light emitted from stars appears to be red. That means they are moving away from us. Scientists used this knowledge to formulate the Big Bang Theory.

2) The Big Bang Theory holds that everything in the universe started from a teeny, tiny point, then pow! it exploded like an egg in the microwave.

3) Or like popping popular popcorn in a popcorn popper without the popcorn popper’s lid on.

4) I did that experiment in my college dorm. While I found that the kernels did indeed pop outward, they did not travel far and certainly not fast enough to exhibit a red shift.

5) Which would have been cool, although I wonder about the damage to the dorm walls caused by popcorn traveling at 100,000 miles per second. Probably would have gotten me kicked out of college.

6) On the other hand, NASA certainly would have contacted me. I mean they spend billions and billions on launch rockets that can only achieve about 7 miles per second.

7) Of course, sending a manned space station to the outer reaches of our galaxy at such a terrifying speed would require a really big popcorn popper.

8) But America is a land of ingenuity, and a relentless dedication to innovation. If we want to build a popcorn popper that can fling a space station into outer space at 100,000 miles, we will do so. After all, we have invented sliced peanut butter.

9) Sweden, however, is certainly way ahead of America in the race to invent the near-light speed popcorn popper.

10) Look at the title of this recipe. Look at the above picture. The Swedes like yellow split peas. This means they prefer this color of split peas over green ones. Or . . .

11) Swedish have discovered a way to hurl their split peas at such a prodigious rate that the light emanating from their legumes appears yellow. That’s not quite as impressive as a red shift sure, but it’s some million times faster than the speediest military jet.

12) Sweden has not been at war for 200 years, even though two world wars raged all around it in the twentieth century. Why?

13) Sure Germany and Russia built impressive tanks, fighter planes and bombers. But no country’s military stands a chance against a nation that can fling hot, nearly molten split-pea soup toward it at over 100,000 miles an second.

14) Or even 50,000 miles a second. And Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hitler, and Stalin knew it. So they left it alone, even though that happy Nordic land has such wonderful pastries.

15) You can order this tasty soup when visiting Sweden, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Soup that travels that fast is impossible to eat. Best try making yellow pea soup from this recipe. Just be sure to buy yellow split peas that are stationary. Doing so isn’t always obvious. You might have to read the packaging for the peas.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, history, humor, international | Tags: Ärter med fläsk, big bang, Chef Paul, college, cookbook, De Lancey, Germany, Hitler, HumorOutcasts Press, innovation, Kaiser Wilhelm, NASA, nordic, pastries, popcorn, recipes, red shift, Russia, soup, space station, split pea, Stalin, Swedes, Swedish, tanks, yellow pea soup | Leave a comment

Kourma Shurpa (beef vegetable soup)

Posted on May 20, 2015 by pauldelancey

Uzbek Soup

KOURMA SHURPA
(beef vegetable soup)

INGREDIENTS

1¼ pounds tri-tip or chuck
3 russet potatoes
2 medium carrots
1 green bell pepper
2 garlic cloves
2 medium onions
2 tomatoes
¼ cup vegetable oil
½ tablespoon cilantro
½ teaspoon coriander
¾ teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons dill
½ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon pink Himalayan salt or salt
1½ quarts water
2 teaspoons parsley

Makes 10 bowls. Takes about 1½ hours.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

Dutch oven

PREPARATION

Cut tri-tip into ½” cubes. Peel potatoes. Cut potatoes into fourths. Cut carrots into round ½” slices. Remove seeds from bell pepper. Dice bell pepper, garlic, onions, and tomatoes.

Add tri-tip cubes and oil to Dutch oven. Stir occasionally. Sauté for 4 minutes on medium-high heat or until cubes brown. Add garlic and onion. Sauté for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add bell pepper, carrot, tomato, cilantro, coriander, cumin, dill, parsley, pepper, and salt.

Add water. Bring to boil using high heat. Reduce heat to warm and simmer for 30 minutes or until carrot becomes tender. Stir occasionally. Add potatoes. Simmer for 30 minutes or until potato fourths are tender. Stir occasionally. Garnish with parsley and serve to guests who will be agog with your knowledge of Uzbekistan.

TIDBITS

1) Uzbek is an anagram for bezku.

2) Kudzu is an extremely fast growing vine that’s spreading all over parts of the southern United States.

3) Bezku is a fast growing beet that’s growing all over Uzbekistan.

4) For the longest time, the Turkmen government was aghast about the proliferating bezku.

5) Then came last month’s announcement that Beetball would be added as a sport for the Summer Olympics. Now athletes all over the world are clamoring for beets.

6) Beetball is played very much like volleyball but with a beet instead of a volleyball. So, tough agile hands are a must for the successful participant.

7) Oh, also good eyesight, excellent eyesight, superb eyesight. You really don’t want to get hit in the nose by a beet hurtling toward you at 80 miles per hour, because you didn’t spot it in time.

8) The best beetball players hail from Mongolia. Genghis Khan trained his warriors to dodge arrows by hurling beets at them. Sure, he could have trained his fighters by loosing arrows at them, but men with arrows in their heads or heads invariably prove to be slow learners.

9) That reminds me, the phrase, “That beats all,” really came from “That beets all,” and is a deadly serious statement. Nothing beats beets for tough army training.

10) Genghis Khan and the succeeding khans of Mongolia nearly conquered Europe in 1241. No European army could withstand the Mongols. The Mongol horsemen, toughened by months of beet throwing, easily dodged the arrows of Russian, Hungarian, and Polish archers.

11) It looked really grim for the nascent French pastry industry.

12) Then suddenly in 1242, the fiercesome, all conquering Mongol armies withdrew to Mongolia. Their khan, Ogadai, had tied and the Mongols true to their tradition, had returned to their homeland to elect a new leader. How did Ogadai die?

14) Well, Sven Svenson of Sweden poisoned the Mongol leader with lutefisk. Sven knew that just as no Western army could stand up to the Terror of the East, no man could survive eating lutefisk, or even smelling and looking at it. Apparently though, Sven was okay with run-on sentences.

15) Indeed, lutefisk warfare is the primary reason the tiny Viking armies consistently overwhelmed the much larger armies of Ireland, England, France, and Germany. We hear the expression, “God save us from the fury of the Norsemen,” but it used to be, “God saves us from the horror of lutefisk.”

16) Anyway, Svenson was decapitated by the Mongols, which certainly was a bummer for Sven.

17) The United States and the European Union still permit the making and even the selling of lutefisk to adults and innocent children. Why? Why? Because we all know how lutefisk saved Western civilization in 1241. There is even the suspicion that Western armies maintain vast stockpiles of lutefisk, but no one will talk.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, history, humor, international | Tags: archers, armies, Chef Paul, cookbook, De Lancey, Dutch, European Union, Genghis Khan, Himalayan, Hungarian, khan, kourma shurpa, lutefisk, Mongol, Mongolia, Norsemen, Ogadai, pink Himalayan salt, Polish, recipes, Russian, salt, soup, United States, Uzbek, Viking, Western civilization | Leave a comment

Speculaas (Dutch cookie)

Posted on March 26, 2015 by pauldelancey

Dutch Dessert

SPECULAAS
(Dutch cookie)

INGREDIENTS

1¼ cups butter (2½) sticks
1⅓ cups brown sugar
1 medium egg
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoons ginger
1 teaspoon nutmeg
3 cups flour plus some to dust cookie mold

SPECIAL UTENSILS

speculaas mold, other cookie mold, or cookie cutters
electric beater
sewing thread
1-to-2 cookie sheets
1-to-4 glasses of mulled red wine
wine bottle for bopping oafs

Makes 18 cookies. Takes 15 minutes to make dough, to sit overnight in refrigerator, and maybe 1 hour to make the cookies, plus 15-to-20 minutes each time you put cookie sheets in the oven. You will get better and faster at putting the dough in the speculaas mold, trimming the dough with the sewing thread, and getting the dough out of the mold and onto the cookie sheet in one piece. While getting the hang of things, I say chill out and have some wine to calm yourself down. Note, the upper limit of drinks is for those who use speculaas or other embossed cookie molds. If you just plop down some dough, you only get one glass. There you go.

PREPARATION

Add butter and sugar to first, large mixing bowl. Mix using electric beater set on CREAM until butter/sugar mix becomes creamy. Add egg. Mix with electric beater set on CAKE until well blended. Add baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg to second, small mixing bowl. Mix together with whisk. Add spice mix from second, small mixing bowl and flour to first, large mixing bowl. Knead mixture until it forms a firm dough ball. Refrigerate dough ball overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Dust speculaas mold for each cookie. Press dough into mold. Gently trim all dough above the line of mold with sewing thread. The top of the dough should be flush with the top of the mold.

Turn mold over and rap it against the cookie sheet. The dough should come out easily and intact if the mold was sufficiently dusted with flour. If not, gently, slowly pull dough out of the mold. If it the shaped dough comes apart in only one or two spots, gently smoosh the pieces together with your fingertip. If someone happens to see this and makes a snarky remark, hit the oaf on its head with the wine bottle. Bake cookies at 350 degrees for 15-to-25 minutes or until cookies turn golden brown.

TIDBITS

1) The first weekend of September is the Redhead Festival in Breda, Netherlands. It started as a local photographer’s quest to find a redhead model. It soon got out of hand. Well, sort of. Redheads walk around seeing other redheads. They even celebrate the color red.

2) It could have so exciting. Why not really celebrate the color red by having tomato fights?

3) Or have ketchup wrestling. That would draw a big crowd.

4) Or have professional drivers race around Breda in red fire trucks instead of race cars.

5) Or let tourists do high diving into a pool of tomato soup.

6) Or hold a contest to build the highest pyramid out of red bell peppers.

7) Or have a contest to eat the most habañero peppers.

8) Or even celebrate ginger. Redheads are often called gingers.

9) Who wouldn’t want to enter a contest to see who could eat the most buttered ginger toast?

10) Go bowling with tomatoes. Professional tomato bowlers recommend a perfectly round. The flattish, not entirely round ones do not go as straight as the perfectly round ones. You’ll never knock down any pins with your tomato if it heads straight for the gutter. Oh, it must be said that the typical tomato has no finger holes as opposed to the standard three-hole bowling ball. This makes tomato bowling even more challenging.

11) Play golf with ginger root! Be careful not to hit your ginger in the woods. It blends in with the leaves. You’ll never find it.

12) Even better, play basketball with tomatoes! Given that tomatoes would make a big splat the first time the ball handler batted the tomato to the ground, fears of players getting away with uncalled double dribbles would be thing of the past.

12) Play football with tomatoes! Since tomatoes are so fragile, soft hands for the quarterback and receivers would be a must.

13) Stage your own bullfights. All you need is a red tablecloth and fast feet.

14) What about ten tons of tomatoes and a bulldozer? Revelers get five minutes on the machine, or fewer if they miss the tomatoes and run into a building.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, humor, international | Tags: basketball, bowlers, bowling, Breda, bulldozer, bullfights, Chef Paul, cookbook, dessert, Dutch, fire trucks, football, ginger, golf, habañero peppers, high diving, Netherlands, Paul De Lancey, pyramid, race cars, recipes, redhead, soup, speculaas, tomatoes | 2 Comments

Muamba Nsusu (Congolese chicken peanut soup)

Posted on March 21, 2015 by pauldelancey

Congolese Soup

MUAMBA NSUSU
(chicken peanut soup)

INGREDIENTS

2½ pounds chicken breasts
½ teaspoon salt
1 large carrot
1 red chile
1 large yellow onion
2 tomatoes
5 cups chicken stock
¾ teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon lemon zest
¾ cup creamy peanut butter
5 ounces tomato paste
1 tablespoon red palm oil (1½ tablespoons more later)
1½ tablespoon red palm oil
⅓ cup peanuts

Makes 12 bowls. Takes about 1 hour.

PREPARATION

Cut chicken into 1″ cubes. Rub salt onto chicken cubes. Dice carrot, chile, onion, and tomatoes. (Don’t remove seeds from chile and be sure to wash your hands afterward.) Add chicken stock, cumin, lemon zest, peanut butter, diced tomatoes, and tomato paste to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended.

Add 1 tablespoon red palm oil and chicken cubes to large pot. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink on outside. Stir frequently. Set aside. Add 1½ tablespoons red palm oil, carrot, chile, and onion to pan. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. The chicken in the pot and the red palm oil/carrot/onion mix in the pan can be sautéed at the same time.

Add chicken stock/peanut butter/tomato mixture from mixing bowl to pot. Simmer on low-medium heat for 20 minutes or until the soup is well blended. Stir occasionally. Add chicken cubes to pot. Simmer for 5-to-10 minutes or until soup thickens. Garnish with peanuts.

TIDBITS

1) All chefs make the occasional mistake. It’s useful in these events to have a prepared excuse. Mine is plate tectonics. The shifting positions of the Earth’s continents made me burn those eggs. If the mistake was caused by someone ELSE, zap the offender with your sonic obliterator. You don’t need that negativity in your life.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, humor, international | Tags: Chef Paul, chicken, Congo, Congolese, cookbook, De Lancey, muamba nsusu, peanut, plate tectonics, recipes, red palm oil, soup, tomato | Leave a comment

Easy Beef Pho

Posted on March 13, 2015 by pauldelancey

Vietnamese Soup

EASY BEEF PHO

INGREDIENTS

2 cups beef pho broth
12 ounces rice noodles
8 ounces thinly sliced sirloin
4 ounces deli-sliced roast beef

½ cup fresh basil
5 green onion stalks
1 or 2 jalapeno peppers
3 limes
2 cups bean sprouts
½ tablespoon chili garlic sauce
2 tablespoons fish sauce or hoisin sauce

Makes 10 bowls. Takes 25 minutes.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

sonic obliterator

PREPARATION

Add beef pho broth to pan. Cover and bring to boil on high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer until all ingredients are ready. Add rice noodle to second pot. Cook according to instructions on package. Drain noodles.

While pho broth boils and rice noodles cook, dice basil and green onion. Thinly slice jalapeno pepper and limes. Add sirloin and roast beef to pot with pho broth. Simmer on low heat until sirloin is no longer pink. Divide rice noodles, basil, green onion, jalapeno pepper, bean sprouts, chili garlic sauce, and fish sauce between bowls. Garnish with lime slices. Ladle equal amounts of pho broth with meat into bowls. Serve to adoring guests.

Some guests might complain that this recipe isn’t authentic, that it skips steps, that it doesn’t use pig knuckles, and so on. You could reason with them, saying you can’t find beef knuckles at your local supermarket, you didn’t even know beeves had knuckles, and that properly prepared pho.takes five days, and that you have a life to live. Or . . . you could simply zap them with your sonic obliterator. You don’t need their negativity in your life.

TIDBITS

1) Pho is an anagram for hop. Hop On Pop is a book by Dr. Seuss. Culinary historians think the author had been planning to write No Mo’ Pho but decided against it when he discovered pho is actually pronounced “fuh.” It’s all for the best as Hop On Pop brought Dr. Seuss enduring fame.

Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, humor, international | Tags: basil, Chef Paul, chili garlic, cookbook, culinary, De Lancey, Dr. Seuss, fish sauce, hoisin, Hop on Pop, pho, recipes, roast beef, sirloin, sonic obliterator, soup, Vietnam, Vietnamese | Leave a comment

Bad Artist #25, Supermarkets

Posted on January 13, 2015 by pauldelancey

SUPERMARKET-SIGN HAIKU #1

Please sir, will you move?

Stop reading those cans and move.

I need to buy soup.

SUPERMARKET-SIGN HAIKU #2

Don’t care if it has

Monosodium glutamate

Buy the frickin’ can.

– Paul De Lancey, Bad Artist

Categories: cartoon, humor | Tags: artist, bad artist, Christmas, De Lancey, haiku, monosodium glutamate, murders, soup, thriller | Leave a comment

Sococho (Panamanian Soup)

Posted on October 11, 2014 by pauldelancey

Panamanian Soup

SOCOCHO

INGREDIENTS

4 garlic cloves
1 large onion
2 tomatoes
2 pounds yucca or cassava root
1½ pounds potatoes
2 pounds boneless chicken parts
2 teaspoons olive oil (additional ½ tablespoon later)
1 tablespoon cilantro
½ teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon olive oil
4 cups chicken stock

SPECIAL UTENSILS

Dutch oven
rocker knife or knife with thick blade

Serves 8 bowls and can take up to 2 hours to prepare depending on the battle between you and the yucca root goes.

PREPARATION

Mince garlic cloves. Dice onion and tomatoes. Peel yucca and cut it into ½” cubes. (Cutting yucca root is much easier with rocker knife or thick-bladed knife.) Chop potatoes into ½” cubes. Cut chicken into 1″ cubes. Add 2 teaspoons olive oil, cilantro, oregano, salt, and chicken to mixing bowl. Thoroughly coat chicken with herb/salt/olive oil mix. Let marinate for 20 minutes.

While chicken marinates, add ½ tablespoon olive, garlic, and onion to pan. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Add chicken and its herb/salt/olive oil marinade to large soup pot. Cook on medium heat for 10 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink inside. Stir occasionally. (How about “Pink Chicken” as a name for avant garde band?)

Add chicken stock to soup pot. Keep heat on medium. Add potato and yucca to pot, cover, and cook for 45-to-60 minutes or until potato and yucca are tender. Add tomatoes and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

TIDBITS

1) Van Halen has a song called, “Panama.” A lot of people thought the words were actually “Padded bra.”

2) Either version makes as much sense in the song.

3) I keep hearing Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders singing, “I’m gonna make you, make you malteds.” I like the idea of a famous singer making me a malted. I do prefer them over milkshakes.

4) Does anyone else hear “Do the hustle” as “Tuna hustle?” How does a tuna hustle?”

5) And of course, Creedence Clearwater Revival tell us, “There’s a bathroom on the right.” That’s nice to know.

6) Okay, okay, tidbits 1) to 5) are a prime example of what happens what I look up fun facts for a country and find nothing exciting except . . .

7) In Panama, the sun rises in the Pacific and sets in the Atlantic.

8) This is because time runs backward in Panama

9) In Panama, the people use American dollars for transaction involving paper currency, but their own home-grown coins, the Balboas for vending machines and buses.

10) Panama’s coins are named after Rocky Balboa the hero of all those Rocky boxing movies.

11) How is it possible that the Balboa coins came before the Rocky movies but are named after the series’ main character? Time runs backward in Panama. Remember tidbit 8)?

12) People in Panama win all the American lotteries, since they know all the winning numbers.

13) But they lose the big jackpots when they exchange all that loot when they buy their lottery tickets. Does this frustrate the Panamanians?

14) Yes it does.

15) Invariably the American lotteries are then won by Americans or by citizens of other nations where time moves forward.

16) Augh! I’ve lost my train of thought.

17) Whew, I’ve got it back. Time gets a bit dicey when passing from a country where time moves forward to Panama where it regresses. Often people crossing the Costa Rica/Panamanian border find themselves in a sort of stasis field where time doesn’t move at all.

18) Which is a boon for parents of surly teenagers. If you have the cash, simply deposit your young know-it-all, whatever, in anyone of the stasis fields dotting the border there and leave him there.

19) Don’t forget to take your child home when he’s old enough to leave home for good.

20) You get up to eight years of clean bedrooms and the teenagers won’t get embarrassed by your ignorance. It’s a win-win situation.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, food, history, humor, international, recipes | Tags: American, Atlantic, Balboa, Chrissie Hynde, cookbook, Costa Rica, Creedence Clearwater Revival, fun, lotteries, Pacific, padded bra, Panama, Panamanian, recipes, Rocky, sococho, soup, stasis field, teenagers, the Pretenders, time, Van Halen, yucca | Leave a comment

Guriltai Shul (Mongolian Soup)

Posted on July 14, 2014 by pauldelancey

Mongolian Soup

GURILTAI SHUL

INGREDIENTS

2 potatoes
2 carrots
1 onion
12 ounces whole cut of lamb or beef (You have a lot of leeway here.)
12 ounces egg noodles
¾ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
8 cups lamb stock or beef stock

SPECIAL UTENSIL

Dutch oven

PREPARATION

Peel potatoes. Dice potatoes, carrots, and onion. Cut meat into strips ½” wide and 2″ long..

Add vegetable oil and onion to Dutch oven. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add meat. Sauté for 3 minutes at medium-high heat or until meat browns. Stir frequently. Add carrots, potatoes. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 3 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Add pepper, salt, and stock to Dutch oven. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add noodles. Bring soup to oil then reduce heat to low and let soup simmer for another 10 minutes or until noodles are soft. Serve hot.

TIDBITS

1) Mongolia took a 2010 livestock census. I’m impressed. America expends a lot of effort and money taking a census of just its humans. How did Mongolia do it? It’s not as if the country’s critters have a fixed address. How did they make sure they counted every animal or didn’t double or triple count them? It’s hard to tell sheep and goats apart. Oh sure, you can differentiate between two goats if they’re male and female, but there’s millions of male goats and millions of female goats. You can’t ask the sheep’s name. Even if you could get the sheep to reply, they probably have only four different names like, Baakaa, Baama, BaaRaa, and Baazaa. But the Mongolians managed to take what they thought was a reasonably accurate census of their livestock. As I said, I’m impressed.

2) And just how did the Mongols get their livestock to answer the census’s questions? Do they have someone who can talk to the animals? I had always thought Hugh Lofting’s The Story of Doctor Dolittle was pure fiction, but now I think it was really based on a Mongolian veterinarian.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: beef, census, critters, Doctor Dolittle, Dolittle, female, goats, gurilati shul, Guriltai, Hugh Lofting, lamb, livestock, Lofting, male, Mongolian, Mongols, noodles, potatoes, sheep, shul, soup, veterinarian | Leave a comment

Peanut Soup

Posted on July 4, 2014 by pauldelancey

Cameroonian Soup

PEANUT SOUP

INGREDIENTS

1 red chile pepper
1 yellow onion
2 tomatoes
2 garlic cloves
1 green bell pepper
⅓ cup unsalted peanuts
2 tablespoons peanut oil
4 cups vegetable or chicken broth
1 cup peanut butter (smooth or chunky)
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup baby spinach

SPECIAL UTENSIL

spice grinder

PREPARATION

Remove seeds from red chile pepper. Dice onion and tomatoes. Mince garlic cloves, green bell pepper, and red chile pepper. Grind peanuts in spice grinder.

Add peanut oil, garlic, onion, green bell pepper, and red chile pepper to pot. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Add vegetable broth, peanut butter, tomato, pepper, and salt. Stir until peanut butter dissolves into soup. Reduce heat to low. Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add spinach. Simmer on low for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Ladle soup into bowls. Top soup with ground peanuts.

TIDBITS

1) In 1472, Portuguese explorers named one of Cameroon’s rivers Rio dos Camarões after all the shrimp in it. This is how the country, Cameroon, gets it name. Way cool. I wish where I lived could be renamed Taco. I love tacos.

2)In 1931, Cameroon sent $3.77 to America’s starving. Or they could have sent shrimp.

3) The world’s biggest specie of frog lives in Cameroon. One of them is called Jeremiah.

4)The yellow stripe in Cameroon’s flag represents sunshine. Antarctica, if it ever becomes a country, should have a white stripe representing snow and a beaker in honor of all the scientists living there.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, food, humor, international, recipes, Uncategorized | Tags: America, Antarctica, beaker, bell pepper, Cameroon, Cameroonian, chile pepper, cookbook, Eat Me, explorers, fun, garlic, Jeremiah, Paul R. De Lancey, peanut, peanut oil, Peanuts, pepper, Portuguese, recipes, scientists, shrimp, soup, spinach, straving, sunshine, tacos, tomatoes | Leave a comment

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