Posts Tagged With: sugar

Piri Piri Chicken

Mozambican Entree

PIRI PIRI CHICKEN

INGREDIENTS

6 garlic cloves
6 piri piri chiles (or Thai chiles)
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons paprika
2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons lemon juice
7 tablespoons olive oil
3½ pounds boneless chicken parts, skin on

SPECIAL UTENSILS

blender
outdoor grill
meat thermometer (You really do need this. There is a huge range of times needed to grill the chicken depending on your grill and the size of the chicken breasts.

Serves 6. Takes 15 minutes preparations 12 hours marinating, and another 30 at the grill.

PREPARATION

Mince garlic cloves and chiles. Add all ingredients except chicken to large mixing bowl. Stir with whisk or fork until well blended. Add chicken parts. Mix with fork until chicken is well coated. Cover and let marinate in fridge for 12 hours or overnight. Keep marinade.

Place chicken on grill skin side up. Grill chicken on outdoor grill for 15 minutes using low-medium heat. Flip chicken parts over and grill for another 10 minutes. Baste every 10 minutes with reserved. Check heat with meat thermometer after 20 minutes of grilling. Chicken breasts should have an internal temperature of 165-to-170 degrees.)

TIDBITS

1) “Sugar, Sugar” was big hit song for the Archies in 1969. The song “Piri Piri” was not a hit song for the Chickens in 1976. The Chickens had the great bad luck to form in the start of a nasty civil war Fellow Mozabicans simply didn’t have the money to buy records. And all the radio stations were monopolized to provide propaganda for the warring sides.

2) Piri Piri reunited in 2012. They played minor gigs in Mozambique, when by sheer good luck they landed a concert date in Wrigley Field, Chicago for November 3, 2016. Unfortunately, everyone was watching the Cubs win their first World Series in 108 and so, no one showed. I’m happy to report though, that the group has landed a permanent engagement at the South Pole’s research station where the saying “Party all night” really means something.

– 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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Our Land’s Welfare Leeches

 turtles

The welfare system continues to spiral out of control. Millions and millions dollars of our tax dollars flow into the lazy mouths of these lazy bums who do little but sleep, eat, and make more lazy bums. A great many of these welfare kings and queens hail from other countries without even the most basic of IDs such as drivers’ licenses. Indeed they thumb their noses, metaphorically at least, at us, the taxpaying citizens of this great land. Who are these burdens to the American economy?

The creatures in our nation’s zoo. As the great philosopher Hobbes, or someone else, could have said, “There is an implicit social contract between our zoos and its critters. The zoo provides food and shelters. The animals therein provide entertainment by jumping up and down, running, chattering, and at the very least moving.”

But do our zoo’s animal do much moving? Heck no. They sleep, sleep, and sleep. Big whoop. The worst offenders are the koalas, turtles  and lions who sleep twenty hours a day and for whom the act of munching on their grub makes their little black hearts beat like jackrabbits. What will gets these sleeping bum off the their butts?

Speed? Well, no. It’s illegal, isn’t it? At least for people it is. And I, for one, don’t want any of the zoo’s purchasers going to jail.

But what about high-energy drinks? One of those little bottles gets a person whizzing about for about five hours. Imagine how long it would get a tiny koala going? Heck we might even get to see those koalas pole vaulting and boxing each other.

Or since the lions and turtles sleep so much because they need all their energy to digest their stupid gazelle butts and turtle pellets, why not feed them something all our red-blooded American kids love, breakfast cereal packed with hig- energy sugar? I tell ya, fifty bowls of little sugar bombs in the lions’ breakfast bowls would get those lions roaring. Or how about hearing turtles roar? They’re usually ever so quiet. I tell you one could visit a zoo fifty times and never hear a turtle roar. Well, I want to hear a turtle roar. Don’t you?

Or even better have the roaring turtles do honest-to-goodness 100-yard dashes, one’s where they sprint as quickly as Usain Bolt.  Wouldn’t that draw those paying crowds into our nation’s zoos?

– Paul De Lancey, concerned citizen

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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Pasta Sauce

Italian Appetizer

PASTA SAUCE

INGREDIENTSPastaSauce-

2 garlic cloves
2 pounds Roma tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon marjoram
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon savory
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon thyme

makes 2 ½ cups

SPECIAL UTENSIL

blender

PREPARATION

Mince garlic cloves. Puree tomatoes in blender. Add remaining ingredients to large saucepan. Bring to boil on high heat, stirring constantly. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for about 45 minutes or until sauce thickens. Cool.

TIDBITS

1) It’s helpful to know whenever you’re at an anagram convention that pasta sauce is an anagram for: cause a spat, a cat’s pause, sautes a cap, and cue ass pat.

2) A pat is a small slice of butter. A stick of butter is much longer than a pat.

3) When German soldiers invaded the Netherlands in 1940, they confiscated the locals’ butter. Culinary historians suspect the main impetus behind Germany’s patently unpleasant wars of aggression was a massive butter shortage in the Fatherland. The Netherlands has ample stocks of butter, so it was overrun by its larger bread-spread lacking neighbor to the east.

4) Sure, Germany invaded other nations as well, but that was mainly from inertia. Once you start invading other countries, it’s kinda hard to stop. Besides, Belgium had fries, France had cheese and baguettes, and Russia had beef stroganoff.

5) Eight nations met in Toronto, Canada in 1953 to sign the Ample Butter Supply Treaty (ABS.) To remove all temptation for aggression, signatory countries pledged to main large supplies of butter. America maintains its emergency butter supply in a climate controlled cave near Butte, Montana.

– 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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Hot Chocolate

American Appetizer

HOT CHOCOLATE

INGREDIENTSHotChocolate-

4 ounces semisweet chocolate (chips or squares)
4cups milk
1/2 cup sugar

PREPARATION

Add all ingredients to saucepan. Heat with medium heat. (Whoa! Heating with heat. That’s just crazy enough to work.) Cook until chocolate has completely melted and liquid is just ready to boil. Stir frequently.

Use an electric or hand beater on hot chocolate if you wish to make it frothy. Mini marshmallows and whipped cream make excellent toppings.

TIDBITS

1) If it weren’t for chocolate, we probably wouldn’t have microwaves. Decades ago, the chocolate bar in Percy Spencer’s pocket melted when he got close to the microwaves of a magnetron. Instead of saying yuck, Percy got excited. He placed an egg next to the magnetron. The egg cooked so fast that it exploded. The synapses in Percy’s brain fired at a prodigious rate. The research on the kitchen microwave began.

2) The good feelings to your brain and body from eating chocolate last four times longer than from an amorous kiss. Indeed, pollsters in Britain found that 50% of women love chocolate more than sex. This guys, is why you give your dates a box of chocolates rather than a package of lutefisk.

3) Eating chocolate multiple times a week greatly reduces the risk of fatal heart disease.

4) Chocolate is a natural antidepressant.

5) A milk chocolate bar has ten fewer calories than a bag of potato chips.

5) So chocolate gave a boost to the advancement of science, provides for an enhanced love life, protects your health, keeps you from being sad, and is better for your figure than potato chips. What more do you want? Why can’t our government be more like chocolate?

6) It can. It can. The Bacon & Chocolate Party was formed in 2012 and is dedicated to promoting the health giving properties of chocolate and bacon and to ensure ample supplies of these wonderful foods.

– 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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Pumpkin Pie

American Dessert

PUMPKIN PIE

INGREDIENTSPumpkinPie-

2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon cardamom, ground
1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves, ground
3/4 teaspoon ginger, ground
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
1 15 ounce can pumpkin mashed or puree
1 12 ounce can evaporated milk
2 8″-to-9″graham-cracker pie shell or 1 9″ deep dish graham-cracker pie shell
whipped cream for topping

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Add eggs, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, salt, and sugar to large bowl. Beat eggs with whisk. Add pumpkin. Mix with whisk. Add evaporated milk. Mix again with whisk. Pour mixture into pie shell. Put filled pie shell in oven and bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees. Bake an additional 40-to-50 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the pie’s center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 2 hours. Serve with whipped cream. Yum.

TIDBITS

1) Pumpkins are grown on every continent except Antarctica.

2) Morton, Illinois is the Pumpkin Capital. Go visit its Pumpkin Festival in mid September.

3) Pumpkin seeds have been used to remove freckles.

4) Linus from the comic strip Peanuts believed in the Great Pumpkin. See the lyrics for “I’m dreaming of the Great Pumpkin” and other pumpkin songs.

6) In 2009, motorcyclists in Nigeria wore dried pumpkin shells on their heads to circumvent laws making them wear helmets.

7) Irish lore says Stingy Jack was too miserly to get into Heaven. But Jack had tricked the devil so he wasn’t welcome there either. Jack roamed the darkness between Heaven and Hell with a lit, carved pumpkin. This is probably the basis for pumpkin carving on Halloween. That and freckle fear.

– 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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Fried Doughnut Bites

American Dessert

FRIED DOUGHNUT BITES

INGREDIENTSFriedDB-

1 large egg
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (1 cup more later)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (plus a bit more later)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup vegetable oil
flour to dust hands
1 cup confectionary sugar

PREPARATION

Use whisk to mix egg, sugar, milk, and 2 tablespoons vegetable oil. Add flour, salt, baking powder. Mix again, this time with fork. (You’ll go crazy getting the flour out of the inside of a whisk.)

Heat 1 cup vegetable oil in skillet to 375 degrees. Drop dough balls of about 1-to-2 teaspoons in size into heated oil. (Dust hands with flour between making each dough ball. The flour keeps dough from clinging all over your hands.)

Fry dough balls for 2 to 3 minutes or until golden brown. Be sure to taste a few dough balls before serving. Don’t want to serve ones that aren’t done. Turn frequently when cooking. (No, don’t turn yourself around. You’ll get dizzy. Turn over the dough balls.)

Put cooked doughnut bites in paper towels to absorb grease. Roll in confectionary sugar if desired. Most people will want this last step.

TIDBITS

1) This dish was originally supposed to be called “Fried Doughnuts.” However, doughnuts made this way don’t look like the round doughnuts with the whole in the middle.

2) It’s also why members of my family helpfully, even gleefully suggested the following names: Doughnut Crumbles, Fat Balls, and Fat Bombs.

3) The family was unanimous in liking them, though.

4) I think a great slogan for a doughnut shop would be, “Our doughnuts are made from real dough.” Might make you think what donuts from donut shops are made from.

5) Law enforcement officials like to eat doughnuts on stakeouts because they can eat them and still keep a hand free for emergencies and both eyes on the place they’re watching.

6) Doughnuts were considered real treats on cattle drives during the Old West

– 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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Bruna Boner (Swedish beans)

Swedish Entree

BRUNA BÖNER
(Swedish beans)

INGREDIENTSBrunerB-

1 pound bag pink beans
6 cups water
4 teaspoons, or half-stick, butter
8 ounces brown sugar
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 tablespoons corn starch

PREPARATION

Put beans in large pot. Add enough water to cover beans with a few inches to spare. Let soak overnight or at least 10 hours. The beans will be crunchy if not sufficiently soaked. (You do not want to wake up, twenty years later, in the middle of the night screaming, “Why? Why did I not soak the beans long enough?”)

Drain the water. (This gets rid of any dirt on the beans.) Add 6 cups water. Cook on medium heat for 40 minutes. Stir every few minutes. Add more water if the water no longer covers the beans. Covering the pot with a lid also keeps water from evaporating.

Add butter. Cook on low-to-medium heat for 40 minutes. Stir every few minutes to avoid burning. Add more water if the water no longer covers the beans.

Add sugar. (If the brown sugar comes out of the box as a brick, saw it in half.) Cook on low-to-medium heat for 40 minutes. Stir every few minutes to avoid burning. Add more water if the water no longer covers the beans. (Engrave this advice in your memory.)

Add 1/4 to 1/2 cup vinegar, teaspoon by teaspoon, according to taste. If needed, thicken beans by adding cornstarch.

TIDBITS

1) This recipe comes from my grandmother Anna Erickson who was born in Murrum, Sweden, in 1889. I miss her.

2) Her family came to America through Boston, having heard of the hardships of Ellis Island in New York.

3) She grew up in Shickley, Nebraska. She later went back with my mother to visit. The whole town went to an outdoor movie, but was distracted by a rather lengthy meteor shower.

4) I grew up with this sort of Swedish food. Where the weird, modern Swedish pizzas came from I don’t know. It’s also strange that Bruna Bonër, or Brown Beans, uses pink beans. Wacky Swedes.

– 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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Arrowroot Custard

St. Vincentian Dessert

ARROWROOT CUSTARD

INGREDIENTSArrowrootCust-

3 tablespoons arrowroot
1 tablespoon milk (3 1/2 cups more later)
3 1/2 cup milk
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 egg yolks

PREPARATION

Add arrowroot and 1 tablespoon milk to small mixing bowl. Mix with fork until paste forms. Add 3 1/2 cups milk to pot. Cook milk on high heat until milk just starts bubbling. STIR FREQUENTLY. Add arrowroot paste from mixing bowl to pot and stir. Remove pot from burner. Turn heat down to low.

(Milk burns quickly. Anybody who comes by and sees you intent on boiling milk will say, “Careful, milk burns in a hurry! They cannot help it. It’s inevitable as falling asleep in the back row at a lecture for theoretical economics.)

Add sugar to pot. Mix with spoon until sugar dissolves. Return pot to burner. Simmer on low heat for 3 minutes. Remove pot from burner. Add in vanilla extract and egg yolks. Mix with whisk or fork until egg yolk blend in completely. Allow to cool. (The heat in the mix will cook the yolks enough during this time.)

Drink as much as you dare before sharing with guests. It’s really tasty.

TIDBITS

1) An anagram for “arrowroot custard” is “Coward roars, ‘Trout!’”

2) Arrowroot is a starch-rich underground creeping rhizome.

3) There was a 1964 movie called The Creeping Terror. Leonard Maltin, the film critic, gave it a “bomb” rating. His Classic Movie Guide said, “Awful horror movie, poor on every conceivable (and inconceivable) level.” I saw it. The monster looks a lot like a giant Denver omelette.

4) If that sort of horror movie can get made, why not The Creeping Rhizome? Just saying. You could have The Underground Creeping Rhizome but that would be way too scary.

– 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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Sunshine Milkshake

American Dessert

SUNSHINE MILKSHAKE

INGREDIENTSSunshineMilk-

1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup sugar
2 bananas

SPECIAL UTENSIL

blender

PREPARATION

Peel the bananas. Put bananas, milk, orange juice, sugar, and vanilla extract. Use “milkshake” setting. Blend until shake is sufficiently smooth for your taste.

With the time you saved making this simple recipe over a more complicated one, you can read War and Peace.

TIDBITS

1) Seasoned fishermen put vanilla extract on their hands so fish can’t smell them. How fish hundreds of feet deep in the ocean can smell human way up there in a boat is beyond me.

2) If fish have such a good sense of smell, maybe the TSA should hire them to sniff for drugs and explosives at airports.

3) Of course, the TSA would have to provide fish bowls for their aquatic brethren or the fish would die. And stink. And then no one would want to fly, except the bad guys who would be easy to arrest as they were the only ones flying.

4) Unless, of course, the TSA people eat the fish when they die. Maybe use some lemon juice.

5) It’s an interesting legal question. May a fish working for the federal government be eaten?

6) In 1519, Montezuma invited Cortez to share a chocolate drink (Xocolatl) with him. Cortez accepted the invitation. Cortez soon afterward seized Montezuma and executed him. This is more than bad manners on the part of a guest. If Cortez had not gotten into see Montezuma, he couldn’t have decapitated the leadership of the great Aztec nation. The resulting disarray in the Aztec command gave Cortez enough of an advantage to conquer Mexico.

7) The Spanish went on to conquer Central America, much of South America, and what became the southwestern part of the United States. One can only imagine how culinary history would have been changed in the Americas if this had not have happened.

8) So think about that when you invite someone over for hot chocolate.

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

Tanzanian Mango Cream Recipe

Tanzanian Dessert

MANGO CREAM

INGREDIENTSMangoCr-

2 mangoes
1 1/3 cup sugar
1 cup heavy cream

PREPARATION

Peel mangoes. Cut fleshy part of mango in blender. Puree mango in blender. Put sugar and heavy cream in mixing bowl. Whip cream with whisk or electric beater until sugar dissolves and cream thickens. Pour pureed mango into mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until all is uniformly blended.

TIDBITS

1) Mango is not a palindrome.

2) However, it is anagram for Ma Nog.

3) Ma Nog led the extended Nog family of Tanzania from 1869 to 1914 and in 1888 developed egg nog. It was fantastic! The whole world took notice! The whole world loved egg nog! They all wanted it! Everyone ended sentences with exclamation points!

3) The late 1800s was best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of spiced dessert drinks. It was the age of militaristic imperialism.

4) In 1885, Germany invaded Tanzanzia, then Tanganyika, to secure the supply of Ma Nog’s egg nog. France and Britain the other big colonial powers resented Germany rolly polly Ma Nog egg monopoly.

5) Relations festered for decades between Germany and the Franco-British egg-nog alliance. War War One erupted in 1914. Supposedly it was because the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated but newly declassified documents prove decisively the Tanzania egg nog cause.

6) Millions died in World War One. This war spawned a sequel, World War Two. Millions died in that war as well.

7) But in 1961 Tanzania became independent. It’s peace loving government with the kind acquiesence of Ma Nog’s grandchildren posted her delicious egg nog recipe in all the prestigious culinary journals.

8) We haven’t had a global war since. Yay for Tanzania and egg nog.

– 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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