Posts Tagged With: thriller

Texas Chili

Posted on February 16, 2017 by pauldelancey

American Entree

TEXAS CHILI

INGREDIENTStexaschili

3 pounds beef chuck or sirloin
2 tablespoons lard or vegetable oil
3 garlic cloves
1 medium onion
1 jalapeno pepper
2 tomatoes
1 7-ounce can green chile peppers
½ cup chili powder
½ teaspoon coriander
1 tablespoon cumin
½ tablespoon oregano
2 tablespoons masa harina or cornmeal                                                                                                                                       This chili is kept in place by gravity.
2 teaspoons brown sugar

SPECIAL UTENSIL

slow cooker

Serves 8. Takes 1 hour preparation plus 4 hours in the slow cooker.

PREPARATION

Cut beef into 1″ cubes. Add lard and enough beef to make a single layer to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until beef starts to brown. Remove beef when browned and add it to slow cooker. Keep lard in pan. You will need to cook in batches.

While beef browns, dice garlic and onion. Seed and dice jalapeno pepper. Dice tomatoes. Add garlic, onion, and jalapeno to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes of until garlic and onion soften. Add tomato, green chiles, chili powder, coriander, cumin, oregano, masa harina, and brown sugar. Cook on low-medium heat for 3 minutes. Stir until well blended and occasionally after that. Transfer all contents in pan to slow cook. Cover slow cooker. Cover and cook on high for 4 hours or until meat is tender to the fork.

TIDBITS

1) The four forces of the universe are: gravitational, molecular, atomic, and electrical. I might be remembering this wrong. You don’t me running the universe. Anyway, gravity is important. It keeps the chili in your bowl from floating. Molecular forces keep the meat in your chili from vaporizing into billions and billions of beef-chuck atoms. Atomic forces keep the beef-chuck atoms ripping themselves apart in a nuclear explosion; no chili is worth that. Finally, the electrical forces in chili are weak. That’s why the electrical wires in your homes are made from copper, not chili.

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

Spaghetti Omelette From Cameroon

Posted on February 10, 2017 by pauldelancey

Cameroonian Breakfast

SPAGHETTI OMELETTE

INGREDIENTSspaghettiomelette

2 eggs
½ cup cooked spaghetti
1 stalk green onion
¼ small onion
1 small tomato
⅛ teaspoon white pepper or black pepper
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Makes 1 omelette. Takes 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add eggs to mixing bowl. Beat eggs with whisk until blended. Cut green onion into ¼” slices. Dice onion and tomato. Add spaghetti, green onion, onion, tomato, white pepper, salt, and oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until veggies soften and spaghetti starts getting crispy. Stir occasionally.

Pour beaten eggs over veggies. Cook at medium for 3 minutes or until eggs become hard enough to flip over. Flip egg mixture. Cook at medium heat for 2 minutes or until omelette is done to your desired level of doneness. Goes well inside ½ baguette as a sandwich filler.

Isn’t the very idea of a spaghetti omelette way cool?

TIDBITS

1) China invented spaghetti. They built Great Spaghetti Wall of China in 1155 to keep out the Mongol barbarians. It worked. The wall was too high to scale, too thick to batter through.

2) However, in the summer of 1213, Mongols under Genghis Khan approached the wall. Khan’s engineers studied and studied their obstacle. No use. The frustrated warriors threw tomatoes, one of their more non-lethal weapons, at the wall before turning away to head home. Suddenly hot rain, it was summer, deluged and penetrated the Great Spaghetti Wall for ten minutes. The pasta softened. So did the tomatoes. The Mongol horde, tired of endless yogurt meals, attacked the wall with two-tined forks. The cooked spaghetti was great. and so they ate their way through the wall. The Mongols poured into China and devastated the land.

3) The French built the Maginot Line in the 1930s to keep out the spaghetti-hating German army. Unfortunately, the French didn’t have enough pasta to build a wall along their entire northern border. The Germans, in 1940, simply sent their forces around the wall and defeated France. No nation has tried building a spaghetti wall since.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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

Soul by Darth Vader, Armor by American Standard

Posted on February 8, 2017 by pauldelancey

Look at the photos below.

stormtroopertoilet

 

The armor and the toilet are made of the same stuff. Are storm troopers really transformers that can turn themselves into toilets as the need arises? Or did American StandardTM or KohlerTM submit the lowest bid when the Imperial armor order come up? Was Darth Vader that cost conscious? Why do storm troopers always miss? Might it have something to do with men and toilets?

– 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: humor | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Shrimp Creole

Posted on February 7, 2017 by pauldelancey

Cajun Entree

SHRIMP CREOLE

INGREDIENTSshrimpcreole

⅔ cup rice
1½ pounds shrimp will shells on
1⅓ cups water
1 stalk celery
2 garlic cloves
1 green bell pepper
1 large onion
3 tablespoons butter
½ teaspoon basil
1 bay leaf
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon thyme
1 14-ounce can diced, undrained tomatoes

Serves 4. Takes 50 minutes.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

Dutch oven

PREPARATION

Cook rice according to instructions on package. While rice cooks, shell and devein shrimp. KEEP SHELLS. Add shrimp shells and water to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Reduce heat to warm and simmer until needed.

Mince celery, garlic, green bell pepper, and onion. Add minced veggies and butter to Dutch oven. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until ingredients soften. Stir frequently. Add basil, bay leaf, cayenne pepper, pepper, salt, and thyme. Stir.

Remove and discard shrimp shells from pot. Add ¼ cup of the shrimp-shell flavored water to Dutch oven. (Keep the rest of this flavored water.) Reduce heat to Dutch oven to medium. Cook for 5 minutes on medium heat. Stir frequently enough to keep mixture from burning on bottom. Add diced tomatoes with its liquid and the remaining shrimp-shell flavored water. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes or until liquid thickens. Stir frequently enough to keep mixture from burning on bottom. Remove bay leaf. Add shrimp. Cook on medium heat for 3 minutes or until the shrimp turn pink or orange. Stir frequently. Serve over rice.

TIDBITS

1) The shrimp in the above photo are on the plate because they are subject to the laws of gravity.

2) When they want to be.

3) Shrimp have the ability to turn off gravity by clicking their dozen little red shoes together and saying, “There’s no place like Mars. There’s no place like Mars.”

4) And whoosh, off they float to Mars.

5) Whenever you see a meteorite streaking away from Earth, that’s really a shrimp going home to Mars. They’re not burning up, rather they are traveling so fast they give off a red shift.

6) NASA would dearly love to know how shrimp can negate gravity and float across space at near light speed.

7) NASA has determined that the shrimp’s shell is impervious to friction-generated heat, so that the little crustaceans can zip back and forth through the Earth’s atmosphere with impunity.

8) OK, NASA also wants to build a spaceship as durable as shrimp shells.

9) This is why the NASA cafeteria serves shrimp creole every single meal. Every single day. They are saving the shrimp shells for structural analysis. They also hope to gather enough shrimp shells to make a space shuttle.

10) Unfortunately, shrimp creole tastes better if you boil the shrimp shells. So, they go into the shrimp creole. This is bad, while shrimp shells resist the heat of speeding through the atmosphere and they stand up to the wetness of water, become too pliable when boiled in water. As we know, flimsy shrimps shells are useless for the rigors of intergalactic travel. Thus, the scientists can never get enough shrimp shells.

11) Now you know why shrimp are so worried about global warming. Global warming means hotter oceans. Hotter oceans cause flimsier shells. Softer shells will make it easier for sharks to eat them. Sharks particularly love jumbo shrimp.

12) It takes time for sharks to crunch their way through shrimp shells; submarine fleets around the world are studying these study shells. While the sharks attempt their futile munching, the shrimp say, “There’s no place like Mars. There’s no place like Mars.”

13) And whoosh, the shark is taken along at near-light speeds through the atmosphere. Where they die. This is why there are not more sharks in the oceans. It’s always why aquariums occasionally misplace a shark.

14) But all this will change when the oceans get too hot for the shrimp shells. So, the shrimp have been migrating back to Mars.

15) Those canals you see on Mars have all been built by shrimp. They need places to swim.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Tacos de Rajas con Crema

Posted on February 6, 2017 by pauldelancey

Mexican Entree

TACOS DE RAJAS CON CREMA

INGREDIENTStacosderajas

2 tablespoons vegetable oil (2 tablespoons more later)
4 poblano or Anaheim chiles
1 garlic clove
1 medium onion
½ pound Oaxacan cheese or queso fresco
1½ cups crema Mexicana or sour cream
12 8″ corn tortillas

Makes 12 tacos. Takes 1 hour 10 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add 2 tablespoons oil to pan. Heat oil
on high heat until a tiny bit of tortilla starts to (We once thought the Earth looked like this.)
dance. Add poblano chiles. Stir the chiles
occasionally until the chiles blister and blacken all over. (Be careful when frying or sautéing at high heat. When stirring, hold a lid between you and the hot oil when stirring or tilt the pan away from you.) Put poblanos in plastic bags and let steam for 20 minutes. Remove from bags and rub skin off chiles. Discard skins. Seed poblano chiles and cut them into ½” wide strips.

While chiles steam, mince garlic clove and onion. Shred cheese. Add 2 tablespoons oil to, garlic, and onion to pan. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion and garlic soften. Stir frequently. Add poblano strips. Sauté for 2 minutes. Stir frequently. Add crema Mexicana. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 4 minutes or until crema thickens. Stir frequently. Add cheese, Reduce heat to low and simmer for 3 minutes or until cheese melts completely. Stir frequently.

Warm tortillas in pan on high for a few seconds or wrap them in a wet towel and microwave for 1 minute. Warming the tortillas makes them pliable enough to roll. Ladle 1/12th of the poblano/cheese sauce, about 2 tablespoons, onto each warmed tortilla. Roll up tortillas and serve.

TIDBITS

1) Before 1492, many believed the Earth was flat like a tortilla. Others, folks who ate oatmeal all day long, did not care. Then lost spice merchants from India accidentally showed up in Venice carrying peppercorns and basil. It was now possible to make the appetizer, caprese. Life was worth living.

2) Unfortunately, the land route to spice-laden India was blocked by meanies. Columbus, in the world’s first version of The Shark Tank, convinced Queen Isabella to sponsor his historic voyage of discovery. He and his brother Mercator had told her the Earth was round like a cylinder. Later Benedictine monks asserted our planet was rounded like the egg. Finally Peary, explorer and diner, after reaching the North Pole in 1909, concluded our planet is really shaped like a stuffed tomato.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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

Coconut Pepper Steak

Posted on February 2, 2017 by pauldelancey

Mauretanian Entree

COCONUT PEPPER STEAK

INGREDIENTScoconutpeppersteak

2 cups rice
3 tablespoons cornstarch
¼ cup dry white wine
3 green bell peppers
3 garlic cloves
3 pounds beef tenderloin
2 cubes beef bouillon
⅓ cup peanut oil or vegetable oil
¼ teaspoon chili powder
¾ teaspoon pepper
½ tablespoon salt
⅔ cup coconut milk

SPECIAL UTENSILS

Fist of Doom, kitchen mallet, or heavy can
Dutch oven

Serves 8. Takes 50 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cook rice according to instructions on package. Add cornstarch and dry white wine to mixing bowl. Stir with whisk until cornstarch dissolves. Seed bell peppers. Mince garlic cloves. Slice bell peppers and beef into strips 1″ and up to 3″ long. Smash bouillon cubes with Fist of Doom.

Add peanut oil, bell-pepper strips, garlic, chili powder, pepper, and salt to pan. Sauté on medium-high heat for 2 minutes. Stir frequently. Add beef strips. Sauté for 3 minutes on medium-high heat. Stir occasionally. Add coconut milk and smashed bouillon cubes. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Add dissolved cornstarch in wine to pan. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes or until sauce thickens. Stir occasionally. Ladle beef strips, bell-strips, and sauce over rice.

TIDBITS

1) This and nearly all other recipes employ fractional amounts of ingredients, such as ½ teaspoon. Fractions are learned in grammar school. This is why there are no kindergarten chefs.

2) There are precious few recipes that list “x teaspoons” and then challenge you to solve for x. There’s been some speculation that Xavier Cougat once wrote a cookbook for algebra lovers, but there’s evidence for it.

3) The letter x is a palindrome. This is why mathematicians love to use it.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

La Bouillie (Hot Cereal from Chad)

Posted on January 31, 2017 by pauldelancey

Chadian Breakfeast

LA BOUILLIE
(Hot Cereal)

INGREDIENTSlabouillie

4 cups water (1 additional cup later)
1 cup ground rice or wheat flour
3 tablespoons smooth peanut butter
1 tablespoon corn flour, wheat flour, or rice
1 cup water
⅓ cup milk
1½ tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons sugar

Makes 4 bowls. Takes 12 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add 4 cups water to pot. Bring water to boil using high heat. Gradually add rice, stirring all the while. While 4 cups water comes to boil, add peanut butter, corn flour, and 1 cup water to mixing bowl. Mix with fork until blended. Once 4 cups water are boiling, add peanut butter/corn flour mix to pot. Mix with fork or whisk until completely blended and the cereal has reached your desired level of thickness. Stir frequently. Remove from heat. Add milk, lemon juice and sugar. Stir with whisk until completely blended.

TIDBITS

1) Abba “Willie” Aouzou, a prosperous date merchant in Abademi, Chad, loved American country music. His one, true dream was to perform at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. While his fellow tribesmen sang traditional songs of their camel caravaning days, Abba sang the songs of Willie Nelson. While his neighbors ate couscous and quaffed hibiscus, Abba “Willie” Aouzou ate Texas chili and drank beer. The only thing he had in common with the folks around him was the Arabic language and a love of hot breakfast cereal.

2) Still, Abba’s love of beer proved an endless source of friction. “Willie, our beliefs forbid us to the drink alcohol.” Willie always replied, “But I have to drink beer. How else can I write a song about how my wife stole my pickup truck to run off with my best friend, the whiskey salesmen.”

3) In 1972, “Willie” Aouzou wrote about sharing a big bowl of chili with Willie Nelson. The song shot to the top of the North African country music charts. The Grand Ole Opry invited him to perform. He got a standing ovation. Secure in his success, Abba gave up beer and began writing twangy songs that fused honky tonk with the spirit of the Saharan caravans. Nashville went wild for him. A rising Swedish pop band named itself Abba in homage to him. His home town of Fi’ad, Chad went crazy as well, naming a hot breakfast cereal after him, “La Bouillie.” La Bouillie is nearly an anagram for his first hit, “Willie’s Bowl.” because there are a lot of wordsmiths in Fi’ad.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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

Pa Amb Tomaquet (Tomato Bread)

Posted on January 25, 2017 by pauldelancey

Andorran Appetizer

PA AMB TOMÀQUET
(Tomato Bread)

INGREDIENTStomatobread

4″ baguette or crusty Italian bread
4 garlic cloves
4 big, ripe tomatoes
8 teaspoons olive oil (1 teaspoon per slice)
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt

Makes 8 slices. Takes 10 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cut bread into ½” slices. Toast bread slices in toaster on medium setting, if that exists, for 1½ minutes or slices are .browned to your desired level

Cut garlic cloves in half. Rub each slice with half a garlic clove. Do not use the same clove twice. (Doing so will bring vampires to your neighborhood.) Cut tomatoes in half. Squeeze a different tomato half over each bread slice. Drizzle 1 teaspoon olive oil over each bread slice. Sprinkle an equal amount of pepper and salt over each slice.

TIDBITS

1) Vampires can only go out at night.

2) Vampires can only enter a building after being invited in.

3) The South Pole’s day is six months long.

4) A vampire would die there!

5) Unless it could get inside a building.

6) However, the people at the South Pole are a savvy lot. They would never invite in a vampire.

7) This is why vampires hang out on Alaskan cruises during winter months.

8) However, most people prefer to visit Alaska in the summer.

9) Which is bad for blood thirsty vampires. And even the few people who go on such voyage will not invite vampires into their staterooms. It’s not easy being a vampire tourist nowadays.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Tiramisu

Posted on January 17, 2017 by pauldelancey

Italian Dessert

TIRAMISU

INGREDIENTStiramisu

6 lady fingers
6 egg yolks
⅔ cup sugar
½ teaspoon rum extract or 2 tablespoons rum or Marsala wine
1 pound marscapone*
½ cup room-temperature espresso
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa

* = You could use cream cheese as a substitute, but then the ghosts of thousands of Italian chefs would arise to terrorize the world and you don’t want that, do you?

SPECIAL UTENSILS

8″ x 8″ casserole dish
double boiler (This utensil makes this recipe easier. However, the recipe is written for those who don’t have one. Life is fraught with difficult choices.)

Serves 6. Takes 6 hours 15 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add egg yolks and sugar to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add rum extract. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add egg yolk/sugar mixture to pan. The pan needs to be just wide enough not to fall into to the pot that will go beneath it.

Add water to pot until it is 2/3 the way to the top. Heat on high heat until water is nearly boiling. Reduce heat to low and rest pan on the pot. Stir egg yolk/sugar mixture for 10 minutes or until it starts to thicken. Stir constantly. Remove from heat and cool in refrigerator for 15 minutes or until mixture is cold. Add marscapone. Mix gently with whisk until mixture is creamy.

Cut lady fingers in half along their lengths Drizzle lady-finger halves with espresso. Arrange the bottom halves of the lady fingers in casserole dish. Add ½ of the marscapone/egg yolk mixture over espresso and lady fingers. Smooth with spatula. Add lady-finger tops and the remaining marscapone/egg yolk mixture. Sprinkle with cocoa. Refrigerate for 5 hours or until tiramisu is firm.

TIDBITS

1) The Russia of 1611 to 1613 was ruled by a cat, Tsar Miiu. Miiu is the way Russian cats say “meow.” Now, cats do not ordinarily rule such a large country or even a smaller one like Belgium.

2) However, Tsar Miiu reign began during difficult times. Indeed, the years of 1598 are known as The Time of Troubles. Because they were troubling times. With lots of troubles. People were troubled by the troubling troubles.

3) On August 23, 1601, a young teen named Ivan stayed in bed. He should have been out helping with the harvest. Instead he daydreamed and daydreamed about the beautiful Reiko Go. The Gos ran a small restaurant in the nearby. As the only place serving Japanese noodles within thousands of miles, Go to Go’s pretty much had the Miso Soup market cornered. When the peasants didn’t have time to sit down, they ordered to go at Go to Go’s to go window.

4) Anyway, Ivan’s parents came in and raged at Ivan for his laziness. They called him: moss, a rock, a slug a sloth, and a sluggish sloth. Disgusted at this abuse, Ivan, a scant hour later, bolted out of bed and took off to Go to Go’s to see Reiko. He asked her to elope. Reiko said, “You’re as handsome as the perfect noodle, but I’d so as eat lutefisk as marry you. You have no money. You have no prospects. You’ve as much get up and go as a snail relying on plate tectonics for a burst of speed.”

5) There you have it, the first mention of plate tectonics. Reiko often mused about the Earth’s shifting plates during slow times at the restaurant. That Reiko had figured out the Earth was composed of a core composed of molten nickel, a mantle made of rockish stuff (This was a theory in its infancy, after all.), and a crust comprised of slowly moving plates. She could have revolutionized the world of science. But instead, she devoted herself to making the perfect noodle.

6) Reiko pointed her finger at the door. “Go, be like Dmitri, the son of our late Tsar.”
“But he’s dead, sweetheart. People say he staggered off a cliff.”
“Ivan, I don’t know that. I didn’t see that. No one saw him die. He could have journeyed to Paris for the perfect boeuf bourguignon.”

7) A light bulb went off over Ivan’s head. If no one saw Dmitri die and no one knew what he looked anymore like as it had been years since his last appearance and Dimitri had worn a cloth sack over his anyway due to his acne. So, Ivan showed up at the Russian Duma and proclaimed himself to be Dmitri, the true heir to the Russian throne. Most of the Russian nobles put up no resistance, having dined on lutefisk for lunch.

8) However, the nobility that had eaten chicken instead contested his claim. Civil war broke out. Battles raged all over the country. Crops were trampled and burnt. Foreign governments sensing opportunity, invaded. Land was taken. Citrus trees were chopped down. The Russian tangelo industry would never recover. More pretenders to the throne arose. Even more fighting occurred, enough to warrant an exclamation point! The Russian Duma met and withdrew support from all contenders. A new tsar needed to be crowned.

9) A that point Miiu, a cat, padded into the building, a mouse in his mouth. Boyar Koniev pointed at it. “That cat for Tsar.”
Boldin shook his head. “Nyet, that is only a cat. All it will do is catch mices and nap.”
“Bo ho,” said Koniev, “wouldn’t that be a huge improvement over all the tsars and claimants we’ve had lately?”
Everyone agreed and Miiu became Tsar. Miiu reigned for two years, By that time Russia had calmed down enough to raise a human to the throne. The new tsar’s chef and anagrammatist, created a new dessert in Tsar Miiu’s honor, tiramisu.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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

Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup

Posted on January 15, 2017 by pauldelancey

Taiwanese Soup

BEEF NOODLE SOUP

INGREDIENTSbeefnoodlesoup

5 garlic cloves
1 inch ginger root
6 scallions (white part of green onions)
1 Roma tomato
2 Thai chiles or red chiles
8 cups water (or enough to cover short ribs)
1⅓ cups Chinese rice wine or sherry
¾ cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon Sichuan chili bean sauce
(doubanchiang), Korean gochujang. or bean sauce
4 whole star anise pods
3 pounds beef short ribs
1 cup chicken stock
1¼ pounds Asian wheat noodles or linguine
¼ cup mustard greens or spinach
¼ cup baby bok choy, bok choy, or Napa cabbage
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro

SPECIAL UTENSILS

8 quart pot
tongs

Makes 8 bowls. Takes 4 hours 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Mince garlic cloves. Peel and grate ginger root. Cut scallions into ¼” slices. Dice tomato and Thai chiles. Add garlic, ginger, scallion, tomato, water, rice wine, soy sauce, brown sugar, chili bean sauce, and star anise into pot. Bring to boil on high heat. Reduce heat to low. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Add short ribs. Cover and simmer on low heat for 2½ hours or until meat is tender to the fork, but is still on the ribs. Turn off heat, remove lid, and let sit for 1 hour. Remove meat from pot with tongs and place on flat surface. Push bones out of short ribs. Shred beef with fork.. Return shredded beef to pot. Add chicken stock. Simmer on low heat for 20 minutes. Stir occasionally.

While soup simmers, cook noodles according to instructions on package. Dice mustard greens, baby bok choy, and cilantro. Add noodles to bowls. Add mustard greens and bok choy to bowls. Ladle soup over mustard greens and baby bok choy. Garnish with cilantro.

TIDBITS

1) Not too many years ago, Susan Chang of Poway, California, posted the following question on FacebookTM, “If we took all the cooked noodles in the world and tied them together, would they reach all the way to Mars?” No response. Susan asked the same question, but added a picture of two kittens playing with noodles.

2) The post went viral. Suddenly, billions of people had to know. Purchases of noodles went up a thousand fold. The entire economies of thirteen smallish countries switched over to making noodles. Greenland built sixty million hot houses to raise wheat. Ten million babies were named after noodles, “Noodlo if they were boys or “Noodla” if they were girls.

3) Soon the world had billions of miles of noodles, enough to cover every road in the world. This naturally made traveling anywhere difficult, unless, of course, you had a JeepTM equipped with noodle tires. But we didn’t have many of those vehicles. Most factories still churned out noodles.

4) Time to cook those noodles. On May 5, all seven billion people cooked noodles. The steam from all that water boiling formed a thick cloud over the entire Earth. The cloud lasted an year. No sunlight got through at all; dinosaurs that somehow survived the meteor from 65 million years ago, died up for good. People tied noodle after noodle together. Soon a string billions of miles long circled the globe countless times. We know it was countless because no one tried counting it.

5) Sally was chose for the honor of stretching the string to Mars. Being five foot seven and standing on her tippy toes and extending her hand to sky, she managed to lift the noodle end seven feet to Mars. This was short of the Red Planet as all could see. So, Sally stood on her boyfriend Bob’s shoulders. Still short of Mars. A troupe of Chinese acrobats came over. Although they stood seventeen people tall, a GuinnessTM record for noodle standing they were still not all the way to Mars.

6) Bushnell AviationTM lent a helicopter. One person, Dwayne, held onto the helicopter and then another person held on to him, and so on. However, even though Wayne was a weight lifter, even he couldn’t hold up 15,000 pounds of people for long. He let go. Fortunately every fill into the community swimming pool, establishing Guinness records for the largest number of people to successfully perform a cannonball into a community pool and for the largest tidal wave in Wyoming.

7) Then NASA and the European Space Agency, seeing people actually performing scientific experiments got into the act. A space shuttle spooled out the noodle string as it traveled Mars. The string measured 135 billion miles, enough to get to that planet when it was closest to Earth.

12) Unfortunately, Mars was farther away than that. The phlegmatic population, there being a global cold, shrugged and built a noodle string three time longer than the first, which is still whipping around the Earth. NASA tried again. It worked! It did. It did. All the way to Mars. Sally clipped the string in two. ESA carried the second string all the way as well. The noodle strings stayed in place as the extremely cold temperatures of space froze them into super strong poles.

13) Then Amos Keeto, at Bushnell ConstructionTM said, “We have extra noodle, enough to make rungs between the noodle poles. The people of Earth, did just that. Now, if you have space suit and have enough supplies, you can climb to Mars. Way cool.

– 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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