Posts Tagged With: tomato

Tomato Soup

American Soup

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TOMATO SOUP

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INGREDIENTS
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3 garlic cloves
1 small onion
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 bay leaf
1¾ cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon salt
2½ pounds tomatoes
3 tablespoons butter
2½ tablespoons flour
½ tablespoon fresh basil
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SPECIAL UTENSILS
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large food processor or electric blender
colander
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Serves 6. Takes 40 minutes.
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PREPARATION
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Dice garlic and onion. Add garlic cloves, onion, and olive oil to large pot. Sauté at for 5 minutes at medium-high heat or until onion softens. Add bay leaf, broth, oregano, salt. and tomatoes. Bring to boil using medium-high heat. Stir frequently. Cover. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes or until tomatoes begin to disintegrate. Remove bay leaf.
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While tomato/broth mixture simmers, add butter to pan. Melt butter using medium heat. Add flour gradually, stirring always. Cook for 1 minute or until mixture turns brown.
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Add ingredients in pot to food processor. Blend using puree setting until ingredients become tomato soup. (You might to blend in batches.) Strain soup through colander into bowl. Discard bits in colander. Gradually stir in brown flour mixture. Stir with fork or whisk until any lumps disappear.
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Dice fresh basil. Garnish soup with fresh basil. Other garnishes that go well with this soup are: croutons, parsley, and Parmesan cheese.
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TIDBITS
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1) Writing first appeared 5,400 years ago in Mesopotamia. But the land had no tomatoes, so no tomato-soup recipes. Humans first domesticated tomatoes in South America on April 12, 4976 BCE, but the natives didn’t write, so again no tomato-soup recipes Then one glorious day in 1832 saw the first published tomato-soup recipe. Culinary historians say this is humanity’s greatest deed.
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– 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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Tomato Rules of Thumb

No one likes an unruly tomato.  The really bad ones escape to outer space. So here are rules to keep them on Earth.
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1 pound = 2 big* tomatoes = 8 plum tomatoes = 3 Roma tomatoes = 25 cherry tomatoes
1 pound = 1¾ cups diced** tomatoes
1 cup canned tomatoes = 1¾ diced, cooked tomatoes
1 cup tomato sauce = ⅓ cup tomato paste plus ½ cup water
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* = This is an approximation. Tomatoes come in all shapes and sizes even within the same type of tomato, such as Roma. It would be nicer for chefs around the world if tomatoes displayed a greater degree of uniformity. However, the tomato world is a fractious community. Perhaps you can convince them to be the same. Then you will be the long awaited Tomato Whisperer.
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** = Again, an approximation. The number of cups you get from a pound of tomatoes depends on how finely you slice them. You can’t blame all your culinary uncertainty on the tomato.
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“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves. . .”
– Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II
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– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

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

Categories: cookbook, Paul De Lancey, science | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Paul’s Awesome English Dictionary: Today’s Word – Madmad

How many times has this happened to you? You can’t stand your job. Your spouse ran off with a tomato trader. There’s nothing on TV once you get home.  Or perhaps, just perhaps, you feel a vague unease that life has passed you by and that you’ve checked off none of the items on your bucket list.

Then the pressure that’s building for years overwhelms your equilibrium. You say, “Screw it. I’m moving to Madagascar. Today. I am.” And you do.

If only there were a word to describe this process.

And now we have.

TODAY’S AWESOME WORD

MADMAD

Awesome entry #43

 

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

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

Categories: Paul's Awesome Dictionay | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Tomato Pie

American Entree

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TOMATO PIE

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INGREDIENTS­
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1 tablespoon fresh basil
1½ tablespoons fresh dill
3 green onions
1½ tablespoons fresh oregano
1 tablespoon fresh parsley
2½ pounds tomatoes
½ tablespoon salt
¾ cup mayonnaise
¾ cup shredded mozzarella cheese
¾ cup shredded Parmesan cheese
1 9″ pie shell
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SPECIAL UTENSILS
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mandoline (optional)
aluminum foil
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Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 20 minutes.
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PREPARATION
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Preheat oven to 360 degrees, Dice basil, dill, green onions, oregano, and parsley. Use mandoline or knife to Slice tomatoes into slices ¼”-thick slices with mandoline or knife. Place tomato slices 1-layer deep on paper towels. Sprinkle slices with salt. Place paper towels on tomatoes. Pat tomatoes dry. Let sit 15 minutes. Pat tomato slices dry again with new paper towels. Add mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses, basil, dill, green onion, oregano, and mayonnaise to mixing bowl. Mix with fork or whisk until well blended.
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Arrange ⅓ of the tomato slices over the pie crest. Spread ½ of the cheese/mayonnaise mixture over the tomato slices. Repeat. Arrange last layer of tomato slices over the 2nd cheese/ mayonnaise layer. Press these slices firmly into the cheese/mayonnaise. (This makes the layers come together.) Wrap only the edges of crust with tin foil to prevent the crust from browning excessively.
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Bake at 360 degrees for 35 minutes or until the mayonnaise/cheese mixture turns golden brown and begins to bubble. Garnish with parsley.
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TIDBITS
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1) Lucy of Olduvai Gorge had a brother called Tomato. His skeleton has yet to be discovered. That’s why know so little of him. While most homonids were content to be hunter-gathers, Tomato developed the tomato by careful cross pollination. He then scattered tomato seeds along his way to North and South America. It’s only fitting that we named the tomato after him.
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– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
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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: Chatting With Chefs, cuisine, history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

De Lancey’s European Fun Festival Tours

Aleta, your tour guide

Have fun! Come travel with me.

First Weekend in July – The International Witches Fair –  Watch reenactors capture witches and heretics. Watch the lost souls get tried. Be enthralled by their torture. Be entranced by lovingly recreated witches’s covens. Listen to the excommunication of the entire town. Watch as Pope Julius II curses the entire village of Trasmoz, Spain. The festival sports an authentic medieval market place and medieval camp. There are parades, magic shows, musical shows, and medieval combat. You’ll want to go year after year just to see everything. Learn about medieval plants. Learn how to poison someone. Or maybe you’ll want to heal people with medieval medicinal plants. To each his own.

August – World Bog Snokeling Championships – LLanwrtyd, Wales. People come from all over the world to race 120-yards through a peat bog. Is it difficult? Dunno. But it is only 120 yards long. Many find the competition to be intense. People root on their favorite snorkelers.If you’re an ironman, if you’re a triathlete, you simply must enter in the Bog Snorkeling Championships. It consists of an 8-mile run, a 12-mile Mountain Bike ride, and a 60-yard bog snorkel. There’s lots of fun for the spectators as well. Graze and quaff your way through the food and drink stands. Work your way to the ale and cider bar. Listen to live music as your kids stampede the bouncy castle.  The festival encourages fancy dress.
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August 26 to 28 – Redhead Days Festival – Held this year in Tilburg, Netherlands. Be there to strut your awesome redheadness or if you’re not redheaded yourself, to absorb the sunshine emanating from so much redheads assembled in one place. Be sure to check the event’s website before you bring your clothes. Attendees all dress in the same color, which will have been decided by voting. Planned highlights include: dress-up contest, pub crawl, kids playground, hot tubs (not in the kids playground), food stands, cocktail workshop, BBQ, art exhibition with a red-haired theme , open stage, singing, salsa dancing, lectures, photoshoots, poetry, and cycling tours. Spend your days at the festival, then head to the exciting after-festival parties. There’s even a late night, redhead party at Netherland’s best known gay bar, The Lollipop. All are welcome.
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Last Wednesday in Augsust – Last La Tomatina – The world’s best tomato festival, La Tomatina, is held in Buñol, Spain. The festival starts with the eating of many different tomato-based dishes. Yum! However, dining on the tomato is not the reason for La Tomatina’s extraordinary popularity. The festival hosts the world’s biggest tomato fight. Yippee.

Note: festival dates are prone to change. Check before you book. You don’t want to lug your broom all the way to Spain only to discover the International Witches Fair won’t take place another two weeks.

 

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

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

 

 

Categories: fun festivals, travel | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Full English Breakfast (Fry Up)

British Breakfast

FULL ENGLISH BREAKFAST
(Fry Up)

INGREDIENTS

1 15-ounce can baked beans*
1 large tomato
4 pork sausages, breakfast sausages, or bangers
4 slices bacon**
6 mushroom caps
2 slices black pudding (optional)***
1½ tablespoons olive oil
2 slices bread
2 eggs

* = Try to use Heinz beans. Heinz is really popular in England
** = back bacon, pork belly, or regular bacon
*** = can be found online

SPECIAL UTENSILS

3 pans and 1 pot (Not really special, but you’ll need 4 of them.)
sonic obliterator (Now this is a truly special kitchen utensil. Once you get one, you’ll wonder how your ever managed to do without one.)

Serves 2. Takes 40 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cut tomato into 4 slices. Add beans to small pot. Simmer at low heat until the sauce that comes with the beans thicken. Cover and reduce heat to warm or lowest setting. Stir enough to prevent burning.

Poke sausages with fork or toothpick. (This keeps the sausage juices from building up and coming out in a hot jet.) Add sausages to 1st pan. Fry sausages at medium heat for 15 minutes or until completely browned. Turn enough to ensure even browning. Turn enough to prevent burning Cover and reduce heat to warm..

While sausage fry or warm, add bacon to 2nd pan. Fry bacon for 3 minutes or until it reaches your desired level of doneness. Turn occasionally to ensure even browning. Cover and reduce heat to warm. Remove from heat and set aside Turn enough to prevent burning.

While sausages simmer, add mushrooms to 2rd pan. (The one that had the bacon.) Sauté at medium-high heat for 2 minutes or until they turn brown. Turn enough to keep from burning. Remove mushrooms from heat. Add black pudding to 3rd pan. Sauté at medium heat for 3 minutes or until it both sides turn crispy. Flip once. Remove and set aside.

Add 1½ tablespoons olive oil to 3th pan. Heat at medium heat until tiny piece of bread in the oil starts to dance. Add bread slices. Sauté for 2 minutes or until both sides are crispy and golden brown. Flip once. Remove and set aside Add eggs to this, the 3rd pan. Fry eggs until they are done to your liking. Remove from heat and set aside. Add tomato slices. Reduce heat to low-medium. Sauté for 2 minutes. Flip once.

Add equal amounts of everything to 2 serving plates. Use sonic obliterator on anyone gives you any guff at all during the cooking or the presentation. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your kitchen.

TIDBITS

1) People ask me, “How does one start writing again while suffering from writers’ block?”

2) Go find your muse. Of course, you might just discover that your muse has gone on a drunken bender.

3) So you go on a pub crawl to find her. At each stop, you ask the bartender if he’s seen your muse.

4)“I’m not telling you a thing,” says the bartender, “until you’ve ordered a drink.”

5) So, you order and down a whiskey.

6) “Your muse was here ten minutes ago,” says the man serving drinks, “but she went to the next bar up the street.”

7) So you enter the next bar. That bartender also refuses to talk unless you’ve bought a drink. You order another whiskey. The barkeep informs you that she moved onto a bar two blocks west. “She was a with a gal called Betty.”

8) And so it goes. You drink a whiskey at every bar you go into. The bartender states that you just missed her, but you can find at a bar that’s really not very far away. And so you stagger doggedly on after her.

9) Hours later, your muse parts company with Betty. But the muse conquers bar after bar.

10) Eventually, you give up. You decide to head home. In your car.

11) A vigilant traffic cop notices you weaving from lane to lane. He pulls you over.

12) “But officer,” you hear yourself saying, “I’m a writer. I was looking for my muse, but she was on a pub crawl.”

13) The officer sneers. “Like, I haven’t heard that one before.”

14) This is why writing is not as easy as some people think.

 

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

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

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

Kachumbari (Kenyan Tomato Onion Salad)

Kenyan Appetizer

KACHUMBARI
(Tomato Onion Salad)

INGREDIENTS

½ cup fresh cilantro
1 medium red onion
4 tomatoes
½ cucumber
1 red chile
1¼ teaspoons salt
1 cup water
1 avocado
1½ tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon olive oil

Serves 4. Takes 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Dice cilantro, red onion, and tomatoes. Peel and dice cucumber. Seed and mince red chile. Add diced red onion and salt to small mixing bowl. Mix with hand until red-onion bits are well coated with salt. Add water. Let red onion soak for 10 minutes. Drain red onion.

Peel, seed, and dice avocado. Add all ingredients to large mixing bowl. Toss with fork until well blended.

TIDBITS

1) One of the most unsung trade routes of the Late Middle Ages, according to culinary, historians, was for Kenyan Kachumbari in exchange for Florentine wool. The Kenyans, or another name for Kenyans as historians had another name for the natives who lived then, prized Florentine wool.

2) For the Kenyans, made excellent KevlarTM type vests out of this most excellent wool. These vests proved impenetrable to all spears, arrows, swords, and knives. Kenya could never be conquered as long as it preserved the secret to making their vests. Unfortunately, in 1632, a kitchen maid, Machupa Mwangi, used the papers containing the secret vest formula to line her pie tins. These papers did not survive the baking. A few years later, Omani Arabs conquered Kenya. Kenya would not regain its independence for over 300 years. Bummer.

3) Florentine painters used Kachumbari to make vibrant landscapes. Unfortunately, these paintings had to be small as the ingredients of Kachumbari were quite perishable. (I don’t know how the Kenyan caravaners kept their avocados, which normally go bad in a few days, fresh on their months-long trek north. Modern scientists are eager to rediscover this lost art.) But one morning, Lorenzo Rotini, discovered paints could be made from minerals and plants. And they would last long enough to produce even the largest paints. The Renaissance began the very next day. Huzzah!

 

– 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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Fun Festivals – Tossing Tomatoes at La Tomatina

The world’s best tomato festival, La Tomatina, is held in Buñol, Spain. The festival starts with the eating of many different tomato-based dishes. Yum! However, dining on the tomato is not the reason for La Tomatina’s extraordinary popularity. The festival hosts the world’s biggest tomato fight. Yippee.

Strangely enough this fun festival grew out of parade where musicians and people dressed up as giants and big heads. The local youth, decided to join the parade, as who would not? I mean giants and big heads. The teens got rambunctious. One of the marchers lost his fake head in the commotion. He became angry and started hitting all the young folks that came near him.

The teens took offense at this battery. As fate would have it, the young ones were next to a vegetable cart. The local youth grabbed tomatoes and other veggies and threw them at the battering marcher. Well, the aim of most people is rather poor and most of the hurled tomatoes missed their target. The people hit by these errant missiles got angry. So, they hurled tomatoes back. And missed. Hitting still others. Soon, the tomato tossing became general, just like all those bar fights in Western movies.

The following year, Buñol’s youth commemorated the event by staging a fake argument that deteriorated into a tomato-throwing free for all. The authorities, not foreseeing the tourist draw this tomato hurling would become, broke up the fight. But the tomato-hurling came back the next year. Now la Tomatina happens every year. Why? Because it’s such great fun. Locals hose down the participants. Authorities hose down the streets. So much citric acid, from the tomatoes, gets everywhere that the washed streets will sparkle.

I want to go to La Tomatina. So let’s go there some time. We’ll arrange a meeting. Stay tuned.

Authorities banned this tomato tossing once. Possibly to honor my birth. Possibly because police traditionally look askance at anything resembling a riot. Anyway, devotees of the festival protested this by carrying a huge tomato in a coffin through the center of town. Buñol’s authorities relented and from then on allowed the La Tomatina Festival to continue. Really! Is that all it takes to make the authorities relent? Just carry a tomato-laden coffin through town. (Writes this down for future reference.)

La Tomatina increases in popularity every year and occurs on the last Wednesday in August. Up to 100,000 people attend. It’s so popular that you must buy tickets to attend. Now, the world has finally taken notice. Similar events take place in Colorado, Nevada, Colombia, Costa Rica, China, and India. La Tomatina has made its way in to movies around the world and even into a Mickey Mouse(tm) episode.

Unfortunately, the festival was not held in 2020 and will not be held this year, because of the Covid pandemic. Let us strongly hope that we can soon, and safely, engage in boisterous fun once again.

Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D., travel adviser

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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Triple Sandwich

Peruvian Entree

TRIPLE SANDWICH

INGREDIENTS

2 eggs
4 slices white bread
1 small avocado
1 small tomato
3 tablespoons mayonnaise (6 times at ½ tablespoon)
⅛ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt

Makes 1 sandwich. Serves 2. Takes 20, or so, minutes, depending on the hardness of the boiled egg.

PREPARATION

Boil 2 eggs in water for 6 minutes, for soft boiled, to 12 minutes, for hard boiled. While eggs boil trim crusts off bread slices. Peel and remove pit of avocado. Cut avocado into ½” cubes. Dice tomato. Peel eggs. Cut each egg into 2 slices along its length.

Spread ½ tablespoon mayonnaise on 1st slice of bread. Arrange avocado cubes evenly over mayonnaise. Sprinkle pepper and salt over avocado.

Spread ½ tablespoon mayonnaise on each side of 2nd slice of bread. Put 2nd slice of bread on avocado. Sprinkle diced tomato evenly on 2nd bread slice.

Spread ½ tablespoon mayonnaise on each side of 3nd slice of bread. Put 3nd slice of bread on diced tomatoes. Arrange egg slices evenly on 3rd bread slice.

Spread ½ tablespoon mayonnaise on 4th slice of bread. Put 4th bread slice, mayonnaise side down, on egg slices. Cut sandwich diagonally. This sandwich looks really nice.

TIDBITS

1) A triple is a term from Peruvian baseball. Baseball was invented in Peru by Señor Alfredo Lopez de Santiago y Albondigas. Lopez owned many large diamond mines in Northern Peru. Diamond mining was cramped work. Cramped work leads to cramped workers. Cramped workers lead to crimped productions. So to stretch the muscles of his miners, Lopez invented the game of Baseball. This occurred in 1834, a full eleven years before Alexander Cartwright supposedly invented the sport in America.

2) Lopez found no takers from his weary and famished workers. He had to bribe his miners with food. Batters who ended up at third base, were rewarded with a triple-layered sandwich of avocado, tomato, and eggs. This sandwich came to be known simply as a “triple.” The corresponding base hit also became a triple. 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.

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

Affogato, Italian Ice Cream Coffee

Italian Dessert

AFFOGATO

INGREDIENTS

2 cups hot espresso or hot and very strong coffee*
2 scoops vanilla ice cream*

* = There’s only two ingredients here. Higher quality ingredients will show up more than in other recipes. Also, there’s a lot of leeway. The size of your glass or cup and ice-cream scoop can vary a lot. Frequent research will reveal your optimal amounts. Excelsior!

Serves 4. Takes 2 minutes (Plus any time to brew the espresso.)

SPECIAL UTENSILS

4 narrow juice glasses or other glasses you might have. I mean how easy is it to find espresso glasses near you? And if no one’s looking, a Minnie MouseTM coffee mug will do just fine. Of course, a Minnie Mouse espresso glass would be better. The culinary world is fraught with perilous decisions.

PREPARATION

Put a scoop of vanilla ice cream in each glass. Pour hot espresso over ice cream.

TIDBITS

1) “Affogato” is a condensed version of the phrase “(A fog, a to)mato.” Actually, it’s short for “(A f)rigging (fog, a to)mato”

2) Italy experienced tumultuous–There are four “u”s in that word. Remember that for ScrabbleTM- times in 1968. The oafish Soviet led Warsaw Pact invaded nearby Czechoslovakia. Communist provoked student riots erupted up and down the Italian peninsula. It seemed inevitable that Italy would go communist and fall under Russian domination.

3) Remember the fogs of 1968. Over and over, drivers racing high-performance cars through Italy’s mountain passes experienced massive car pileups when fogs descended with stunning quickness. When the fogs lifted, inspectors would wrecked cars along with a single red tomato, the symbol of Italy’s communist party.

4) Italy teetered. But once aroused, its leaders acted decisively. By law, all Italian tomatoes had to be made into pasta sauce. This decree left no tomatoes for Italy’s Communist party. Deprived of their symbolic flourish at car-crash sites, they lost all interest in the people’s revolution thing and went out to restaurants to sample all the new exciting pasta sauces. Italy has been at peace ever 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

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