Posts Tagged With: turkey

Turkey Stroganoff

Posted on August 30, 2012 by pauldelancey

Russian Entree

TURKEY STROGANOFF

INGREDIENTS

12 ounce bag egg noodles
water
1 garlic clove
1 small onion
1 1/2 pounds ground turkey
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
2 teaspoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
1 cup chicken broth
4 tablespoons sour cream

PREPARATION

Start cooking egg noodles according to instructions or slowly add egg noodles to large pot of boiling water. Keep noodles in boiling water for 5 to 7 minutes. Drain water from noodles with colander.

Mince garlic clove. (Do a small victory dance to celebrate another victory of Man Versus Garlic.) Dice onion (If you look carefully through your tearing eyes, you might see the onion bits move slightly. This is indeed the onion’s victory dance and you should be honored if you get to see it.)

Meanwhile, back at the mixing bowl, combine turkey, garlic, coriander, salt, pepper, onion, and paprika. Cook until there is no pink turkey meat.

Melt butter in frying pan using medium heat. Add olive oil and flour. Stir constantly until mixture thickens. Add turkey/spice mix. Add in sour cream and broth. Cook on medium-high heat until the entire mixture is hot.

This is a simple dish with easy steps, yet enough spices to make your guests drool. Life is good.

TIDBITS

1) Butter is made by agitating fresh cream.

2) Fresh cream, being an inanimate object, is usually cool by nature and difficult to agitate.

3) So you’ll have to call your fresh cream all sorts of nasty things to agitate it enough to make it become butter.

4) Things like “Your momma dates Sweet N LoTM” and “Butter begins with ‘butt’.”

5) Butter is largely a colloid of milk and water.

6) What’s a colloid?

7) Butter comes in two varieties, salted and unsalted, just like nuclear power.

8) Although, unsalted nuclear power does seem to predominate.

9) But you could sprinkle salt on an enriched uranium rod if you so wanted.

10) Please put on a radioactive-proof suit before trying the previous tidbit.

11) During the Middle Ages, witches were able to transform themselves into insects to steal butter.

12) Witches don’t like margarine or spreads.

13) This is why you don’t find many witches anymore.

14) So, if you see a witch on Halloween, please give her a stick of butter. Life’s been hard for her.

15) And maybe the witch will be so grateful for your kindness, she’ll give you a spell to use on your boss.

– 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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Greek Stuffed Bell Peppers

Posted on August 18, 2012 by pauldelancey

Greek Entree

STUFFED BELL PEPPERS

INGREDIENTS

1 cup brown rice
6 bell peppers (any color)
2 cups water (diet water is okay)
1 1/2 pounds ground turkey
1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil
1 teaspoon Prudhomme’s Poultry MagicTM pice
1/2 teaspoons Prudhomme’s Vegetable MagicTM spice
0 teaspoons salt (too much salt is bad for you. Boo, salt, boo)
1/2 teaspoons black pepper
olive oil
1/4 teaspoons paprika
pig sweat (not really)
1 sweetheart to help you find all the ingredients. Some of the fixings will be lurking behind jugs of milk in the refrigerator

SPECIALTY ITEM

Rice cooker

PREPARATION

The most important thing in this recipe is having the ingredients. But you do have flexibility. For example, if you don’t have Prudhomme’s Poultry MagicTM spice, use poultry seasoning, coriander, or dill.

The first step is to cut off the tops of the bell peppers and remove the stem and seeds. Fill a pot with water and put a steaming rack over the pot. Put the peppers on the rack. Boil the water in the pot for ten minutes. (Enough time for a three-mile-run if you’re really fast.) All this is done to soften the peppers.

You really ought to know how to cook rice, especially for this recipe. Theoretically, having a rice cooker ought to be idiot-proof. Ha, not for this idiot.

I had never used this rice cooker before. I measured a cup of rice and poured it in. I measured another cup of water and poured it in. There didn’t seem to be as much water as I had thought there would be. I poured another cup. Same result.

The water pooling onto the counter told me something was amiss. “Honey,” I said, “water’s coming out the rice maker.”

She strode into the kitchen, cleaned up the water, looked at the cooker, and at me. “You didn’t put the black plastic pot into the cooker. You probably ruined it.”

“I didn’t know there was a plastic pot,” I said in my defense. My synapses were really firing.

After much spirited debate, I unscrewed the bottom of the cooker and extracted the remaining 223,192 kernels. My wife took the cooker to the bathroom and dried the contraption with a hair dryer. We put it back together, this time with the plastic pot.

Oh, I combined the stupid rice with the turkey meat and all those spices. Mixed them thoroughly with my hands. Don’t shake hands with people while doing this.

Carefully scoop the rice/meat mass into the peppers. Pour some olive oil on top of the peppers and coat the seeds with the oil. Yes, olive oil is oily. If your fingers got coated, you’ll have to wash your hands again. Sprinkle a good amount of paprika on top of the peppers and meat to obtain a nice browning.

Place the stuffed peppers in a baking dish and cook for 35-50 minutes at 350 degrees until the meat is completely cooked. Please do not let anyone fiddle with the timer during the baking. If so, you’ll have to take the peppers out of the oven more than once and poke at the meat to see if it’s done. DO NOT do this without a pot holder.

Any excess rice/meat mass can be combined with ranch beans to make a tasty side dish.

Well, there you have it. These bell peppers made a scrumptious main course. My family loved it. I don’t know if I’ll make it again, though. I’m powerful afraid of that rice cooker.

TIDBITS

1) Asians eat close to forty times as much rice per year as the average American.

2) Although you can puff rice, it does not “pop” as well as popcorn.

3) Rice is a symbol of fertility. That’s why people used to throw handfuls at weddings. The practice stopped when lawyers and insurers stepped in. One might also imagine couples wishing to remain childless objecting.

– 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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Spaghetti And Meatballs

Posted on August 16, 2012 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 pounds of ground turkey meat
2 big garlic cloves
1 cup of sourdough bread crumbs
2 jars of spaghetti sauce
12 ounces of spaghetti

COOKING THE SPAGHETTI

Follow the instructions on your bag of spaghetti. Different sizes and types of spaghetti have different cooking instructions.

PREPARING THE MEATBALLS

This dish is relatively forgiving. If it’s too spicy, add some water or tomato sauce. If it isn’t spicy enough add some more. If it’s too “liquidy”–-“liquidy” is a legitimate cooking term–-cook the sauce a little longer. If there isn’t enough sauce add more.

Begin defrosting the turkey meat overnight. This way saves electricity and is better for the environment than defrosting by microwave. Sometimes, however, you just don’t have the time. It’s a good idea to take the meat out of the microwave and remove the defrosted outer meat. If you don’t, you will end up cooking the outer part of your block of turkey meat, making it extremely difficult to make meatballs.

Mince the garlic cloves. Take a slice of sourdough bread and make crumbs out of it. I suggest a food processor as it can make smaller crumbs than you can and it won’t get bored doing it either. Sourdough is the chosen bread in this recipe as it goes well with the garlic and spaghetti sauces.

Mix the meat, cloves, and crumbs together. Make meatballs that are at least 1 inch in diameter and less than two. Meatballs that are more than 2 inches across stand a good chance of resembling a model of the Earth–-a hard crust on the outside, gray in the middle with a reddish core.

Put the meatballs in the pan. Actually, this recipe will make two pans worth, giving a huge, delicious meal or wonderful leftovers that your kids will eat the next day before you get up.

Cook on medium heat. Gradually add spaghetti sauce until the medium balls are covered. Reduce heat to low and cover. You won’t have to turn over the meatballs more than a few times as the sauce atop will keep the moisture in.

You’re ready with your sauce at this point. However, if your noodles are not, if you can’t get your kids to log off Wizard 101 or if your sweetheart is in the middle of a Wii Fit session, it is an extremely good idea to set the heat to warm at most or even shut it off. Stir occasionally and gnash your teeth. Your anger will evaporate with the compliments your hungry brood or guests will give you for this meal.

TIDBITS

1) Pasta was eaten by the Chinese seven-thousand years ago.

2) Cortez brought tomatoes back to Spain from Mexico in 1519. So his conquest of Mexico, while bad for the Aztecs, was a positive boon for the culinary world. No tomato sauces for spaghetti noodles for 5,500 years! Ugh.

3)Pasta was not brought back from China by Marco Polo. Ancient Romans ate this food as well. Dang, yet another example of how boring history can be.

4) Pasta was considered to be peasant food by Italian nobility until around the 19th century.

5) Pasta is an anagram for “pa sat.”

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

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

Categories: cuisine, food, history, humor, international, recipes | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Chinese Hamburger Bash

Posted on August 7, 2012 by pauldelancey

Chinese Entree

CHINESE HAMBURGER BASH

INGREDIENTS

1 medium onion
2 green bell peppers
2 garlic cloves
1 1/2 ground turkey
1 pound ground beef
12 ounces extra-firm tofu
1/2 tablespoon peanut oil
1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1 cup diced tomato
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon Meat MagicTM spice
2 teaspoons cornstarch
About 16 buns
No-stick spray

SPECIAL UTENSIL

Large spatula

PREPARATION

This recipe is rightly called a bash. It makes about 16 to 20 patties.

Mince onion, bell peppers, and cloves. In large bowl, mix all ingredients except buns. (Don’t mince your own buns; that would be a disaster.) Be sure to make patties smaller than your spatula.

Coat bottom of frying pan with no-stick spray. Cook burgers on medium-high heat. These hamburgers are moister and more prone to crumble than their American counterparts. So, make sure you have the entire patty on top of the spatula before you turn them over. Turn them over carefully. Do not flip them. Turn them over once.

TIDBITS

1) There have been many mass migrations and conquests throughout history. Some examples are: Alexander the Great’s conquests, Rome’s conquest of the Mediterranean, Germanic tribes overrunning the Roman Empire, Arab conquests of North Africa, Mongol invasions of China, Persia, and Russia, and Spanish victories in Central and South America.

2) What do all these bloodthirsty conquerors have in common?

3) None of them ate hamburgers.

4) With or without cheese.

5) They didn’t even eat sliders.

6) Geez, the Romans ate thrush tongues, for goodness sake. What would it have hurt them to eat a Chinese Hamburger?

7) And the Vikings ate lutefisk. Lutefisk! Think of all the monasteries, towns, and libraries that were sacked because the Vikings ate lutefisk instead of Mexican hamburgers.

8) And then there would have been no Dark Ages. Learning would have flourished. We would have had colonies on the moon by the 17th century if only the Vikings had eaten burgers.

9) Or even sliders.

 

– 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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Pigs In A Blanket

Posted on July 19, 2012 by pauldelancey

American Entree

PIGS IN A BUTTERMILK BLANKET

INGREDIENTS

1 16 ounce package jumbo buttermilk biscuit dough
1 cup grated four cheeses
8 turkey franks

PREPARATION

Defrost franks. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Separate the dough into eight pieces. Elongate each dough piece with a rolling pin dusted with flour (Male chefs, this will not work on you.) or simply roll a frozen turkey frank along the dough if any are remaining.

(You don’t have to use turkey franks instead of beef franks or buttermilk biscuits in this dish. In keeping with this cookbook’s theme of “Cooking with what’s handy,” I used, well, what was handy. Similarly, a 10 ounce package of dough will mean thinner blankets for your pigs.)

Sprinkle grated cheese evenly among the eight dough pieces. Put a frank near one end of a dough piece and wrap the dough around the frank. Put this work of art on cookie sheet with the dough overlap on the bottom. Otherwise, the dough will bake apart and you will have “Pigs in a Buttermilk Boat.”

Bake in oven until biscuits are golden brown or about 10 to 15 minutes. This is a bad time to hibernate; monitor your Pigs in a Buttermilk Blanket to make they don’t burn or cook unevenly. It’s discouraging to have part of a baked dish be burnt on one side and doughy on the other. You might need to rotate the Pigs at least once. Heat escapes each time you open the oven, so in these cases you might need to cook the dish a minute longer.

Remember, vigilance when baking.

TIDBITS

1) This tidbit was eliminated during editing.

2) April 24th is National Pigs in a Blanket Day.

3) This dish is also known somewhere as “Weiner Winks.”

4) The British make Pigs in a Blanket by wrapping up small sausages in bacon.

5) Footballs were originally made from pigs’ bladders. This sounded so gross, people took to calling them pigskins. These early footballs could very well have been the inspiration for air pumps.

6) But footballs made from cows’ bladders would have been huge, while ones coming from chickens would have been tiny. Would Payton Manning have thrown all those touchdowns if he had been tossing chicken bladders downfield?

– 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, humor, recipes | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Turkey Burgers

Posted on July 15, 2012 by pauldelancey

American Entrée-Basic

TURKEY BURGERS

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 pounds of ground turkey meat
1 onion
1/4 green bell peppers
2 green onion stalks
2 tablespoons garlic salt
1/2 tablespoons cumin
8 potato hamburger buns – top and bottom
1/4 head of lettuce, washed
1 cup of grated four-cheese blend
1 ketchup bottle
water
extra virgin olive oil

SPECIALTY UTENSILS

Sonic obliterator
Four-slice toaster

TOASTING THE BUNS

You really need a four-slice toaster. You simply cannot feed turkey burgers to a hungry horde with a two-hole toaster. Don=t do four bun halves, two whole buns, and rest on your laurels.

(You say you need more immediate motivation? Pretend the members of your brood have become ravenous cannibals ready to sink their razor sharp canines into your haunches unless they get their turkey burgers.) Keep on toasting.

(And DON’T, DON’T, microwave anything while toasting. You’ll trip your circuit breaker and you’ll have to dash outside and flip the circuits. This is one reason against cooking in the nude. The other being that grease splatters.)

PREPARING THE ONION

Remove the skin. It adds nothing to the taste, is papery, and gets stuck between your teeth. (How can you concentrate on your boss’s story about mango harvesting in Tahiti when you have onion skin between your first and second molars annoying the heck out of you? Remove the skin, now.)

Also cut off the root part at the bottom. It’s edible ,I suppose, but hardly tasty. If the onion has a big, green sprout in the middle, it’s because you bought it when Nixon was in office and is no longer edible.

PREPARING THE GREEN BELL PEPPERS

It really helps if you have a prepared green bell pepper left over from last night’s culinary extravaganza, made from the chapter on stuffed green peppers, for example.

If not, cut the top off the green bell pepper and discard, or at least discard the stem. Scoop out the innards of the pepper seeds and those four vertical, soft whitish columns and throw them away.

Chop up the pepper and put it in a pan. Coat the pieces with olive oil. Use extra-virgin olive oil. (That’s the most virgin you can get, unless you went through school studying economics.)

Cook the green bell pepper. This process is called sauteeing.

(See, you’re picking up the vocabulary. Mais oui. C’est magnifique, n’est ce pas? Ho, ho, ho.)

CHOPPING UP THE VEGGIES

You really must get yourself a food processor, big or small, one with two little whirling blades. This little gizmo will make chopping up or mincing the veggies so much faster than cutting them up with a knife. If your knife is blunt, this task takes forever. And a sharp knife is just too tempting for a spouse sulking over your latest big purchase.

Get a food processor. Mince the green onions. Mince the onions. Onions are big. (Don’t let that intimidate you. You’re bigger than they and have opposable thumbs.) Be sure to cut it up into at least four sections before putting it into the processor. Chop up the bell peppers.

SPICING

The above list of spices assumes you like the same amount of spices as I do. So experiment. Once you become adept at cooking, you=ll be able to smell the correct amount of spice to add as you mix.

 PREPARING THE BURGER

Get a big bowl. Put the ingredients you’ve prepared so far. Mix. Mix with your hands until everything is thoroughly mixed. Your hands will get extremely messy.

(Midway through the mixing is, of course, the time someone will knock on your front door to ask you if you want your trees trimmed, even if you don’t have any. In the meantime you have dropped turkey meat all over that hard-to-justify-buying Persian carpet and of course, on the front doorknob. 

This is the time to say, “Excuse me, I’ll just be a moment.” Go back to the kitchen table, pick up the sonic obliterator, and annihilate the would-be tree trimmer. Wipe up and pick up all bits of turkey meat on the way back to the kitchen. Cleanliness is a virtue.)

THE TURKEY-BURGER PATTIES

Make four patties and put them in your pan. The patties should not be much bigger than your spatula or they might fall apart when turned over.

Turn the heat to high to get things going and gradually turn it down to medium or medium high. The higher you set the temperature, the more closely you’ll need to watch the patties and turn them over.

Turkey meat turns white when cooked. The outside turns white  before the inside does. So how do you know when it’s done? It’s perfectly acceptable for a chef, particularly one that’s starting out, to cut a small piece near the edge and look at it and taste it. If the inside of the piece is white, then it is done. Remember, if no one saw you taste the burger, then it didn’t happen.

(By the way, it is a matter between you and your God about what to do if you should drop an entire patty on the floor. Consider the cleanliness of your floor and the likability of your guests in making your decision.)

You must flip the burgers repeatedly with your spatula. If you do not do so, the water will rise to the top of the burger and evaporate, making the burger too dry to eat. Flipping puts the water that has almost escaped on the bottom of the burger again.

 Consider occasionally sprinkling water on top of the patty and pouring a thin layer of water into the pan. This adds moisture to the burger and a moist burger is a yummy burger.

ASSEMBLING THE TURKEY BURGER

Put the bottom bun–it’s flat–on the plate. Put the cooked patty on the bun and the lettuce atop the patty. (There are some heretics who put the lettuce on first, but they are being hunted down without mercy.) Sprinkle the cheese on next. If you are adventurous, pour on some ketchup. Place the top bun–it’s dome shaped–on next.

You are now a culinary hero to your guests.

TIDBITS

1) A Hamburger is someone from Hamburg, Germany. The term a hamburger derives from this city. A Berliner is someone from Berlin. Berliner is also the name of a jelly doughnut. Some people think when President Kennedy said in that famous Cold War speech, Ich bin ein Berliner, he was actually saying, “I am a jelly doughnut.”

2) The first official listing of a hamburger on a menu occurred at Delmonico’s in New York in 1826.

3) Cheeseburger In Paradise is a great song.

4) A turkey is not someone from Turkey. It is a bowling term.

5) The turkey was one of the first animals in North America to be domesticated.

6) Turkeys were called turkeys in the 1500s by English merchants because they thought turkeys came from India and that Turkey owned India. Bozos.

– 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

Blackened Turkey Dog Recipe – From Cookbook

Posted on July 2, 2012 by pauldelancey

Cajun Entree

BLACKENED TURKEY DOGS

INGREDIENTS

6 turkey hot dogs
6 hot dog buns
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon Poultry MagicTM spice
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon thyme
No-stick cooking spray

PREPARATION

Preheat skillet to 350 degrees. Completely defrost turkey dogs. Mix paprika, salt, cayenne, poultry spice, cumin, and thyme on large plate. Coat all sides of the turkey dogs with spray.

Place the turkey dogs on plate and roll them until they are coated with spices. Place turkey dogs in skillet and cook for 8 to 12 minutes making a quarter turn every 1 to 2 minutes, or until spices blacken.

Toast buns. (Why do hot dogs and hot-dog buns come in different amounts? Why has no president done anything about it?) Put turkey dogs in buns. If you like Cajun cooking, you should need no condiments, such as ketchup. But as the French say, “Chaque à son gout.”

TIDBITS

1) I have never seen blackened hot dogs anywhere. This dish is a product of my feverish imagination. It’s good, though.

2) In 1755 and 1758, the British exiled French Canadians from Acadia. Many moved to Louisiana where they became known as Cajuns.

3) Cajun food is spicy. Canadian food is not. Nor is Eskimo cuisine. Eskimos do not have hot sauce.

4) I mostly grew up in Arcadia, California.

5) Cayenne is the capital of French Guiana. French Guiana is in South America. Why is this land not independent? Do the people love French cooking?

6) Cayenne is mostly grown in Mexico, Asia, Africa, New Mexico, and Louisiana. But apparently not much in a land that has a capital named Cayenne.

7) National Hot Dog Day is July 18.

8) Babe Ruth is believed to have consumed twelve hot dogs and drank eight sodas between games of a double header.

9) Americans eat about 150 million hot dogs on the Fourth of July.

10) Humphrey Bogart was a big fan of hot dogs. Coincidentally, he won an Oscar for his performance in The African Queen.

11) Mustard is the favorite hot-dog topping among adult Americans. Kids, however, prefer ketchup.

12) Maybe this recipe will change that.

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

Greek Dolmathes

Posted on July 1, 2012 by pauldelancey

Greek Entree

DOLMATHES
(stuffed grape leaves)

INGREDIENTSDolmath-

100 grape leaves
4 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 medium onions
1 1/2 pounds ground turkey
3/4 cups uncooked rice
1 teaspoon parsley
1/2 tablespoon Prudhomme’s Poultry MagicTM spice
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon Mediterranean rice seasoning
1 1/4 cups water
1/4 cup tomato sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice

SPECIAL HELP

Your kids, relatives, neighbors, and anyone else who comes within your gravitational field.

PREPARATION

Pick 100 grape leaves. Remove stems. This is a great task for the kids. If you don’t have grapes growing on the side of the hill in your front yard, they can be found at the Greek section of your supermarket.

Dice onion. Saute onion in butter until tender and golden. Pour mix into big bowl. Let it cool for at least five minutes. Your fingers will thank you. Add turkey, rice, parsley, poultry spice, coriander, pepper, rice seasoning, water, tomato sauce, and lemon juice. Whew. Mix thoroughly.

(Memorize the following phrases to sound like a great chef: heat over to 350 degrees, cook to golden brown, use a big pot, mix thoroughly, and stir occasionally.)

Put all the grape leaves in a big pot. (See? Sounds culinary, doesn’t it?) Cover the leaves with water. Cook on medium-high heat until all the leaves turn from a bright green to an olive green. This is called blanching.

Pour out all the water. (Try pouring it on that pan you used to fry eggs. That hot water will loosen the egg bits from the pan right quick.)

Put the leaves on a big plate. Take a leaf and put it on a board, or another plate, with the smooth, shiny side face down. Put about a teaspoon of your meat/rice/spice mix in the middle of the leaf. Fold the bottom of the leaf until it just covers the mix. Fold both sides in so they completely cover the mix. Roll up the leaf like a burrito or spring roll, making sure to keep the sides folded in. This step takes the longest.

Put a few leaves on the bottom of the pot. Put the first rolled up leaves, dolmathes, up against the sides of the pot. Put the next leaves against those leaves and so on. You need the dolmathes jammed together so they don’t unravel. Add layers as necessary.

Add water to pot until all dolmathes are covered. Place a lid that is slightly smaller than the pot on top of the dolmathes to further keep them from unraveling. Cook on low heat for 45 minutes.

You can speed up the process by cooking the rice while mixing the meat and spices together. In this case, reduce the cooking of the dolmathes to 30 minutes.

Don’t throw away the liquid that remains in the pot after you serve the dolmathes. It makes an excellent broth.

TIDBITS

1) Dolmathe is a great ScrabbleTM word.

2) I first made this dish years ago for my wife’s birthday. We are still married.

3) My family and I first ate dolmathes at a wonderful Greek restaurant in Portland, Oregon.

4) I went to graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin. The two Greek restaurants nearest to the school were across the street from each other.

5) The three stages of mathematics are: 1) numbers, 2) lower-case English letters, and 3) Greek letters. If there is a fourth stage, I don’t want to know it. My head would explode.

6) Socrates almost died in battle. If he had, all Western philosophical thought would have been completely altered. Cliff Notes would have put out one fewer booklet.

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

Turkey Burgers From Cookbook

Posted on February 22, 2012 by pauldelancey

American Entree

TURKEY BURGERS

INGREDIENTSTurkBur-

1 1/2 pounds of ground turkey meat
1 onion
1/4 green bell peppers
2 green onion stalks
2 tablespoons garlic salt
1/2 tablespoons cumin
8 potato hamburger buns – top and bottom
1/4 head of lettuce, washed
1 cup of grated four-cheese blend
1 ketchup bottle
water
extra virgin olive oil

SPECIALTY UTENSILS
spatula
sonic obliterator
four-slice toaster

TOASTING THE BUNS

You really need a four-slice toaster. You simply cannot feed turkey burgers to a hungry horde of anguine’s with a two-hole toaster. Don’t do four bun halves, two whole buns, and rest on your laurels.

(You say you need more immediate motivation? Pretend the members of your brood have become ravenous cannibals ready to sink their razor-sharp canines into your haunches unless they get their turkey burgers.) Keep on toasting.

(And DON’T, DON’T, microwave anything while toasting. You’ll trip your circuit breaker and you’ll have to dash outside and flip the circuits. This is one reason against cooking in the nude. The other being that grease splatters.)

PREPARING THE ONION

Remove the skin. It adds nothing to the taste, is papery, and gets stuck between your teeth. How can you concentrate on your boss’s story about mango harvesting in Tahiti when you have onion skin between your first and second molars annoying the heck out of you? Remove the skin, now.

Also cut off the root part at the bottom. It’s edible ,I suppose, but hardly tasty. If the onion has a big, green sprout in the middle, it’s because you bought it when Nixon was in office and is no longer edible.

PREPARING THE GREEN BELL PEPPERS

It really helps if you have a prepared green bell pepper left over from last night’s culinary extravaganza, made from the chapter on stuffed green peppers, for example. If not, cut the top off the green bell pepper and discard, or at least discard the stem. Scoop out the innards of the pepper seeds and those four vertical, soft whitish columns and throw them away. Chop up the pepper and put it in a pan. Coat the pieces with olive oil. Use extra-virgin olive oil. (That’s the most virgin you can get, unless you went through school studying economics.)

Cook the green bell pepper. This process is called sauteeing. (See, you’re picking up the vocabulary. Mais oui. C’est magnifique, n’est ce pas? Ho, ho, ho.)

CHOPPING UP THE VEGGIES

You really must get yourself a food processor, big or small, one with two little whirling blades. This little gizmo will make chopping up or mincing the veggies so much faster than cutting them up with a knife. If your knife is blunt, this task takes forever. And a sharp knife is just too tempting for a spouse sulking over your latest big purchase.

Get a food processor. Mince the green onions. Mince the onions. Onions are big. Be sure to cut it up into at least four sections before putting it into the processor. Chop up the bell peppers.

SPICING

The above list of spices assumes you like the same amount of spices as I do. So experiment. Once you become adept at cooking, you’ll be able to smell the correct amount of spice to add as you mix.

PREPARING THE BURGER

Get a big bowl. Put the ingredients except the bun and water into it. Mix. Mix with your hands until everything is thoroughly mixed. Your hands will get extremely messy.

(Midway through the mixing is, of course, the time someone will knock on your front door to ask you if you want your trees trimmed, even if you don’t have any. In the meantime you have dropped turkey meat all over that hard-to-justify-buying Persian carpet and of course, on the front doorknob.

This is the time to say, “Excuse me, I’ll just be a moment.” Go back to the kitchen table, pick up the sonic obliterator, and annihilate the would-be tree trimmer. Wipe up and pick up all bits of turkey meat on the way back to the kitchen.)

THE TURKEY-BURGER PATTIES

Make four patties and put them in your pan. The patties should not be much bigger than your spatula or they might fall apart when turned over.

Turn the heat to high to get things going and gradually turn it down to medium or medium high. The higher you set the temperature, the more closely you’ll need to watch the patties and turn them over.

Turkey meat turns white when cooked. The outside turns white before the inside does. So how do you know when it’s done? It’s perfectly acceptable for a chef, particularly one that’s starting out, to cut a small piece near the edge and look at it and taste it. If the inside of the piece is white, then it is done. Remember, if no one saw you taste the burger, then it didn’t happen.

(By the way, it is a matter between you and your God about what to do if you should drop an entire patty on the floor. Consider the cleanliness of your floor and the likeability of your guests in making your decision.)

You must flip the burgers repeatedly with your spatula. If you do not do so, the water will rise to the top of the burger and evaporate, making the burger too dry to eat. Flipping puts the water that has almost escaped on the bottom of the burger again.

Consider occasionally sprinkling water on top of the patty and pouring a thin layer of water into the pan. This adds moisture to the burger and a moist burger is a yummy burger.

ASSEMBLING THE TURKEY BURGER

Put the bottom bun–it’s flat–on the plate. Put the cooked patty on the bun and the lettuce atop the patty. (There are some heretics who put the lettuce on first, but they are being hunted down without mercy.) Sprinkle the cheese on next. If you are adventurous, pour on some ketchup. Place the top bun–-it’s dome- shaped–-on next.

You are now a culinary hero to your guests.

TIDBITS

1)A Hamburger is someone from Hamburg, Germany. The term “hamburger” derives from this city. A Berliner is someone from Berlin. Berliner is also the name of a jelly doughnut. Some people think when President Kennedy said in that famous Cold War speech, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” he was actually saying, “I am a jelly doughnut.”

2) The first official listing of a hamburger on a menu occurred at Delmonico’s in New York in 1826.

3) Cheeseburger In Paradise is a great song.

4) “A turkey” is not someone from Turkey. It is a bowling term.

4) The turkey was one of the first animals in North America to be domesticated.

5) Turkeys were called turkeys in the 1500s by English merchants because they thought turkeys came from India and that Turkey owned India. Bozos.

– 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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