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Cooking With Delfina
Good evening! Welcome to cooking with Delfina! Tonight I’m going to teach you how to cook what has become a time honored traditional dinner prepared by yours truly at Camp Fallen From Grace each Pennsic…..Spaghetti, garlic bread and for dessert…Dutch Oven Cobbler. Mmmm sounds good dudn’t it?! Well first things first, we must steal…..errr acquire our ingredients! You’re going to need: 1) Drama (anything major or minor will do. Annoyance may be substituted for those on a diet). *Tip: aim this dinner for the middle to end of Pennsic War week when drama should be plentiful and ready for harvest. 2) The Biggest bottle of Dark Rum you can get yer hands on 3) Gas Range Camping Stove 4) A large metal pot (approximately big enough to give a four year old a bath in) 5) A cast iron dutch oven 6) A griddle 7) A metric ton of dried spaghetti noodles 8) Spaghetti Sauce 9) French Bread 10) Butter 11) Garlic Powder 12) Parsley Flakes 13) 1 Can apple pie mix 14) 1 Can of 7-up (sierra mist will work in a pinch) 15) 1 box of spiced cake mix 16) 1 Fire Pit, preferably with fire that has burned down to red hot coals 17) First Aid Kit 18) Camp Member who has some medical knowledge Ok we have all our ingredients? Good let’s get started then! There is a bit of prep time involved with making this dinner that you MUST start days ahead of the planned dinner date. You must get in the correct mood for cooking this feast or it just won’t be the same! Make sure that you get lots and lots of sun exposure. This will give your skin a delightful red glow and make you irritable. Also be sure to stay up late every night so that you get as little sleep as possible in the days leading up to the dinner. This will no doubt make you cranky and help with the drama and impair your judgment (which is important for cooking ala Delfina style!). Now the day of the dinner make sure you obligate yourself to some activity or service that will take up until an hour or two before dinner. This will help you feel rushed, tired and help the littlest amount of drama go the farthest. Now find your drama! Anything will do! Maybe you didn’t get invited to a party or a merchant short-changed you or a camp member left their undies drying on the front gate again (purely fictional…but hey I’m sure it happens somewhere). Anything works. Now make sure that you let that drama simmer alongside with the lack of sleep, impaired judgment and sprinkle liberally with sun exposure until it boils over. Quickly, before the boiling-over stops, grab the bottle of rum and apply liberally. You want total saturation for maximum effectiveness. An easy way to tell when you’ve applied enough rum is when the clouds overhead seem to be large fluffy bunny rabbits smiling down on you…the grass is really comfortable and EVERYTHING is funny. Now you’re ready to start the cobbler since it requires longer cook time than the spaghetti. Grab the Cast Iron Dutch oven and the butter. Scoop out a huge dollop of butter with your hand and fling it into the dutch oven. Extra points if you do it from across the kitchen tent. Once you have finally managed to land a wad of butter into the dutch oven smear it around the inside of the pot. Don’t forget to make swirls and smiley faces as you do. Next dump the cake mix inside the dutch oven. Make sure to have a paper towel handy to cough out some of the inhaled cake mix. A delightful side effect of accidentally inhaling some of the spice cake mix is that you now have spice flavored boo…ok well I’m not going to go there. Add the can of apple mix and 7-up. Loosely mix with fingers and place lid on top. Lug the dutch oven over to the fire pit. Make sure to stumble at least once and slosh cobbler batter onto your foot, the ants will appreciate it. Bury the dutch oven in the hot coals and promptly forget about it. The recommended cook time for this cobbler is 60 minutes but yer cookin' with Delfina now. 60 minutes is WAY too brief! Now for the spaghetti! Get the large pot and overfill it with water. Make sure to slosh most of it onto you while you’re trying to carry it to the stove so that you are now your own personal wet chemise contest. Extra points if passing fighters whistle and cat-call. Lug the pot on top of the stove. Make sure to slosh the water onto the eye and extinguish the pilot light at least once. (There is nothing more amusing than to watch a drunk person trying to relight a pilot light) Bring the water to a boil. Count the number of people who will be eating dinner that night and then multiply that by 20. If rum saturation is to the point where this calculation is beyond your means, then simply add 1 box of spaghetti per person. Now that you’ve added the pasta realize that you still have too much water in the pot. Grab the nearest vessel and attempt to bail water. Extra Points if you yell “Avast me harties…she’s takn’ on water and list’n to tha port side!!!….bail ye scallywags!!!!….bail!!!” Double extra points if people who don’t belong to your camp suddenly appear to help you bail water. Don’t forget to slosh the boiling water across your hand. It will take you a moment to realize you’ve done this. Don’t worry you will. At this point seek out the first aid kit and the medical savvy camp member. After you’re done with the first aid, it’s time to start the garlic bread! Grab the largest knife available. Hold it up and chuckle in a maniacal manner. Your campmate who just helped you with first aid will confiscate the knife and cut the bread for you. Have them cut the loaf long-ways to save time. Smear both sides of the bread with butter and sprinkle liberally with parsley and garlic powder (there will be no frigg’n vampires around HERE tonight!). Don’t forget to at least once take a pinch of the garlic powder and throw it at the bread while yelling “BAM!!...Kick it up a notch!!!!” Place the griddle over the stove and slam the two loaf halves “face down,” on the griddle. Listen to that sizzle! Bonus points if you throw in some random jokes in reference to the Spanish Inquisition while pretending the toasting bread is two hapless victims you are torturing. Make sure to stop paying attention briefly to what you are doing so that you accidentally burn the tips of your fingers on the griddle. Repeat action with first aid kit and now rather peeved medical-savvy camp member. Warm up the spaghetti sauce in a pan. Another camp member will most likely drain the noodles for you at this point as they are now concerned that you will burn yourself again. Search for a bowl big enough to contain the mountain of pasta and give up. Dump spaghetti sauce and noodles into the large pot (big enough to bath a four year old in) and bring to the table. Sure people will darn near have to tip themselves inside to get the spaghetti but hey! They’ve been fighting all day and its food! The camp will now eat spaghetti to the point of near bursting where upon neighbors are called in to finish off what’s left. At this point you realize you have made enough spaghetti for your entire block and then-some. Wait 8 hours until you’ve sobered up and are enjoying a nice game of cards to remember the cobbler in the fire pit. Retrieve it and serve-up! Sure it’s a charcoal brisket six inches deep but that 4 inch diameter in the very middle is the best cobbler ever! I hope you enjoyed this segment of Cooking with Delfina. Next week I’ll teach you how to make quail on a spit (aka archery practice). Good Night!
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