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Culinary Corner With KingFish And ShmooMay 16 '08 (Updated Oct 20 '08) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line The Chickenitzel Episode
The show opens with haphazard dancers leaping over each other, stocking a simple country kitchen with the finest ingredients money can buy. They slide through the doors, dive through the open windows and appear seemingly out of nowhere from pantry cupboards and dumbwaiters. Sight gags and pratfalls abound. *♫ Everything is food, food, food. Everything is food to go. Everything is food for thought, Everything you knead is dough, It is food. Everything is food. ♫ ♫ Everything is meat, meat, meat. Careful what you put on your feet. Once it lived on an animule. Now it walks along with you It could be food. Everything is food. ♫ ♫ “I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a Hamburger today.” “He would gladly pay you Tuesday for a Hamburger today.” ♫ ♫ Everything is Chow Chow Chow, everything is “food to go” now. Everything is fast food chains, from your liver to your sugar cane. It is food. Everything is food. ♫ ♫ Everything is upside down. Everything is sunny side up It's ubiquitous, enigmatic and they can't trick us with no hot dogmatic. It is food food food. Everything is food. ♫ ♫ Everything’s Kingfish and Shmoo. Creating dishes just for you. If if it tries to walk or fly away, they will bake or boil or fry today. To them it’s food. Everything is food. ♫ “What a toe tapping little ditty that is…Well Hey everyone and welcome to the very first episode of Culinary Corner. I’m Kingfish, your towering host...” “...and I’m Shmoo, your humble cook of the day.” “Speaking of which, let’s get right down to it Shmoo. What are you cooking up for us on this great, ground-breaking momentous occasion?” “Well Fish, in honor of your recent cardiac refurbishing, I thought I’d follow a high calorie, high cholesterol, high fat theme and start it off with a little something I call XTREME CHICKENITZEL!!!” “Wow, I love the way that echoed around, shook the plates in the cupboard and knocked my glasses off my face when you said it. Do it again.” “Sure thing... XTREME CHICKENITZEL!!!” “Truly awesome, made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Now I have to say, Chickenitzel... not something I’ve ever heard of. Sounds vaguely Mexican. Are we having Mexican? Ummm...am I still allowed to use the word Mexican or is their something more P.C that I should be aware of?” “Hahaha. No Fish, we aren’t having Mexican today and I believe you are still allowed to say Mexican. It’s a word used to describe people or objects from the country Mexico... sort of like referring to things north of the border as Canadian.” “Then might I ask what Chickenitzel...” “I’ll save you the trouble of that last verb. Originally I created this dish as an XTREME SCHNITZEL recipe. You know “This Ain’t You Grandma’s Schnitzel. Not A Recipe For The Elderly, Warning: Pregnant Women and People With Digestive Issues May Wish To Avoid!” But then, after I had tried it I said to myself “Self...” I said, because that’s what I call myself when no-one else is around, “Self...This is a good schnitzel recipe but it would be ten times better with chicken instead.” Luckily myself agreed with me. The problem was that I had no idea what to call it. XTREME CHICKEN!!!, sounded, well sort of...” “Lame?” “Yea, Lame! Exactly, but CHICKENITZEL? Well now that’s a name people will remember. “Indeed they will Shmoo. So walk us through what you have done so far.” “Sure thing Fish. Well first of all I have taken one very large chicken breast from my butcher and sliced it lengthwise horizontally, the way you would fillet a fish...oh, sorry about that...” “Think nothing of it.” “Then I’ve pounded the living bejeezus out of it with a tenderizing mallet until each half of the chicken is about a quarter of an inch thick. “So that is all one piece of chicken?” “Yes, my butcher gets his hands on tremendously huge breasts.” “Apparently.” “I’m amazed every time I walk in to his shop and look at his breasts.” “I would be too. Are they natural?” “Yup.” “Unbelievable.” “Mind if I take a moment to give a shout out to my butcher?” “Nope, go right ahead.” “Hey Hank!! What up? You’re breasts are really making a big splash here. So anyway we have 2 pieces of chicken about a quarter of an inch thick, six inches wide and several miles long. Take about 1 heaping tablespoon of old fashioned Dijon mustard, you know- the good brown kind that looks like pureed baby poo with flecks of stuff in it, and spread that on one of the pieces of chicken.” “Love that old fashioned Dijon Shmoo.” “Me too Fish, and yet I hate regular yellow mustard… isn’t that odd?” “Kinda... yea.” “I thought so. Anyway, then you are going to take a combined 2 tablespoons of Oregano, Basil and Marjoram and liberally sprinkle it on the mustard. You’ll notice that I have pre-diced a quarter of an orange pepper, in this dish I have 2 cloves of crushed and minced garlic and over here I have thinly diced about one cup of onion.” “Yes, I had noticed that Shmoo, it all looks very pretty the way you’ve spread it out.” “Thanks Fish, I did it to save time... can’t have our at home audience sitting there twiddling their thumbs while I’m dicing crap up now can we? So we layer the garlic, then the onion and then the pepper on the herbs.” “Looks good already” “Yup, it sure does. By the way, you can substitute red or yellow peppers if you want... or use all three colors if you feel like something a little more vibrant... it’s OK. Now, I’ve gone to my deli and have had them slice three nice bread sized pieces of Havarti cheese.” “Why Havarti Shmoo?” “Glad ya asked. Havarti has a nice mild taste and a very high oil content. When you bake it, you are going to get a nice glisten of yellow/orange oil in the dish. Makes it seem that much more fattening and bad for you.” “And is this fattening and bad for you?” “Don’t know Fish… don’t really care either. I’ll have a salad tomorrow if I’m feeling guilty. For now... well lets bring on the grease.” “OK... Bring it.” “What we do now is take about half the cheese and layer it on top of the sweet peppers. Now we are going to take the second piece of chicken, spread another heaping tablespoon of that Old Fashioned Dijon Mustard on it and place it, mustard side down, on the cheese.” “Sort of like a “Chickenitzel Sandwich.” “Why... exactly like a Chickenitzel Sandwich Fish. On top of this is we put the rest of the Havarti.” “I have to say, it’s innovative and tasty looking Shmoo… but XTREME? That’s a bit of a stretch. I think you are pushing the dramatic envelope just a bit with that. Hey… wait... what’s with that cup of crushed glass and carpet tacks?” “Ahhh Fish... now we have crossed in to the world of Xtreme.” “Well be right back after these messages.” A husky baritone manly voice: “Hi... I’m Brenda Vaccaro for Playtex Tampons. You know, some days when I was filming Midnight Cowboy, I just didn’t feel fresh...” “...and we’re back. Did that commercial disturb you as much as it did me Shmoo?” “More I think Fish. I use to have a thing for Brenda Vaccaro. Do you think she quit smoking before they had to remove her voice box?” “No idea.” “O.K. So before the break, The Kingfish was mocking my use of the word Xtreme until he saw that cup full of crushed glass and carpet tacks. They are completely optional of course. My wife and I use to drive by that Xtreme Pita place and she’d say “Really now... how Xtreme can it be?” We use to hypothesize that maybe they put finishing nails or shotgun shells in their Pitas, which would be truly Xtreme indeed, and so I have done the same here.” “...with broken glass and carpet tacks…” “Yes... but like I said Fish... totally optional. If you really don’t feel like shredding your esophagus or bleeding internally for weeks than I suggest you leave them out. Today we have decided to just let them rest where they are.” “So all we have left to do is cook this puppy.” “Yup. Put this in a Pyrex dish, pre-heat the oven to 375 and let this bad boy bubble for about half an hour. “...so now we have to wait another half hour Shmoo? I don’t know if I can come up with that amount of filler...” “Nahhh man. I put one in the oven earlier. It should be ready right... about... now.” Bing “OK folks, while Shmoo is pulling his monstrous Chickenitzel from the oven I’ll get a few extra plates for some lucky folks in the audience.” “Give me a minute here Fish while I cut it… man that Havarti is hot. By the way, I'll be serving this with a nice garlic mashed potato and a no nonsense plain old brown gravy.” “Sounds great. In the mean time, who would like to try a piece… WOW Shmoo... look at all those hands!” “It’s like shooting fish in a barrel sometimes... ooops... sorry about that.” “Never a problem old friend. In the mean time, I’m the Kingfish...” “...and I’m The Shmoo.” “...and you’ve been watching Culinary Corner. Next week we’ll be joined by Oscar winner Javier Bardem and Shmoo will be walking us through some Jalapeno, Mushroom, parmesan meatball concoction he created.” “Yup... should be a gas.. Hey... Javier Bardem... he sounds vaguely Mexican. Is Javier Mexican?” “Nope, He’s Spanish Shmoo. See you all next week and remember folks...” “If It roams the earth in any way, odds are pretty good you can eat it.” Theme music plays over credits while happy people from the audience run to the stage for a plate of food. (*The food song was lovingly stolen from the late, great Harry Nilsson and his soundtrack for that wonderful Robin William's flop, Popeye)  |
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