Carrots, Strawberry-Meyer Lemon Ice Cream and Green Beans

The holidays! Ooooh the Holidays, they were great, I got to spend time with my family, I drank copious amounts of wine and got so many good things to cook with. I know. Im excited too. I have not taken as much time to cook as I probably should have but I did create some strange things.

So I got home very late at night after being out with my friends and it was maybe 2 or 3 in the morning and I really wanted something to eat, but not because I was hungry, but just to eat. I scrounged around the fridge and discovered that there was barely any food for me to make. I found some random juices and baby carrot. So I got the idea to julian some carrots and just stir fry them around a little bit and maybe give them an Asian flare. So I threw them in a pan, added some minced garlic, garlic chilis, sriracha and some soy sauce. Im sure there were some other random things added in throughout the process but I cooked them carrots until they were a little tender and then started to munch! I had created a masterpiece! A fantastic little dish that had enough spice and the salty flare I was looking for. It will be a fantastic side dish to something I make!

Carrot Creation

Looks a bit strange but I promise it was delicious.

One of my gifts for Christmas was an ice cream maker! So I really wanted to make some ice cream, and at first I really wanted to make green tea ice cream. Then I decided I would make some strawberry ice cream! Part of the process of extracting the juices from the strawberries it that you have to put it in lemon juice and and it softened the strawberries and creates a syrup of sorts. But I really liked how it tasted with the lemon juice so I decided to make strawberry Meyer lemon ice cream instead! Promising I know. Now the recipe I was following didnt have any eggs in it, but a lot of the recipes for ice cream I've read about include some part of the eggs. So I researched what they did in the ice cream... and decided to throw one in. Why not?

I made the ice cream batch and then realized I needed to wait for the bowl in the ice cream maker to freeze. So... I hade to wait another 24 hours. But finally the next day I was able to make it! It kinda comes out like a thick soft serve and then you have to freeze it. It turned out SO GOOD. It was rich and creamy and the lemon gave it sort of a sorbet tang.

Strawberry-Meyer Lemon Ice Cream

I invited people over for a small ice cream party.

I've been cooking a lot with soy sauce because I really like how it sinks into whatever your cooking with it. I have some green beans and some shrimp and i decided to do sort of a stir fry with garlic and onions minced. I added in some soy sauce, sea salt, garlic powder, about half a cup of water and some brown sugar. It turned out really delicious, I couldnt stop eating it! I'm really starting to get this little flare down.

Stir Fried Green Beans and Shrimp


mmmmm

Overall some delicious treats.

Talapia, Sauces, and the Ice Cream Adventures.

This week has been a really busy for me, I had a huge exam, a literature review due and an anti smoking campaign to work on. It was really stressful, and I cooked a lot to let myself relax as much as possible. I've had a couple recipes I've been needing to try out, and some that I found to work with what I had in the house. I recently bought some Taplapia because it was on sale for $3.99 a pound... so What to do with a pound of Talaplia? Well other then make some healthy quick meals, they are deliciously compatible with lots of things. I found this delicious recipe that works with the Panko crumbs I had left over and a sauce that seemed easy enough and worked for me, since I've been trying to cook with Tomatoes recently. So I started on the sauce and it seemed to be going better then the others I have made so far, it was a cream based sauce, delicious and easy. Just olive oil, garlic, Cherry tomatoes, cream and Parmesan. The recipe told me to wait until the sauce turned pink... it never turned pink but it did turn orange. I figured it was done at that point so I started in on the Talapia. Now I froze all the fillets together and... I couldn't just defrost one, I had to do them all, so I made more food then I needed. The talapia recipe wanted me to bread them with parmesian, but i opted out. Cooked them in olive oil!

Panko Talapia with a Parmesian Tomato Cream Sauce


Delicious Sauce

Recipe for sauce:
1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
2 Cloves garlic minced
10-12 Cherry Tomatoes
1/2 Cup cream
1 Cup Spinach
1/4 Cup Parmesan Cheese

I wanted to bake something earlier on in the week, but I had no chocolate chips, so I decided I would put candy in them! What candy do you ask? Why Japanese chocolate mushroom candy (no real mushrooms involved) of course. So I made some cookie batter, didn't have enough flour for them (which didnt go well first time around so I had to add some whole wheat flour in later on) and chopped up some candies. They turned out chewy and crunchy.

Japanese Mushroom Candy Cookies

Tasty mushrooms..

I used to go to High school in Berkeley and it was right by this food place that was called the Gourmet Ghetto, and there was one pasta place called Gypsies I always used to go to. I used to eat this Gorgonzola Penne pasta all the time and I really enjoyed it, and the sauce seemed simple enough so I figured i could try it on my own. I found a simple Gorgonzola sauce recipe and tried it out, added some tomatoes, spinach and chicken to spice it up a bit. This was my first cheese sauce I made on the stove that didnt get grainy, gotta use those low burners man. The dish was easy enough to make and fed all of my roomies.

Gorgonzola Pasta with Spinach, Chicken and Tomatoes


Dreamy sauce...

Recipe:
1 Cup white wine
1 1/4 Cups Heavy Cream
5 oz Gorgonzola Cheese
Pinch of Black pepper

I stumbled recently upon a recipe for making ice cream, that explained to me how to make it without an ice cream maker. Now I'm hoping to get an ice cream maker for Christmas, and I really have wanted to make ice cream, so when I found this recipe, I was delighted. Obviously I was avoiding homework as usual, and so this seemed like a great choice. I started out making this recipe for Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and it seemed easy enough, but of course i screwed up the first step. I burned the butter and used all my half and half on the burnt batch... what was I to do? Then i remembered I had some cream and some normal milk, so I just evaporated the milk (the trustee technique I learned when making curried salmon) and added it to the cream and restarted with some new, not burned butter. I then whisked it together with sugar and egg whites (I later reread the recipe and it required egg yolks not whites.. FAIL) till it was nice and fluffy. The heated it up till it was scolding and transferred it to the fridge to cool. After it was cook I put it in a cake pan and shoved it in the freezer. Every 20 mins I churned so the frozen sides would mix in. Eventually after a couple hours once it was a bit more solid i added in a lot of chocolate chips and let it freeze overnight. It turned out really good, not as creamy as I wanted but thats alright, it tastes just like cookie dough.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream


Freezing process...

Recipe:
1 Cup Chopped Chocolate chips

2/3 cup dark brown sugar

4 large egg yolks (I used whites)

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 cups half and half (I used evaporated milk plus some heavy cream)

2 cups whole milk (I used 2%)

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

pinch of salt