It's been awhile, but I'm here and cookin'

Well it's sure been awhile since I posted anything, but I swear its not my fault! I've been really busy, first I went to vegas which was out of control. I stayed at Caesar's palace, where I found out that Bobby Flay has a restaurant there. For those of you who don't know who Bobby Flay is, he is an Iron Chef on the Food Network and has two other shows. He is a great chef and someone I watch a lot on television. I was very enthused, but I wasn't able to eat there. I showed up after a show had just let out at about 9 at night and we were too starving to wait an hour to eat dinner. So I had to leave. It was very disappointing... maybe some day, Bobby Flay. So after maybe 36 hours of not sleeping, I came back to San Francisco, exhausted and ready to sleep. Throughout the week I cooked the most I could, but towards the end got terribly sick, and I've been sick ever since! I almost didn't make it to Thanksgiving at my grandmothers. So I have not cooked for over a week now, which has been really depressing, been eating top Ramen and canned soup, gourmet indeed. I'm feeling a bit better, still have an intense cough, but have enough energy to blog again.

I finally found the right pasta to make worms with! As you can see above.

So I went to the store at the beginning of the month and bought all the things I thought I would need for a couple weeks to cook. I bought a lot of Talapia because its a light fish, that's cheap and easy to cook. Now the other day I had bought bread crumbs, instead of Panko, because the store was all out of Panko. I did not use them though, but they were just sitting in the cabinet so I decided to try out a healthier adventure for them. I thawed out some Talapia that I had in the freezer and when it was still wet, I patted some bread crumbs onto it. I chopped up some garlic and started to cook it in Olive oil, finally I put the fillet in and cooked it with the garlic and olive oil. The fish came out crunchy and flavorful and I placed it with some mixed greens. Then I had a thought! I let the olive oil left in the pan cool enough and I put it on my salad with some balsamic vinegar, so I had a delicious garlic salad and talapia lunch. Light and great to eat.

Bread Crumb Talapia with a Garlic Olive Oil Salad

A fast and easy lunch.

Finally I was feeling really adventurous, I wanted to try something I'd never done before so I decided to make tempura. So I found a simple tempura recipe and could not wait to try it out! It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it really didnt seem to be working out, I kept burning the green beans! Which is terrible, because I love green beans, I dont want to burn them. So I tried and tried and eventually this is what came out of it.

Vegetable and Shrimp Tempura

Oh how pretty it looks! Too bad it tasted terrible. It was really really soggy and just... kinda gross. So I failed that test, but I really tried. Do you like the plate? I found it on the street in a box... Its fairly awesome. I dont really know what it's for but I like it. Dont worry guys, I'll try again in the Tempura, once I get a deep fryer and a better recipe.

I bought a lot of tomatoes while I was at the store, some canned and some fresh. I wanted to make a quick dinner for my girlfriend and my friend but I didnt just want to eat chicken and rice. So I decided to make a sauce, that consisted of Olive oil, garlic, tomatoes and cream. In the end it was so delicious to eat with the rice and greatly successful. I really am happy that i can put together some sauces nowadays, it really helps.

Chicken and Tomato Cream Sauce

I had a lot of left over rice from the dish above. When I was growing up and would sleep over at my sisters house her mom used to make us something in the mornings we called Rice cereal. It was just left over rice with milk, sugar and raisins, and it was extremely delicious and a great way to use the left over rice. But the next morning I didn't have any raisins, so i replaced it with sliced almonds and ate it just the same. It was delicious and reminded me of childhood!

Rice Cereal

I really wanted some Floutas from Chevys, if you've ever had them, they are awesome! Especially at happy hour, because you have the giant margaritas and the chicken floutas and they are all half off. So good, way better then making margaritas at home with the overly sugary margarita mix. Anyways, I found the recipe for the Chevys floutas online and couldn't get all of the ingredients but I got as many as I could and added extra cheese. I mean... who doesn't like extra cheese? I also wanted to make some mexican rice, now my friend tried to explain to me it was not as easy as it sound, but i was more confident then that. But... a lot of my rice got burned around the sides, like... terribly burned but the rice in the middle turned out delicious!

Chicken and Cheese Floutas

I should make these more often!

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