Well, I sincerely apologize… I have been on a break from blogging as our internet decided to take a hiatus. But I am back! With a spectacular recipe, partially of my own invention, for green tea ice cream.

The word “love” cannot even begin to describe my feelings about ice cream. If I were less interested in my overall health, and had a fair variety of flavors… I could eat nothing but ice cream, all day, ever day. Ok, perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration, but you catch my drift.

Boiling milk cream and sugar

My first experience with ice cream was when I was only a few months old, in a papoose on my mother’s chest. My parents had gone to an ice cream parlor for dessert, and my dad said, “Let her have a lick.” My mother says, my eyes lit up and I bounced up and down until they gave me more. Oops. My first experience with green tea ice cream  was quite a few years later at a Japanese restaurant in California, and it was somewhat less dramatic; but I enjoyed it, and I have been unable to find a similarly delicious green tea ice cream locally. So I made some.

Matcha, cinnamon, cardamom, and ground pepper

For this ice cream I used the base recipe for Jeni’s Splendid ice creams… Because Jeni has it so right. I don’t say this lightly; if you are in within a few hundred miles of a Jeni’s ice cream shop, you need to go there, sample everything, you will not regret it… Unless you form a debilitating habit, in which case I apologize in advance. But the flavor combination was inspired by the flavors I’ve picked out of a spiced chai latte, and a bit of matcha powder. It’s a nice warm flavor, almost like pumpkin pie spices, with an undertone of green tea.

Green tea ice cream. YUM.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups milk (Jeni calls for whole milk… I used 1% because there’s decadent, and then there is obscene…)
4 tsp. cornstarch
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
2/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp. light corn syrup
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
3 tbsp. cream cheese, softened
2 TBS matcha green tea powder
1 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

Directions

1) In a bowl, stir together 1/4 cup milk and the cornstarch; set slurry aside.

2) In a 4-qt. saucepan, whisk together remaining milk and the cream, sugar, syrup, and salt; bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook for 4 minutes; stir in slurry.

3) Return to a boil and cook, stirring, until thickened, about 2 minutes.

4) Place cream cheese, matcha, and spices in a bowl and pour in 1/4 cup hot milk mixture; whisk until smooth. Then whisk in remaining milk mixture. Pour mixture into a plastic bag; seal, and submerge in a bowl of ice water until chilled.

5) Pour mixture into an ice cream maker; process according to manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer ice cream to a storage container and freeze until set. (About 4 hours.)

July 20, 2012
Categories: Uncategorized . . Author: elizabethhasblog . Comments: Leave a Comment

Well, I made a dark, evil, scary pizza… I thought it was only right that I should make a bright, happy, colorful pizza.

This was actually attempt number two. Number one had a white crust, and also included black beans for the “blue”. But, my husband was not a fan of black beans on a pizza, and they weren’t all that blue anyway… So I ditched them, and I made the crust with spinach. This time, husband was like, “I don’t even care that this is rainbow colored, I want to eat this on the regular.” So, with his blessing, I blog about number two.

Attempt number one.

To be fair, I did not force him, or even expect him to eat the rainbow pizza.. Based on his history, I expected the toppings would be a little too non-traditional for him, not to mention the threat to his manhood. I made him his own nice normal pizza with spinach and pepperoni, but much to my surprise, he wanted to eat rainbow pizza.

Normal pizza.

Also, I stuffed the crust.

So. In case you’d like to make your own rainbow pizza, here’s what I did (makes a thin crust. If you want a regular crust, double):

Spinach crust:
Ingredients:
-1/2 packet active dry yeast
-1/2 TBS sugar
-1/2 tsp salt
-1 cup spinach
-1/4 cup water

-1 cup all purpose flour (more if needed. Dough should be sticky, but workable)

Directions:

-Combine  yeast sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl

-In a blender or food processor puree spinach with the water

-Warm spinach and water to about 110 degrees F (Should be warm to the touch but not burn)

-Pour spinach mixture over the yeast. Let sit for 5-10 minutes until foamy.

-Stir in flour until you are no longer able to stir, then knead until elastic.

-Place dough in an oiled bowl and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.

-Preheat oven to 400 degrees F

-Put sauce, toppings and cheese on pizza, and bake for 12 minutes.

Toppings:

-Pineapple

-Purple cauliflower

-Orange bell pepper

-Tomato

Sauce (it was my easy garlic sauce):

-1 TBS garlic powder

-1 TBS dried oregano

-3 TBS olive oil

June 22, 2012
Categories: Uncategorized . . Author: elizabethhasblog . Comments: 2 Comments

I hate bell peppers. There is not much in the world that I truly and deeply hate; ticks, a couple of girls I went to high school with, and bell peppers. They are brightly colored, and very pretty, but eating them makes me want to curl up in a ball and weep. That said; I often find myself making recipes that call for them… And as they are healthy, and add a splash of color to the dish, I like to use them. Here’s how I render them innocuous: First off, I avoid the green ones at all costs; the red and yellow are much milder. Then, I chop them up into very very small pieces, and I saute them over medium high heat, stirring often so they don’t burn… And cook them for a good long time, until they forget what they are supposed to taste like.  On the other hand, I LOVE eggplant, and this is a fantastic recipe, in spite of the peppers.

The first couple of times I made this, I had some trouble fitting all the extra stuff back into the eggplant, but I figured it out. Once you have sauteed all the flavor out of the peppers, throw your eggplant in the skillet with them, sprinkle a little bit of salt on them, and let them sweat down for 8-10 minutes. Do the same thing with the onions and tomatoes and it all fits in your empty eggplant shells.

Tomato, onion, and basil sprouts.

I have been loath to use dried herbs as of late, as the flavor impact just is not the same, but I have been similarly reluctant to buy fresh herbs from the store as they are expensive. I had a crop of basil, sage, rosemary, oregano, and thyme planted in my meager garden space in the back yard, and they had just started sprouting, when the housing area we live in decided to spray herbicides all along our fence and I lost the lot. After I finished with my tantrum, I got some new seeds and planted everything again, inside, in pots. Point is, in that last picture, those purple sprouty things are my purple basil that I plucked in my efforts to un-crowd the plants in the pot.

Ready to oven.

I cannot rave about this recipe enough. The walnut, wheat germ, parmesan crust is rich, salty, and sweet all at once. The eggplant is meaty, the tomato is bright… And with any luck, you can’t taste the peppers at all! The last time my in laws came to visit, we procured some high-quality steaks wrapped in bacon which we cooked on the grill, and I made this as a side dish. All of the steaks went unfinished, but there was no eggplant left anywhere. True story.

Ready to mouth.

Ingredients: (Makes two servings)

-1 Small red bell pepper

-5 TBS olive oil

-2 cloves minced garlic

-1/4 cup fresh chopped basil or 2 TBS dried

-2 small or one large tomato

Crust:

-1/3 cup ground walnuts

-1/6 cup wheat germ

-1/4 cup grated parmesan

-1 tbs melted butter

-1/3 cup milk

Directions:

-Slice eggplant in half and hollow. Dice the meat.

-Dice the bell pepper.

-Over medium heat, in 2 TBS olive oil, saute bell pepper and egg plant until reduced in size by about half. 8-10 minutes. Divide between shells.

-Chop onion, tomato, garlic, and basil. Add olive oil to pan, saute onion and garlic for 4 minutes until onions are very translucent. Add tomato and basil and saute for another 4 minutes. Divide between shells.

-In the blender or food processor, make a paste of wheat germ, walnuts, butter, milk, and parmesan. Spread a thin layer on top of the eggplants.

-Bake at 350 Degrees F for 45 minutes.

June 18, 2012
Categories: Uncategorized . . Author: elizabethhasblog . Comments: 2 Comments

Alright, so; I know this is not necessarily a temporally appropriate post, as Christmas typically falls in December, however, with the recent EXPLOSION of hits since my pizza making one of the I Can Has Cheezburger homepages, my husband has been prodding me to post about the gingerbread helicopter I made for his unit Christmas party a couple years back. (How was that for a run-on sentence?)

I apologize sincerely, but, as I made this in 2010, and was unaware at the time that I would be blogging about my kitchen in the future, I have no “work-in-progress” pictures. Just the final product.

In December of 2010, my husband, who is military, was with an aviation unit. (Helicopters.) I had been doing a lot of baking at the time, and he thought I ought to make something to impress everyone at the unit Christmas party. I says, “Well, I could make oreos, or oatmeal cream pies, or pain au chocolat, or…” And he says, “Ohmigosh, you have to make a gingerbread helicopter.” I says, “Mmm… Perhaps that’s a little ambitious, as, I have never even made a gingerbread house?” And he ran off to cut up a cardboard box to make a template out of.

Right side.

He designed me a template to look like a Chinook transport helicopter (CH-47) as they are kind of boxy and we figured it would be the least difficult of the army helicopters to manufacture out of a confection. And the next morning, when I woke up, I found myself baking parts for a helicopter.

Front

Most of it was easy, as it was mostly just large, flat areas- the chin bubble, on the other hand, took some thinking about. In the original design it just called for a few narrow flat pieces to kind of simulate roundness, but I didn’t feel that this was satisfactory. What we ended up doing was constructing a frame out of raw gingerbread dough, and baking jolly ranchers inside of it to make a window type, then while it was still hot and malleable we bent it to fit the chopper.

Left side.

That evening, we went to the mall to pillage the candy store, and nearly spent a mint (pun intended) buying a few of everything. And we decorated, and it was incredible fun. It was a huge hit at the party. My reputation for baking had begun… And I then kept it up by mailing a weekly box of baked goods when they deployed for all of 2011.

Ingredients (Note: I made two recipes to build the helicopter. For anything more than a very small house, you will probably need at least two.)

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ginger
• 1 teaspoon allspice
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon clove
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1 egg, beaten
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

• In a medium saucepan, heat sugar, molasses, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves to boiling, stirring occasionally.
• 2
  Remove from heat; stir in soda (it will foam up).
• 3
  Stir in margarine till melted.
• 4
  With a fork, stir in egg, then flour.
• 5
  On a floured surface, knead dough till mixed. Divide dough in half, wrap half with plastic wrap; set aside.
• 6
  Roll half the dough, with a rolling pin, about  1/4 inch.
• 7
  Cut with cutters, or use template
• 8
  Bake at 325F on a cookie sheet for 12 minutes; cool on a wire rack.

Royal cement icing:

• 3 tbs meringue powder
• 4 cups (about 1 lb.) confectioners’ sugar
• 5 tablespoons warm water
  Beat all ingredients until icing forms peaks (7-10 minutes at low speed with a heavy-duty mixer, 10-12 minutes at high speed with a hand-held mixer).

June 15, 2012
Categories: Uncategorized . . Author: elizabethhasblog . Comments: Leave a Comment

After purchasing tamarind paste, for the exclusive purpose of making beef rendang, I had left over tamarind paste that I did not know what to do with. Considering I had to order it online, and it was not inexpensive, I would like to use it rather than just let it sit in the refrigerator until it grows green fuzz, or dries out, or does whatever tamarind paste does when it ages- I have no idea what that is. (But I know it can’t sour, because it’s already violently tart.) So, for want of another recipe to use my tamarind paste in, I turned back to the list of the worlds 50 most delicious foods and came upon Pad Thai.

Tamarind Paste

I had never personally experienced Pad Thai, (I know, shame on me.) but I was recently at the library in the company of a friend who was seeking a recipe for it herself. With her glowing reviews for the dish, when I discovered it on the top 50 list, and realized it called for tamarind paste, I was sold. I turned to the internet for my recipe and came across a recipe for it from Alton Brown. (<3 <3 <3)

Unaltered tofu

Marinated tofu

Tofu compressing contraption

When I told them I was attempting Pad Thai, many of my friends raved about the dish, and said that they had considered making it themselves but they were intimidated by all the ingredients. It’s a fairly long ingredient list, and there is some moderately involved prep work; some of which needs to be done the day before; but it really shouldn’t be so daunting. With an adequate supply of prep bowls, it takes about 45 minutes. (Except for the day before stuff.)

Prepped ingredients

The part that I found more involved was the cooking. Once you start, it goes fast, as, the skillet is on high heat. You really cannot walk away, or stop stirring for more than a few seconds- until you pour in the sauce.

Eggs and scallions 

Both of the recipes I have made with my tamarind paste called for sugar to counteract the tartness… However, my beef rendang and Pad Thai both turned out sour. My new theory on the subject is that the particular batch of tamarind paste I acquired is especially tart and is tainting what would otherwise be delicious dishes. The Pad Thai still turned out tasty- there were a wide range of complex flavors at play- The salty shrimp paste, the rich peanuts, the spicy chili… But the underlying tart note was distracting. What I gather from my friends who are experienced in the eating of Pad Thai, is that it is supposed to be slightly tart, but also sweet. In the future, methinks I will use more sugar than the recipes call for to tone down the tamarind.

Pad Thai

Pad Thai

Ingredients:

• 1-ounce tamarind paste
• 3/4 cup boiling water
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons palm sugar
• 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
• 4 ounces rice stick noodles
• 6 ounces Marinated Tofu, recipe follows
• 1 to 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• 1 cup chopped scallions, divided
• 2 teaspoons minced garlic
• 2 whole eggs, beaten
• 2 teaspoons salted cabbage
• 1 tablespoon dried shrimp
• 3 ounces bean sprouts, divided
• 1/2 cup roasted salted peanuts, chopped, divided
• Freshly ground dried red chile peppers, to taste
• 1 lime, cut into wedgesDirections
• Place the tamarind paste in the boiling water and set aside while preparing the other ingredients.

• Combine the fish sauce, palm sugar, and rice wine vinegar in a small bowl and set aside.

  Place the rice stick noodles in a mixing bowl and cover with hot water. Set aside while you prepare the remaining ingredients. Once the other ingredients are measured out into separate bowls, drain the water from the noodles and set them aside. Cut the tofu into 1/2-inch wide strips, similar to French fries.

  Press the tamarind paste through a fine mesh strainer and add to the sauce. Stir to combine.

  Place a wok over high heat. Once hot, add 1 tablespoon of the peanut oil. Heat until it shimmers, then add the tofu. Cook the tofu until golden brown, moving constantly, for no longer than 1 minute. Remove the tofu from the pan to a small bowl and set aside.

  If necessary, add some more peanut oil to the pan and heat until shimmering. Add 2/3 of the scallions and then the garlic, cook for 10 to 15 seconds. Add the eggs to the pan; once the eggs begin to set up, about 15 to 20 seconds, stir to scramble. Add the remaining ingredients in the following order and toss after each addition: noodles, sauce, cabbage, shrimp, and 2/3 of the bean sprouts and peanuts. Toss everything until heated through, but no longer than 1 to 2 minutes total. Transfer to a serving dish. Garnish with the remaining scallions, bean sprouts, and peanuts. Serve immediately with the ground chile peppers and lime wedges.

  Marinated Tofu:

  6 ounces extra-firm tofu, not silken

  1 1/2 cups soy sauce

  1 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder

  Wrap the tofu firmly in a tea towel. Place the wrapped tofu into an 8-inch cake pan. Top with another cake pan and weigh down with a 5-pound weight. (Bags of dried beans or grains work well.) Place in refrigerator and press for 12 to 15 hours.

  Place pressed tofu in a 2-cup container. Combine soy sauce and five-spice powder and pour over tofu. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes, turning once. Remove the tofu from the marinade and use immediately or store in the refrigerator for up to 2 to 3 days.

   

June 6, 2012
Categories: Uncategorized . . Author: elizabethhasblog . Comments: Leave a Comment