And no, I’m not talking about the Homemade brand of ice cream, I’m talking about actually HOMEMADE ice cream, in 20 minutes.

I know, sounds too good to be true right?  Well, its not and its surprisingly simple.  I’ve read over the years about making ice cream with liquid nitrogen.  I always thought it would be pretty hard to get some liquid nitrogen, so I never put much thought into it… Until recently, when I was getting some CO2 for my kegerator and realized that they sold liquid nitrogen, so I instantly picked some up and took it home (no clue at this point what I was going to do with it, other than I needed make some ice cream, with a side of a possible serious injury.  Obviously I was stoked!).  So I looked up how to make some ice cream, and started making some ice cream.

I used the following ingredients:

10 liters of Liquid Nitrogen (this is enough to make about 3 batches)
4 Cups Whipping Cream (Heavy Cream)
1 1/2 Cups half and half
1 3/4 cups sugar
A few cups of Strawberries sliced (about half smashed)

I mixed all the ingredients together in a large punch bowl (important), and after they were well mixed, I started pouring in the liquid nitrogen pretty liberally until I couldn’t see the bowl anymore (because of the smoke the liquid nitrogen puts off).  Then i took a wooden spoon and stirred until all the liquid nitrogen burned off.  Keep doing this until the ice cream is hard.  After all liquid nitrogen has boiled off, serve the ice cream. Completely safe to eat… I think.

The punch bowl is very important, the more surface area that you have, the better the liquid nitrogen can do its job.  When I first did this, I used a small mixing bowl, and had to use significantly more liquid nitrogen than was required.

Obviously, you are messing with liquid nitrogen, so be aware of the danger that is involved, and don’t do anything stupid.  You should wear gloves and safety glasses while handling/pouring the liquid nitrogen.

Enjoy!

So I don’t know if you saw how many calories that last pizza had, so I decided try and make something healthy.  Stir Fry Tofu Pad Thai!  You have to be careful with this dish, because it can EASILY become super high in calories.

I can’t recommend enough using a wok to make this dish.  It is well worth the cost, and will make things significantly easier.

To start off, you need some rice noodles.  Put them in hot water in a baking dish, and let a slow stream of hot water run into the baking dish for about 25-30 minutes.

While you are waiting on the rice noodles, start cutting your brick of tofu into about 1/2 inch cubes.  I used half a brick, but use however much you would like.

When you have about 10 minutes left, put about 4  teaspoons of peanut oil in the wok and start getting it really hot.  Be careful to not get it too hot to the point that you smoke the oil.  As a general disclaimer, if your oil were to catch on fire, DO NOT PUT WATER ON IT!  Remove it from the heat source and cover it with some sort of lid (even though the lid may not cover the entire wok, it should cover the fire area) or pour baking powder on it.  You can tell the oil is hot if you flick a FEW drops of water and it instantly starts to sizzle away.

Once the oil is hot, toss in your tofu making sure you turn it a lot to try and get it brown on all sides.

After your tofu starts to brown, add about 3 cloves of garlic (minced) and cook until golden brown (this will only last a few seconds).  Then add one scrambled egg (or substitute) and mix in for about 60 seconds.

After that, drain your rice noodles and shake off any excess water and toss them into the wok.  Make sure you flip the noodles often, and cook for about a minute.  Then add your bean sprouts, green onions, vinegar, soy sauce, sugar and chile-garlic sauce.  Let that cook for about 2 minutes, or until everything is well cooked.

Last (and my favorite part) take your chopped peanuts and sprinkle on top and serve.

Ingrediants:

• 4oz rice noodles
• 1 ‘brick’ tofu (however much you would like)
• 4 teaspoons of peanut oil
• 3 garlic cloves (minced)
• 1 large egg
• 2 cups bean sprouts (mung)
• 1/2 cup green onions (you know, the long ones scallion type)
• 4 table spoons rice vinegar
• 3 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 2-3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon chile-garlic (this heats thing up, use less if you don’t like hot food, maybe 1 tablespoon, but it is a must add!)
• 4 tablespoons chopped peanuts (I used my nifty slap chop type of device

Calories: 1088 (total) enough for two or three people, and you will be stuffed!

Mistakes: First time I did this, I added tofu too late in the process, so now I add it as the first item, and let it cook throughout the entire process.  If it still isn’t good enough, you could always make the tofu first, then add it later in the process.

Enjoy.

Right, I get it, that’s not Fresh Homemade Pesto, but if you recall from my previous post about pizza, you make enough dough for two pizzas.  So I decided to make a Chicken Pesto Pizza.  I wont go through how I made this, just how I made the Pesto.

First you take two cups of fresh basil leaves (packed) and 1/3 cup of pine nuts.  Put them into a blender and start surging them until they are well mixed.  Don’t worry if the nuts aren’t broken down yet, that will come with time.  After that add about three cloves of minced garlic and surge again to mix together.  After that, you slowly add 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil and stop when it appears to be well mixed.  Add 1/2 cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese and surge a few times to get that mixed well.  Add some salt and pepper to taste and let it blend for about 30 seconds (I like to vary my speeds, but I’m sure one steady speed is fine too).  Now you have fresh homemade pesto, enjoy!!!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups fresh basil leaves (packed)
• 1/3 cup of pine nuts
• 3 cloves of garlic (minced
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
• Salt & Pepper (however much you’d like)

Calories: 1509 for the above ingredients.

Calories for pizza above: 2403 for above pizza.  I used about 1/2 cup of pesto sauce and one cup of goat cheese. You could reduce that by adding less pesto sauce and less goat cheese.

Mistakes: Dropped about half the tomatoes down the drain :( (which is why this pizza looks so funny!)

I made this the other day and it was surprisingly easy to do.  Ok, first you have to understand that I’m new to cooking.  I could do all of the short order cooking stuff, but nothing more than that.

What it is:  This fine dish is a pizza (obviously, right?) it is made with homemade whole wheat crust, homemade pizza sauce with mozzarella and cheddar cheese blend with pepperoni, sausage, bacon, and green peppers.

How it’s done:  I’ll break this down into sections for ya.

Dough:

1 large punch bowl
1.5 cups of water (warm)
1 package of Active Dry Yeast
2 tablespoons of sugar

Mix the above ingredients together, the yeast should start breaking down the sugar and create a foam over the water in about 10 minutes, or so.  If this foam does not appear, start over and try another package of yeast (it will be a very small layer of foam.

2 teaspoons of salt
4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

Mix the above ingredients together with the foam water.

Next we start adding our whole wheat, unbleached, flour.  Using a whisk (as long as you can, then start thorough kneading the dough) mix one cup of flour at a time (slowly) until the flour (now dough) doesn’t stick to the punch bowl anymore (about 4 cups) be careful not to use too much flour, you can tell this when kneading the dough cracks easily.  This should take about 10-15 minutes todo.

Next, we put a little oil all over the dough and put in a new (or newly clean) punch bowl.  We then let the dough sit in a warm place until it rises to about 50% (or more) of its original size.

After the dough has risen, punch it down to remove all bubbles.  Cut your dough in half (you’ll have dough for next time!).  Then wrap it in saran wrap and place in the refrigerator until your ingredients are ready.

Sauce:

1 (6oz) can of tomato paste
1 1/2 cups of water
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, minced
salt to taste
ground black pepper to taste
1/2 tablespoon dried oregano
1/2 tablespoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed
**Note: I used THIS recipe for the sauce.

Mix together the tomato paste, water, and olive oil.  Mix well. Add garlic, salt and pepper to taste, oregano, basil, and rosemary.  The recipe suggests that you let stand for several hours, I just put it in the refrigerator until I was ready to use (this helped thicken it up).

Ingredients:

Pepperoni
Sausage (I just got Bob Evans sausage and browned it like you would ground beef)
Bacon (cooked)
Green Peppers chopped (I used a slap chop type of device)

I was going to use onions, but time was running out (Superbowl and all).  After the bacon was cooked I used my slap chop type device to get it all nice and crumbled.

At this point you have to heat the oven, I headed mine to about 475 but mine is always on the hotter side.  I used a pizza stone to cook my pizza, people have suggested a pizza screen, maybe next time, as it would be a lot easier.  With a pizza stone, you have to let it preheat in the oven.

While your oven is preheating, grab your dough and start making it into a large circle (about 13” or so).  If you’re wondering how to do this, just search youtube, there are a lot of great videos showing you how.

After the oven has preheated take the stone out and place your dough on the stone. Pull the sauce out of the refrigerator and put onto the pizza.  Then add your toppings, because we will be cooking this pizza pretty fast, do not over do the toppings with a super thick layer.

Cooking:

Place the pizza in the oven (middle rack) and let cook for about 8-10 minutes (checking often).  Some people said you might need to turn your pizza in the oven every 2 minutes, but I didn’t have to do that with mine.  Pull your pizza out and enjoy.

Mistakes:

Not too many, the biggest one was I decided to put a little flour on the stone to help keep the dough from sticking, that was a waste and added an odd taste (not real odd, but enough to get you distracted).

Conclusion:

This was my first pizza, so don’t take this as gospel by any means.  I’d love to hear your ideas and what you would do differently/the same!