Ricotta Cheesecake

I had some leftover ricotta cheese, and I did not know what to do with it. I always wanted to try to make ricotta cheesecake. With some experimentation, I think I got a set recipe down.

Light Ricotta Cheesecake


Ingredients
Crust:
1 Package of graham crackers
2 tbs Brown sugar
1 tsp Cinnamon
3 tbs Melted butter

Filling:
16 oz Ricotta cheese (Drained of most liquid)
16 oz Cream cheese (I think its 16 oz. Basically a block)
2/3 cup Sugar
1/3 cup Cake flour
2 Egg whites
2 Eggs
1 tsp Orange blossom
Zest of one orange and one lemon
1/4 Lemon juice

Directions for the crust
1. Melt butter
2. In food processor combine crackers, cinnamon, and sugar
3. Pulse everything until well blended
4. Slowly drizzle butter in
5. Line baking material bottom with crust

Directions for the filling (Preheat oven to 350)
1. Beat egg whites until soft peaks form. (set aside in a bowl)
2. With a paddle mixer, beat the cream cheese and ricotta cheese together.
3. Put in the two eggs. (one at a time at low speed)
4. Add in sifted sugar and cake flour.
5. Mix very slowly or else everything will fly out.
6. Add in lemon juice, orange blossom, and zests.
7. Mix until well incorporated.
8. Fold egg whites into the batter
9. Prepare a water bath
10. Put batter in cake pan
11. Put cake into the oven for 45-60 minutes.
12. Let it cool and serve

[$20/week] Week 1 Recap

As a resolution, I decided to do something crazy... $20/week. I usually spend $40 or even $50 per week on food and groceries. Here's a recap of what I made, and what I ate.

Breakfast:
$1.99 Chocolate Chip Waffles
$2.55 Blueberry Muffins

Lunch:
$0.28 7 Carrots
$1.34 Ham Fried Rice

Dinner:
$11.62 Turkey Lasagna

Beverages:
$1.40 1/2 gallon Milk
Free Water

Total: $19.18 <- Within budget. Woot...
Note: Sometimes I eat the blueberry muffins for lunch.
Ham fried rice lasted me two lunches.
Lasagna surprisingly lasted me the whole week.

[$20/week] Blueberry Muffins (week 1)

Right in the middle of the night, I get the munchies... I quickly scavenged for ingredients and made something simple, yet healthy. Here's a recipe for about 12 muffins. These things saved me for the rest of the week for snacking or breakfast.

Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup Whole Wheat Flour ($.015)
2 teaspoons Baking Powder ($0.0382)
1/2 cup Sugar ($0.48)
1/3 cup Oil ($0.18)
1 Egg ($0.149)
1/2 cup Dried Blueberries ($1.50)
2/3 cup Milk ($0.15)
Total: $2.55

Directions (Preheat oven 375F)
1. Run all the dry ingredients together through a sifter.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients.
3. In a separate container, mix all the wet ingredients.
4. Combine dry and wet ingredients.
5. Line muffin tins.
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until done.

[$20/week] Ham Fried Rice (week 1)

I brought back some goodies from home. What could it be?? Something from Virgina that is good??? So... I brought back my mom's famous Virginia Ham. Yes, ham in Virginia is quite famous and delicious.

At this time of the week (Tuesday, I think), I was getting quite sick of lasagna everyday. I decided to dig through my fridge and see what I could find.

Carrots ... check, onion ... check, ham ... check, garlic ... check. I think we got ourselves some fried rice ingredients.

Ham Fried Rice (serves 2)


Ingredients
Leftover Rice [1 cup] ($0.05)
1/4 Onion ($0.03)
Garlic ($0.045)
Egg ($0.149)
3 thick slices of Ham (~$1.00)
1 tbs Soy sauce (~$0.10)
Canola Oil (~$0.10)
Total : ~$1.50

Directions
1. Cut up all the ingredients like so below:

2. In a wok, toss in some oil and wait for it to heat up.
3. Sweat onions.
4. Add carrots and cook until the onions are slightly brown and carrots are almost soft.
5. Add ham and cook until the ham is heated up.
6. Turn down heat and make a well for the egg.
7. Scramble the egg in the wok.
8. Add rice and cook.
9. Add soy sauce and stir around until rice turns brownish.
10. Taste to see if flavorful enough. Add salt if not or oyster sauce.

[$20/week] Whole Wheat Turkey Lasagna (week 1)

It is a new year! Time to actually get some blogging done. I haven't touch this blog since summer : (. Graduate school has been quite tough, and I have been getting accustomed to it.

Being a redditor, I decided to take on the $20 a week food challenge on r/budget. As a student living in LA, my peers have told me about how difficult it will be to survive on just $20 a week for food and be decently healthy.

Shizzam! I spent $19.49 this week!
My strategy was to make lasagna, fried rice, eat waffles.

I shall begin my perilous journey of almost starvation:

Whole Wheat Turkey Lasagna (Serves 6)

Cheap ingredients!
Fresh Pasta
5 Eggs ($0.745)
2 lbs Tomatoes ($2.05)
1 Zucchini ($0.37)
Whole Wheat flour ($0.15)
1 lb Ground turkey ($3.79)
3/4 Onion ($.09, yea Smart n Final deals)
1/2 Garlic head ($.09, Smart n Final is the best!)
1/2 package of Mozzarella cheese ($1.745)
16 oz Ricotta cheese ($2.495)
Olive Oil (~$0.10)
Herbs, Seasoning (~$0.15)
Total cost: $11.874

1. Follow instructions to make fresh Pasta

Make the Turkey pasta sauce
1. Finely chop garlic and onion.
2. De-seed the tomatoes.
3. Heat up pan with olive oil.
4. Sweat onions and garlic.
5. Add tomatoes and cook until the peel starts to fall, and liquid starts leaking (~10 minutes).
6. Place all the ingredients in a blender and blend well.
7. In a pan, cook the turkey until it is well done.
8. Add blended sauce.
9. Add seasoning (salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, marjoram)
10. Taste to see if it tastes good!

Ricotta cheese portion
1. Take ricotta and mix with one egg.
2. Add salt and pepper.
3. Taste to see if well seasoned.

Assembling the lasagna in a 12" x 12" lasagna pan (Preheat oven to 375F)
1. Add sauce layer.
2. Add pasta.
3. Add ricotta cheese layer.
4. Repeat until you get to the top.
5. Top with mozzarella cheese and sliced zucchinis.
6. Cover with aluminum foil and cook for 25 minutes.
7. Unwrap and cook for 15 minutes or until cheese on top is golden brown.

Flan

While I was in Taiwan, they have this thing called "pudding". The thing with pudding is that pudding in Taiwan is not like American goopy mess. Instead it is more like flan. Actually it is flan. When you shake it at a certain lateral forces, it regains it's shape like jello like viscoelastic materials.

Anyways, the closest thing to "pudding" is flan. I prefer my flans to be creamy and not so much like jello.

Flan (makes 6 three inch ramekins)

Ingredients for flan
3 whole large eggs
2 Egg yolks
220 g Whole milk (1 cup)
290 g Heavy cream (1.5 to 1.75 cups)
75 g Sugar
1 Vanilla bean, split lengthwise (2 tsp Vanilla extract)
2 tsp Dark rum

Caramel
5:3 ratio of sugar to water by weight

Directions for flan!
1. Heat milk, cream, vanilla bean until 150F or well you see steam.
2. Separate egg yolks and egg whites (save egg whites for macarons or similar) while you wait for milk and cream mix to heat.
3. Dissolve sugar into dairy mixture by stirring continuously.
4. Add in rum and heat until 160F or until it starts to steam quite a bit (do not boil!!!)
5. In a mixing bowl, mix the egg yolks and whole eggs on low speed.
6. Slowly drizzle in dairy mixture while the egg yolks are mixing (do not make bubbles in the mixing process!)
7. Put mixer on stir.
8. Preheat oven to 300F
9. Boil water to prepare the water bath

Making caramel!
1. Dissolve sugar in the water on medium-high heat.
2.When dissolved, don't stir the caramel.
3. Turn off the heat when the caramel reaches a dark-golden color (darker than the picture's caramel)
4. Pour caramel into the ramekins, until the bottoms are slightly filled. (Note: the caramel will harden, don't worry about that because the oven will redistribute the caramel for the flan)
5. Turn off the mixer and put flan mix in caramel

Oven baking (reminder 300F)
1. Place ramekins in deep pan.
2. Place deep pan in the oven.
3. Pour boiling water into the deep pan until water reaches a little below the edge of ramekins.
4. Bake for 45-60 minutes, depending on your oven.
5. When 45 minutes is up, test to see if the flan jiggles a lot. If not, you are done!

Enjoy this creamy delicious treat! If you want, you can use 550g of whole milk and no cream at all or replace the heavy cream with half and half to get a less creamier texture.

Roast Garlic Lemon Chicken with Trumpet Mushrooms

Woosh woosh woosh... typhoon is incoming Taiwan. I doubt it'll hit Taipei, but one of my flatmates said the typhoon is going to be ultra strong like hitting a HADOUKEN on Taiwan. The winds are quite strong, and I heard the South is pretty bad. Hopefully, the winds don't cause buildings to vibrate at its resonance frequency!

I hope everyone is safe! Also on the other side of the world, hopefully things are alright with Irene!

Anyways, what did I make on this ultra not so windy day?
With myself limited to salt, pepper, lemon juice, garlic, chicken, and mushrooms (bought at Carrefour for 150 NT = around 5 USD that can last me three meals).

Well, you'll find out below...

Roast Garlic Lemon Chicken with Trumpet Mushrooms

Ingredients of woosh woosh.
1 whole Bulb of Garlic
2 Chicken breasts
10 Trumpet mushrooms (you can replace with whatever mushrooms you like)
2 tbs Lemon juice
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Prep work of lightning fast wind
1. Slice mushrooms in however you like fashion.

Roasting Garlic (Preheat oven 175 C or 350 F)
1. Take apart garlic and leave the skin of garlic on.
2. Chop tips of garlic off
3. Put garlic in aluminum foil.
4. Drizzle olive oil, salt and pepper over garlic
5. Wrap the garlic into a ball with the aluminum foil
6. Place in oven (middle rack) for 20-25 minutes. (Note: Your smoke alarm might go off)

Cooking and putting everything in place on this windy day. (Do this while the garlic has 5-10 minutes left in the oven)
1. Heat pan in oil.
2. Sear chicken breasts on both sides (nice and golden on each side about 30-45 seconds each side).
3. Season with salt and pepper
4. Place chicken on parchment paper and in the middle rack with the garlic.
5. Bake for 15-20 minutes.

While everything is cooking in the oven... and the garlic is done.
1. Carefully (it's HOT) peel the garlic cloves and place garlic in a bowl
2.Use a spoon, fork, grinding tool, and mash the garlic into a paste.
3. Add the lemon juice, salt, pepper, and generous amount of olive oil.
4. Mix well until the ingredients are incorporated.

Cooking the Mushrooms.
1. Cook the mushrooms until nice and brown (be about 5 minutes)
2. O look your chicken is done just in time!

Putting it all together
1. Plate by placing mushrooms first and add some garlic paste.
2. Add chicken on top of the mushrooms.
3. Spread garlic paste on top of the chicken.

Well... time to enjoy most of my day indoors.