Shanghai Hotel Quarantine Diary: Day 4
4:41am - wake up. Still lots of jet lag
7:20am - do my Centr app workout
7:49am - breakfast is placed out. What a cool variety today! Of course, there was the usual hard-boiled egg (白煮鸡蛋) and yogurt (酸奶).
My favorite was this millet cake (小米糕). Unlike the chewy brown sugar cake made from rice flour from yesterday, this one was fluffy and a bit crumbly, yet very moist. It was lightly sweetened. Delicious!
The rolled scallion bun (葱香花卷) had enough scallions to be sufficiently tasty, which isn’t always the case!
The pork and thousand-year-egg congee (皮蛋瘦肉粥) was surprisingly thick despite is appearance, but it did need a bit of pepper to perk it up a little. Notice United’s little Death Star pepper shaker, another contribution from the airline besides the napkin and cutlery.
Even though I’m only on the fourth day of quarantine, the plain hard boiled egg has gotten a bit monotonous and bland. Today, I added both the Tapatío hot sauce, as well as this roasted seaweed with sesame seeds, which was part of the care package from the office.
8:10am - they call to say we can pick up breakfast
9:23am - get on a work call
10:18am - staff comes by to take out the trash. I put the trash near the entrance, to see if that will prevent the person from entering the room. But they do so anyway, in order to spray their disinfectant around with their spray bottle.
12:00 - pick up lunch. I’ve been on work calls all morning, so didn’t notice when they came by to drop off lunch. Today’s lunch was a bit of a mixed bag.
The chopped pepper steamed fish (剁椒蒸鱼duo4jiao1zhen1yu2) was excellent! The pepper was strong and spicy, while the fish was very savory.
The stir-fried cauliflower (清炒花菜) was pretty standard. I really like the spindly Chinese cauliflower with the pale green stems.
One of the dishes I didn’t like as much was the tomato stir-fried with egg (番茄炒蛋). This was a bit too soupy and saucy for me, and too sweet. Like they added not just ketchup but sugar as well. I much prefer the version we made at home in San Diego!
The ribs flavored with garlic and orange juice (橙汁蒜香小排) was the other dish that wasn’t very successful. First, when the ribs are breaded and fried, then sauced, they become very soggy. Secondly, while the orange flavor was strong and present, the juice made it way too sweet for me. So, two very sweet dishes in one lunch.
The soybean and bitter melon soup (黄豆凉瓜汤, I guess 凉瓜 is the same as 苦瓜) was refreshing as I’ve learned all of the soups are.
12:29pm - they call to tell us that we can pick up our lunches. Now this was a late call!
2:37pm - temperature check
5:25pm - dinner is placed outside
5:55pm - I pick up dinner. This was a truly exceptional dinner - my favorite so far! So many wonderful dishes and discoveries.
Where to start? Well, the most surprising discovery was the 海松茸 (hai3song1rong1) in the dish with fermented tofu and winter melon (腐乳冬瓜煮海松茸 fu3ru3dong1gua1zhu3hai3song1rong1).It looks like it could be an animal, like a slug maybe! But it’s actually a seaweed.
Here’s what I found online, and translated with Google’s help:
Sea matsutake is a kind of green natural food with rich nutrition and delicious taste among brown algae. It is also rich in collagen and anti-radiation substances, which can reduce blood lipids, regulate blood sugar, enhance immunity, and prevent cancer
Well that sounds pretty good! And it tasted good too, thanks to the fermented tofu. The seaweed had that light sea flavor, but it was the crunch that was quite noticeable. And that middle part that looks “open” is kind of soft. The whole dish was pretty as well, with a distinctive light pink color, perhaps due to the fermented tofu? Here’s another picture showing off their unique form!
Another dish I loved - and this one purely because of its outstanding flavor - was the Chinese celery with duck breast (芹菜酱爆鸭胸 qin2cai4jiang4bao4ya1xiong1). Basically, any dish with Chinese celery I love, and this one included a duck breast that had a delightful smoky flavor, and was quite tender to boot.
When I first picked up the box, I thought that they had repeated one of the meals, specifically the lunch from Day 2. That’s because the dish above looked kind of like the garlic shoots with cuttlefish, and the following dish looked a lot like the “golden thread shrimp” (泰汁金丝虾) Well, this was the “noodle shrimp” (面线虾), which was kind of the same concept, only the filling was more like minced shrimp and there wasn’t a tail at the end. Well I’m not complaining, both were delicious! (And this one maybe a little less greasy than the “golden thread shrimp.”
The leafy green today was strongly flavored, like mustard green (清炒春菜粒). It tasted healthy!
Finally, there was the salted vegetable and potato soup (咸菜土豆汤). I treat this more like water.
So while lunch had a couple of duds, dinner more than redeemed the day with a set of dishes that weren’t just delicious, but beautiful and intriguing too!
