Lockdown Day 44: Dates, Scallions, and Watermelon...

No PCR today!

Today wasn’t as packed with cooking as previous weekends - I even had time to watch a couple episodes of a show on Netflix -, but I still got to try a few things.

A sleeper hit was this sweet and sour Napa cabbage. I used a very easy recipe from Chef Wang on YouTube, which called for hand-tearing the cabbage and separating the leafy part with the more solid white part, and making a simple sauce of soy sauce, Chinkiang vinegar, sugar, salt, and starch.

At the very beginning, garlic and red pepper (I used flakes instead of chopped fresh ones) are stir-fried in oil, and then the white parts added. Then the leafy parts, and finally the sauce is poured on at the end.

It’s hard to explain, but it really tasted just like Peking ribs 京都排骨, even though this was cabbage instead of pork! Yes, of course the sauce for both are sweet and sour, but there was a kind of meaty, roasted quality that felt so alike too. Was it because the cabbage was cooked with the high heat of Chinese gas stoves, and got kind of caramelized?

In my Xiaomi, I also steamed the Shanghai big red sausage 上海大红肠 from the Tramy delivery, and one of the zongzi 粽子 from the zongzi gift box from the government.

I’m really not a fan of the sausage; I tried steaming it this time because that’s what my colleague recommended, but I still didn’t like it. First of all, it’s such a vibrant, unnatural-looking red color. And I don’t know what it is - too much starch? - that gives it such a plasticky texture. And on top of that, the taste has a strange fragrance to it, like 5-spice powder or star anise.

The zongzi I chose for today was the chestnut and pork. I was expecting a lot more filling! But it was just one chestnut, one piece of pork (rather chewy), and a couple squares of fat. The zongzi was not bad.

After lunch, I set out to make these mochi-stuffed red dates. I had seen pictures of these on one of my neighborhood’s group chats, and thought it would be a good use of the big bag of dried dates we got in that one government shipment with all of the dried foods. Because I also have a bag of glutinous rice flour that I wanted to use! Basically, you just combined glutinous rice flour with water, take the pits out of the dates, and then put the former into the latter. Then I steamed these in the Xiaomi.

I had extra glutinous rice dough, so while waiting for the steaming to finish, I made little tangyuan 汤圆 and cooked them in a bit of sugar water. Nice!

And I must say the mochi-stuffed dates were really delicious. I think I used to not like Chinese dates very much, but now I’ve come to appreciate their flavor. I hardly put any sugar in the mochi dough, and that was just fine; I might not put any in next time. The sweetness of the dates really complemented the neutral rice flavor. I thought I’d only eat a couple of these, but I ended up eating all but a few with tea outside, and then finished the rest later in the day!

I took a nap after all of this eating, and woke up to find a message from a colleague asking me if I wanted some scallion stems. He knew I had was missing scallions, and I guess he just got these as a bonus in a vegetable order he made. He lives in a building that is really, actually “free,” and biked over to deliver these to me. So thoughtful!

On my rare excursion to the compound gate, I saw boxes upon boxes of antigen tests. They really are expecting us to keep taking these.

When I came back inside, I immediately put these scallions in water. Yay, I’ve put so much cooking “on hold” (cooking the duck blood, or daikon pastries) because scallions are crucial ingredients, but now I finally have some!

After my scallion gift, I did my afternoon antigen test.

Shortly after, I got an automated phone call: the group order purchase I made on the Pinduoduo platform 拼多多 had arrived at the compound gate, and that I should go pick them up as soon as possible. They were my watermelons! So I rushed out (after changing into my “outdoor clothes,” of course), and went to see a pile of boxes of watermelons outside of the gate. Oh my goodness, they are letting us outside to pick up our boxes. It’s my first time in a month and a half, stepping outside of the gates! It was only for a minute, but still… What a change in scenery.

Another yay of the day - I have fruit! I had been rationing myself to one piece of fruit per day, even if it’s just a tiny mandarin orange.

I cut open the bigger watermelon, and it was excellent. Sweet, and importantly, very crunchy texture!

Since I’ve determined that I don’t like that big red sausage, I was thinking about ways to use it up quickly. My mind turned towards Korean food, specifically the budae jjigae or “army stew,” because the dish calls for sausage, and the strong flavors can kind of disguise the sausage’s strange flavor.

To my budae jjigae, I added luncheon meat (which I’m also not a huge fan of), bok choy, red onions, kimchi, garlic shoots (not scallions - I’m letting those grow out before using them!), cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, and a sauce of gochujang and soy sauce.