Lockdown Day 32: Playing with my new ingredients

Today I had a plan. A plan of a lot of cooking (again). Which meant that breakfast had to be quick. Also, to make room in my fridge, I had to take these daikon radish pancakes out last night. So they were ready to reheat in the skillet. Dipping sauce: soy sauce, Chinkiang vinegar, sesame oil, and a dash of Tapatío hot sauce. These were good - and convenient to reheat. I’d make them again.

I felt my celtuce leaves youmaicai 油麦菜, and they seemed to already start to be wilting in the fridge. So I decided to cut both stalks to cook immediately. When I heard the YouTuber 小高姐 say that youmaicai were celtuce leaves, I couldn’t believe her. They looked so different from the leaves that I had cut off earlier in the lockdown from my stalk of celtuce. But then when I pulled off these leaves, the heart in the middle indeed looked like the tip of the celtuce stalk. And it had that characteristic nutty smell.

I cut these leaves up and dried them in the salad spinner, cut up the hearts, and minced some garlic to fry later.

They came out a little dry, and I wonder if that’s because my heat was on high, and I couldn’t stir them fast enough because of the sheer volume of leaves.

Today, I experimented with the soy sauce cured pork 酱油肉. I’d never cooked with this before, and I don’t remember eating it before even.

This is what the pieces look like, out of the package. Long pieces of pork belly.

I saw some videos on YouTube that said to steam them. One said to slice, then steam, the other said to steam, then slice. The latter said to add rice wine and ginger. I combined both pieces of advice, and sliced them, and also added rice wine and ginger.

I steamed for about half an hour, and when I pulled open the lid, they appeared rather dried out! I think they were supposed to be supple pieces with translucent fat. The taste was … of soy sauce and pork!

I also used up some carrot to make a carrot miso dressing based on this recipe from NY Times. A commenter suggested to add some apple, so I did that.

Here’s the final product. Tasty!

I saved the rest of the apple for dessert.

I also cut up some cucumber, and used the mandolin to slice up a bit of red onion.

The final ingredient were these “milk” mantou 牛奶馒头. I steamed them on top of Napa cabbage leaves that had kind of frozen against the back wall of the fridge.

And here are all of my ingredients, with the ingredients on the left four plates ready to be assembled!

I layered the split mantou with the sliced cucumber, then topped with slices of soy sauce pork, then the thin slivers of onion, and finally a dollop of the carrot miso dressing. They were a fantastic combination! The cucumber gave crunch, the red onion a crispiness and an assertive flavor that complemented the soy sauce pork. The pork had a meatiness that I hadn’t had in a while, and it was all rounded off by the slight sweetness of the carrot miso dressing. A great mix of flavors and textures.

This afternoon, we had to do an antigen test, a half hour earlier than normal. No idea why we had to do it before 6pm, whereas before 6:30pm was the deadline.

After the antigen test, I took a long nap. Feeling refreshed, but also kind of hungry, I tucked into some of the small sweet potatoes that I had roasted yesterday.

I love these roasted! I think better than steamed. The peel is easier to peel, because it comes out of the oven sturdier than if it were steamed, and the flavor is so concentrated and sweet. I ate two more after I finished the first three!

Then I caught up on some of the earlier blog posts after quarantine and before the current lockdown. Then I did my workout of the day (upper body), and then had dinner. It was basically the leftovers from yesterday’s kimchi jjigae, but I added in some bok choy, and the fresh noodles. It was a mistake to cook the noodles in the leftover soup, because it turned into kind of a starchy mass with little texture of the individual noodles. Oh well, a new lesson about these ingredients!

And just to show how cooking and baking all of my ingredients has turned all-consuming, at 1:15am I was preparing the dough for scones, using shredded carrot. This went into the fridge, to bake tomorrow.