Lockdown Day 59: Paella de raciones alimentarias

Another Sunday in lockdown, again? Time really flies. Almost two months now.

We have our passes to go out for 3 hours everyday, but we also need to show a negative PCR result for a test taken within 48 hours in order to exit. Our compound cancelled the PCR test for today, so as of 10:40am (when I last took the test 48 hours ago), I could no longer exit. So actually, with 12 hour turnaround for PCR results, we actually need to be taking tests every 36 hours. And if the compound doesn’t organize these tests with this frequency, how are we supposed to exit? Has anyone thought about this?

Sunday morning is family Zoom time, of course. I had a vegetable bao cai bao菜包 from the freezer, and some tea.

Before the call, I already started preparations for making a paella. Last weekend, I thought about making one with the chicken I had, but I wished I had green beans in order to make something approximating a paella valenciana. I decided to put off making the paella for a week, in case green beans would magically appear in my life. And they did! With last Tuesday’s government delivery, we got a nice handful of green beans.

I didn’t have the big white beans (garrafó), the purple and white ones (ferraura), or the small white ones usually in paella valenciana. But I picked out the palest beans that I had to soak last night, and this morning I set the timer on the Xiaomi to cook. I set it to cook under pressure for 30 minutes, which I think was a bit too long because a lot of the beans exploded.

Here are all of the ingredients! The rice I bought in Cost Plus in San Mateo just before flying to Shanghai, and the little bottle of saffron must have come back in 2019 I must imagine. The paprika I bought just before lockdown, because I figured I might be doing some Spanish cooking. The chicken broth I had made from the bones of the last chicken, where the drumsticks and thighs came from.

First I salted, and fried the chicken.

Then pushed them to one side to fry the green beans.

Then came the tomato and paprika.

Then the broth and rosemary. Usually I would use one sprig of fresh rosemary in the broth, and then take that out to replace with another sprig of rosemary at the very end. But I only have dried rosemary.

Then I added the rice.

I used the trick I learned from my friend’s mom - to put the paella in the oven with bottom heat on. Because home stoves don’t have burners wide enough for the paella pan, the oven actually does a good job of substituting the paellera, which is the dedicated cooker for paellas in a lot of Valencian homes.

After taking the paella out, I put it back on the stove to crisp up the bottom. Though the home stove isn’t as wide as the paella pan, Chinese stoves are quite powerful, so the flame actually spread across the bottom!

Then I covered the paella with a kitchen towel to absorb the final moisture. Chinese people have this step too!

The finished paella.

Using the oven at high temperature, plus the cooking on the stove, made the apartment rather warm. Thankfully, there was a cool breeze outside. Eating paella outside really brought back memories!

And, like a Spanish lunch, I continued with some fruit. Lychee in my case.

And then a sweet - mung bean cake 绿豆糕, in this case. I don’t have any more coffee (what we would finish the meal with in Valencia), but my tea was the perfect accompaniment.

I did laundry and caught up with my Spanish roommate over video. And then took my afternoon antigen test.

I took a nap, did some work, and had dinner. I heated up the rest of my buffalo chicken-spinach-artichoke spread, and used it as a sauce (with a bit of tomato puree left over from the paella) with radiatori pasta. And topped it with some parmesan - and more Frank’s Red Hot after tasting.

I did some more work, and then decided to make some tea eggs for breakfast this coming week. I used one of my precious stalks of scallion! I still kept the root to regenerate.