Lockdown Day 33: Two recipes to share, to use some of that carrot and bok choy!

With the carrot scone dough I made yesterday, this morning first thing I did was to take it out of the fridge to shape. But the moment I touched it, it was clear that there was too much liquid, because it felt way too soft.

So I added in 60g more of millet flour, in an attempt to firm up the dough. That seemed to do the trick. Let’s see how it turned out.

Here’s the dough, divided into scone shapes.

After baking.

Then after drizzling on the “cream cheese” glaze. I use quotation marks, because I didn’t have any cream cheese. So what to do? I mixed powdered sugar with evaporated milk and a pinch of salt, and then added in nutritional yeast that I brought back from the US for that cheesy flavor.

It’s beautiful!

Here’s the recipe, which I got to by looking at two different recipes, this millet scone recipe from King Arthur, and this carrot cake scone from a blogger Katiebird Bakes.

Carrot Scones Steps and Ingredients:

1. Preheat oven to 450 F / 225 C

2. Dry ingredients plus butter: combine these following ingredients in a food processor, and pulse a few times to incorporate the butter into pebbles.

60g whole wheat flour
60g all purpose flour
120g millet flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
30g brown sugar
85g butter
1.5 tsp pumpkin pie spice, or cinnamon

3. Beat these together in a big mixing bowl

100g shredded carrot
1 egg
113g evaporated milk

4. Add the dry ingredients plus butter, and add to the wet ingredients and carrot.

5. Refrigerate for a couple hours

6. Form a disc shape on the parchment-lined baking sheet, and then using a bench knife, divide into 8 wedge-shaped pieces and separate them a little from one another.

7. Bake for 13-15 minutes. While baking, stir together the following in a small bowl:

40g powdered sugar
2 tbsp evaporated milk
1 tbsp nutritional yeast

8. Take the scones out of the oven, and drizzle on the glaze.

9. Take the scones off of the baking sheet, and place on a rack to cool.

After this little breakfast, I turned my attention to lunch. Here I investigated a few different recipes, and was inspired by some Rick Bayless Mexican recipes, which used leafy green vegetables and potato. I really wanted to use my bok choy, so was keen to try something along these lines.

This seemed also like the perfect occasion to finally break out my feta cheese, which I’d saved in the fridge for so long. This was in my last Aldi purchase, and didn’t want to use it for any ol’ recipe.

I felt like I could finally dare to use my precious feta, because I realized that it’s okay to freeze the cheese. So I didn’t have to think of a whole string of recipes to use it up quickly.

Besides the feta, I cut up some red onion, roasted potatoes, used up my remaining New Mexico roasted green chile, cut up a very nice avocado, one which I got pretty early on from that fellow San Diegan in my neighborhood. And I also cut up some bok choy, and then salted the vegetables, and waited about half an hour to squeeze out some excess water. Depending on how liquidy your other ingredients are, I don’t think this is super crucial for this recipe. but it does look like what topped the 菜肉面 vegetable pork noodle soup that I loved so much when I lived in Hangzhou way back when.

I also cooked up some tortillas, that I had defrosted. Interestingly, after freezing, these seemed a lot easier to make thinner, just by hanging on the top edge and letting gravity pull down the rest of the tortilla, and I made my way around the edge of the tortilla until it was more or less evenly spread out into a very thin circle. There wasn’t as much puffing up tis time, though.

The big revelation, though, was using the bok choy in a recipe that wasn’t Asian-inspired. I’d had this mental block that I should only use it for Western recipes. All of the recipes I’d found online - whether from Chinese or other Asian chefs, or Western ones - all basically only stir-fried bok choy with garlic, or added it to soups like ramen. I’d never seen bok choy been used in a recipe that wasn’t Asian. But it really worked this time! While they still have a unique taste, it worked well with the Mexican or Southwestern-inspired use.

Here’s all of the ingredients together

And here it is in taco form. The tortillas were super thin this time, so very easy to fold.

Potato and Bok Choy Green Chile Tacos

Ingredients:

1/4 red onion, diced
~1/3-1/2 cup New Mexico roasted green chile
5 heads of bok choy, chopped crosswise
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp cooking oil. I used pressed sunflower oil
1 potato, diced into 1/4 inch cubes

1. Add salt to the bok choy and toss, massaging the salt in. After 30 minutes, squeeze out excess water.

2. While the bok choy is salting, toss the potatoes with 1 tbsp oil, and roast the potatoes, at about 450 F / 225 C for ~20 minutes or until brown.

2. Stir-fry the red onion in the cooking oil until they’ve slightly shrunken and are beginning to brown

3. Add in the green chile, and then the potatoes, and mash them the potatoes a fork. Push to one side of the pan

4. Add in the bok choy to the empty side of the pan, and stir-fry a bit.

5. Combine the bok choy into the potato and chile mixture.

6. Serve in tacos

While I was preparing and eating lunch, I also roasted carrots, eggplant, and zucchini for later use. These vegetables - especially the eggplant and zucchini - become so compact after roasting!

After the big lunch (4 tacos!), I did a workout with some of my gym mates. I was sad to hear that one of them was returning to Germany!

The workout session was pretty intense, and I realized that I hadn’t had protein all day. So I made myself a smoothie with protein powder, and frozen banana and a frozen fruit mix (pineapple, mango, strawberry) from Costco. I only used a few pieces of fruit, to conserve my stock; just enough for sweetness and coldness!

Later, I did the afternoon antigen test.

All afternoon, I’d heard a lot of kids playing outside. We were, after all, now regarded as a “controlled” community, not a “lockdown” neighborhood. So this means that we can leave our apartments, but need to stay within the community gates, which remain padlocked. (I still wonder what happens in an emergency.)

I went out for a little walk, and found that many other people had the same idea! This was almost 7pm, so I suppose for other people, this was their after-dinner walk, while for me it was my before-dinner walk.

After coming back in, I showered and then prepared dinner. I was really excited to get the pressed tofu in the neighborhood government delivery, but without things like peppers or pork, I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I decided to make a kind of almost-vegetarian version of zhajiangmian, the pork sauce noodles that Beijing is famous for, because this would be a good use of cucumber and carrot. I followed a couple different recipes that I had found, and used one recipe’s technique to add onion. So I stir-fried chopped red onion, and also the leftover soy sauce pork from yesterday, which I also chopped more finely.

Then I added in the diced pressed tofu, water, and 3 spoonfuls of 葱伴侣 Cong Ban Lu doubanjiang bean paste, which I’d gotten for free. I actually was hesitant about using this, because I think it just tastes like straight salt, rather than the more nuanced taste of the Pixian doubanjiang that I used for the first time in 2020, and which I love.

I cut up some cucumber, julienned some carrot, and boiled some (100g) of that 阳春面 that was also delivered on Sunday.

Well, it turns out I should have listened to my hesitations. The tofu and pork mixture was so. salty. I’m writing this a few hours later and I still feel thirsty from this meal.