Lockdown Day 37: Making homemade cottage cheese (standing in for ricotta)!

This morning, I was still in bed when I saw a message from a gym friend asking to team up for our Saturday partner workout of the day. Pre-lockdown, I never went to the gym on Saturdays. It’s always partner workout day, where you split up the prescribed number of repetitions with one or two other partners. A I actually don’t like these workouts with partners because I feel like I’m letting the other person down, slow as I am!

But now in lockdown, I do feel like I need as much physical activity as I can get, and I feel like somehow it’s a little less stressful to workout with a partner, at home. Maybe because it’s easier to scale the exercises? Don’t know. Anyway, I decided to do the workout with this gym friend.

After the workout, had a little post-workout snack, a toasted carrot scone - my last one!

Then I went outside to pick up a whole chicken from my friend who lives on the other side of the building. She’s the same friend who gave me her chicken when we received it in the second government delivery, because she was scared of the head. This chicken was from her company’s gift box. She said that some co-workers got chickens with heads on, while others got chickens without the heads on, and she didn’t want to take any chances and just gave me the chicken. She’d actually been storing it for at least a week in her freezer, because I did not have any space in my fridge or freezer. But finally I do, so now I have her Tyson-brand chicken!

It was very frozen, so I just put it in the fridge to defrost.

Then I made a quick lunch, by reheating the tofu chili and the celtuce leaves in the Xiaomi, and cooked some of the dried noodles. I tried blanching the noodles to remain firm, but that was too undercooked actually. So then I put them back in water for 30 more seconds or so. They might have been too soft now? Anyway, it was a nice lunch, and made me think it’s always nice to have some kind of noodle topping handy, to make a quick meal.

Then I finished the remainder of my “lactone tofu.” I put it in the Xiaomi under the reheat function, and then poured off the liquid that was released in the cooker. Then I dressed the tofu. It’s not soy sauce in the bowl, it’s maple syrup! I was really curious to try this combination, and I loved it! I might try doing this for a high protein breakfast in the future (when I can buy groceries).

It was my first day eating outside in a while. I was actually put off from using my balcony for a couple weeks, since the building that the balcony faces was sealed up because of a COVID case. And then there was the fumigation of the neighborhood which sprayed chlorine on the vegetables that I had outside. But now, we are in our 13th day since the last case, and I felt a bit more brave to eat outside.

Then I even put my summer duvet outside to air out, in preparation for changing duvets because of the hot weather.

But my mood shifted. Entryway leader sent a notice from the subdistrict, saying that we would be under lockdown for the next week. No leaving our apartments even. This applies to everyone in the subdistrict, even though some compounds already should be opened up. Why? What is the reason for this??

Some time after this, I heard some talking outside - they seemed to be talking about fumigating the building across from my balcony. I opened my balcony door and saw the lady across the alley also pulling in the vegetables on her windowsill, and she looked at me and pointed vigorously at the street level.

They were 大白 Baymax people putting on their hazmat suits…

…and fumigation backpacks.

The lady giving them instructions, presumably from the neighborhood committee, was taking pictures too. Maybe as a record that this fumigation happened (this case was actually from more than 2 weeks ago…).

After the first one went in, the second one followed with a different-looking fumigation backpack.

Then the went around to the other side of my building, because actually the other side of my building (in a different entryway) had a positive case. After that, they took turns to disinfect each other.

So, I’m kind of back to not really using the balcony much. I have clothes drying now, safely indoors, with my dehumidifier pointed at them.

This afternoon, I embarked on one of my big cooking projects for the weekend. Making cottage cheese! It’s actually a stand-in for ricotta, and I learned the two are different. Cottage cheese is made from fresh milk, while ricotta is made from the leftover whey that’s created during the cheesemaking process (cottage cheese being one such cheese). Ricotta means “twice cooked,” because it’s the cooking of the whey after the whey has been created from cooking other cheese in the first place.

For this, I used the carton of milk that we got in our May 1 deliver, a quarter gallon of fresh milk.

And the very last remaining vinegar I had, a little less than a quarter cup. It actually was spot on for the recipe.

First, I heated the milk over low to medium flame, constantly stirring, until it reached 88 Celsius.

Then I poured in the vinegar, and stirred at the same time. The curds separated immediately!

Then I let it sit on the counter, covered, for about half an hour. I took a nap during this time. Then I poured it into a net bag (technically, a mesh bag for laundry - it worked perfectly!) to strain out the whey.

I let that sit over a pot for another half hour, and then I squeezed out the whey using the net bag.

Ta da!

I’m so happy to have found this process to make cottage cheese. I’ve often looked for ricotta in order to make lasagna, but I’ve never seen ricotta sold in Shanghai, not even in expensive expat-oriented supermarkets. So making about 1 cup of cottage cheese (to stand in for the ricotta) out of simply a quarter gallon of milk was a big revelation. I could do this more in the future too.

After cheese making, it was antigen test time.

Then it was back to making dinner. I roasted sliced potatoes (sliced using my mandolin).

And then assembled a no-pasta lasagna. First some bolognese ragù that I was keeping in the freezer, then a layer of potatoes…

…then a cottage cheese-egg-parmesan-oregano mixture, then mozzarella, then roasted zucchini…

…then ragù, ricotta mixture and mozzarella, and then roasted eggplant slices…

…then some parmesan, more zucchini…

…the last meat sauce, parmesan, and then a layer of potatoes…

…topped off with more parmesan. It’s amazing that in these two little containers, are one large zucchini, one large eggplant, two potatoes, the cheese made from a gallon of milk, and meat sauce.

Here’s the final product. With so many veggies inside, it looked squat, but was very filling. I actually couldn’t finish the whole piece.

And look at all of that ricotta - I mean, cottage cheese - inside! This was truly delicious, and I’m really pleased with how it came out.

I then did a bunch of cleaning. I had done laundry earlier, and then I cleaned my bathroom, and Swiffered the floor. A very productive day! I watched some Netflix, and had an evening snack of sweet potato (ended up having two), and mandarin orange.