Lockdown Day 30: Korean gilgeori toast with homemade Japanese milk bread
Our PCR test took place in the morning, and it included an odd, new step: we needed to bring our antigen tests from this morning (or just after midnight), and show it to one of the 大白 Baymax people, before getting our PCR test. Why? We’re just about to get a PCR test. Do they not believe our antigen tests? Would they not do the PCR test if our antigen test was actually positive? Such a strange new step.
Worse yet, today the person doing the throat swab was incredibly clumsy - and dangerous. He touched my lips with his gloved fingers. This is a potential infection route, if he had virus on his glove, which had been handling biohazards from dozens of other residents. I can truly believe now why people insist that the PCR tests are an infection source.
I came back to my apartment, swabbed my lip with alcohol swab, and took a shower.
Feeling at least mentally better, I had a late breakfast/brunch. I toasted my cabbage-wheat flour crust first, directly on my toaster’s grate. Then I transferred it onto the toaster’s little baking sheet, and topped with just sun-dried tomatoes and the oil that was still clinging to the tomatoes, and roasted eggplant. I liked the extra-toasted crust. It didn’t become crunchy, because it still had all of that cabbage inside, but I think it was more firm this way.
I was really eager this long weekend to make another attempt at Japanese milk bread. So I pulled out my food processor, and put in a halved recipe from King Arthur Flour. Thankfully I had one of my tiny eggs from the second neighborhood government shipment, which I think was small enough to stand in for a half an egg (this egg without the shell was 35g, and according to King Arthur a large egg is 50g).
Here’s my dough before going in the oven with a pan of boiling water, for a second rise.
And here’s the final product! It’s a bit… squat!
It might be because my baking dish is a little larger than a half of a 9” x 5” loaf pan. The inside of the bread wasn’t dense like my previous attempt, but it had the hole structure of a quick bread! I wonder if this is because I used my food processor (with the metal blade) for a high-speed minute-long processing (which I had read is effective), instead of a stand mixer for 10-15 minutes. I ate the end cap while still warm, and it was tasty nonetheless!
While the bread was baking, I went about getting my fillings ready for my Korean gilgeori toast. I wanted to try out my can of luncheon meat that came in an earlier neighborhood government ration.
I was a little surprised looking at the SPAM website, that SPAM only has 6 ingredients: Pork with Ham, Salt, Water, Modified Potato Starch, Sugar, and Sodium Nitrite. I guess it makes sense too, because SPAM was invented so long ago, they probably didn’t have all of the chemicals as today. Now when I look at this can of luncheon meat on the other hand, well…
This might have been my first time cooking with luncheon meat. How do I get this thing out? I tried banging it upside down, and then I tried putting a fork in the middle, and pulling it out. Finally I used a fork along one of the edges, and succeeded in pulling it out.
So pale pink!
Slicing it revealed more red bits of ham. I sliced and diced 8 servings out of this can, and froze 7 of them for later use.
Then, with shredded cabbage, julienned carrots, sliced red onion, and one egg, I made the filling for my gilgeori (street toast). I topped it all with fried spam, and a drizzle of mayonnaise. So good!
I finished lunch with one of my sugary iced teas from quarantine days.
I then did my 6pm antigen test.
Since I had lunch at kind of an early dinner time (4:45pm), I wasn’t terribly hungry in the evening, so I just had a couple of my daikon radish pancakes for dinner at around 10pm. I really like having these in the fridge! I made a dipping sauce of the leftover braising liquid from my Turkish green beans with onion and tomato, adding in soy sauce, Chinkiang vinegar, and sesame oil.
I then had my one fruit of the day - a navel orange.
This afternoon and evening, I focused on getting a little more caught up in earlier blog posts, but I also finished watching Top Gun from an earlier start!
After midnight, I did my morning antigen test. I didn’t realize that the box also had a vial-holder… but what are the two big circles on top for?
When I first got the box of 25 antigen tests, I thought it was an obscene quantity. Well, having just done my midnight test of May 1, I’m now down to one remaining antigen test. Sign, we now do these tests twice a day, alongside our PCR tests, so I’ve used up almost all of my tests already.
We really have been in lockdown a whole month.
