Lockdown Day 34: Yuan Yang coffee-milk-tea, and blackened cod mantou sliders

Sigh, the last day of the 5-day May holiday. No matter how long it is, it’s never long enough, isn’t it?

This morning, while still lazy in bed at around 9am, entryway leader sent a message that everyone had to prepare for an imminent PCR test. So I dutifully got out of bed, and went to brush my teeth. My bathroom is facing the corridor, and at that time I heard banging on the door and her shouting out that we had a PCR test! So then I hurriedly finished up, and got dressed with my “outdoor” clothes, put my masks on, and…

Well some others in the group reported in the chat that they rushed out when they heard the knocking, but found out that it wasn’t our turn yet. Okay, so what was that urgent knocking for? A wakeup call?

Finally, entryway leader sent a 3 second audio saying that it was our turn.

This test was the most dangerous of all, so far. Not only did the worker touch my lip with his glove, but also my eyeglasses! He left behind a streak of goo behind. Had I not been wearing my glasses, he really could have touched my eyes - a mucosal membrane and direct infection site.

After the test, I came back home, and used alcohol swabs on my lips, washed my glasses, and took a shower. I really felt icky this time.

After my own disinfecting process, I had breakfast. Well, to get there, I first have to say that yesterday, good fortune literally rained down. A package of Starbucks VIA instant coffee -fell off of a shelf and onto the floor. I had packed it for quarantine, but somehow I lost track of it after unpacking, so I really forgot that I had this! Coffee!!

Since I had a bunch of evaporated milk remaining from the can I opened, to make my Japanese milk bread, and then the carrot scones, I decided that I would try to make Yuan Yang 鸳鸯. It’s a strong coffee+tea+evaporated milk drink popular in Hong Kong, and served in Hong Kong-style cafés here in Shanghai too. I brewed the fancy 大红 dahong tea in my porcelain tea set, and then heated up my evaporated milk, and poured into a cup with the Starbucks VIA (just maybe 1/3 of the bag, to conserve!). And I added sugar too.

It was delicious! Went perfectly with a toasted carrot scone for breakfast.

For lunch, originally I was going to make what I eventually made for dinner, but I was so bothered by how bad the zhajiangmian topping was last night, that I was determined to try to transform it somehow as soon as possible. Last night, I already “rinsed” my tofu and pork mixture with water, so was starting kind of from a blank slate.

I remembered back in December, in the Air China First Class lounge at PVG, I had a bowl of noodles with a topping called sulajiang “素辣酱” or vegetarian chili. I hadn’t actually ordered it, but was given it by mistake, instead of the chicken noodles I had ordered. But the sulajiang turned out to be really tasty. It was cubes of tofu (like my starting point), together with potatoes and other vegetables. Well, potatoes and other vegetables I do have! I added in rehydrated dried shiitake from a previous government shipment, roasted some potatoes, and added in carrot that I roasted yesterday. I also used “my” doubanjiang 豆瓣酱 that I prefer, the spicy Pixian doubanjiang, and rice wine. I thought it came out well in the end. Still quite salty, but fine. And I blanched some bok choy, and cooked some of the fresh noodles that we got on May 1. I cooked them just 2 minutes this time, but even that I thought was a bit long.

A huge turnaround from yesterday!

For dessert, I had a mandarin orange. This one was still pretty juicy, unlike the last couple that I had.

The various times I’ve tried cooking the fresh noodles, I tried to estimate the best portion size. I saw a TV segment on YouTube about a noodle place in Hangzhou, and I think they did 2.5 ounces which is like 75g or so. So I tried that once, and then 100g, and then 125g (today). I think 125g was too much, and 75g might have been kind of little. So with my second bag, I portioned out 100g packets to freeze for later. After all, the entryway leader reminded us all that the fresh noodles had an expiration date of only 3 days since they were made, so I didn’t want to waste this bag!

After this task, I relaxed with another cup of Yuan Yang, and my favorite YouTube channel, Mentour Pilot. Yes, somehow I find his accident videos relaxing!

Not long afterwards, I set out to make an early dinner. The lighting is so much better for pictures during daytime, haha!

Dinner prep began earlier, with cutting a cod filet into three pieces, and seasoning with salt, paprika, oregano, thyme, and black and white pepper. Kind of like the seasoning for blackened catfish.

Before lunch, I also made a coleslaw, very light on the dressing to save on ingredients. But it was really perfect how light it was.

I steamed, then griddled three mantou buns, to make sliders!

I have to say, these blackened cod mantou sliders turned out really well. The seasoning on the blackened cod was quite good, and the coleslaw was a perfect sweet, crunchy contrast. I even liked the mantou better this way, griddled in butter. Last time, when I had just steamed them for soy sauce pork sliders, I didn’t love the sweet milkiness of the milk mantou.

I accompanied this with the leftover celtuce leaves, which I left chilled, and reheated roasted eggplant.

After lunch, I sent in my antigen test of the afternoon.

After doing some reading and listening to podcasts - what I really wanted to be doing this whole 5-day holiday -, I got a bit hungry again. So I decided to make use of my ingredients from that one neighborhood government shipment of dried foods, to make a dessert soup. I saw a recipe on my Xiaomi MiHome app actually, which used just what I had: the tremella/white ear fungus 银耳, the dates, goji berries, and I also added in lotus bulb.

When I pressed “cook now” on the app, I though there was surely a mistake. 1 hour under pressure? I cancelled and then double checked the recipe. Well, the 1 hour was correct.

Later I saw on a blog post that if you make a soup with tremella 银耳 in a slow cooker, it’s 4 hours, so I guess 1 hour in a pressure cooker is speedy. And I can see why it needed all of that time. The whole soup had a rather thick texture, and the tremella became very soft, kind of gelatinous. I did add rock sugar as directed, but the soup was barely sweet, with the main sweet bites being the ones with the goji berries and dates.

I’ll definitely make this again, because it’s supposed to be anti-inflammatory and good for respiratory system. Perfect for this pandemic time!

After this, I was still a bit hungry, so I had a slice of my milk bread. (And just now I had a scone… so much for avoiding eating too close to bedtime!)