June 26, 2022

Diary of a Quarantined Boy, part 1, day 2

Breakfast was as simple as yesterday's - two slices of toast that have gone through the Gudetama toaster, and the same crappy Nespresso coffee. Plus a banana. Life in quarantine.

Now that we've completed our quarantine project, we turned our attention back to cleaning our apartment. There is a ton of work to do, but thankfully we have a couple of weeks to get it done.

Soon it was time for lunch, and we decided to use up some of our supplies at home, starting with noodles and the box of eggs.

Sesame oil and Sichuan pepper tossed noodles (麻油椒香拌麵), from Tseng Noodles (曾拌麵) - this was OK. Not Sankala's cup of tea.

She pan-fried some eggs but broke the first one on account of me, so I got to eat that one...

Blanched bok choy (燙青江菜)

In the afternoon we got a delivery from mom, who dropped off some fruit and supplies with the security desk downstairs. We asked for white toast this time, and some butter.

For dinner we decided to have a "proper" meal, meaning something other than lunch box or simple noodles. Sankala chose to order from Longchuan Hakka Free Range Chicken Farm (龍傳客家放山雞莊), which is actually located inside the Ningxia Night Market (寧夏夜市). Since these were proper restaurant dishes, we even decided to plate them before serving.

Hind quarter of steamed local free range chicken (1/4土雞後段腿部) - this was damn good! Sankala loves eating chicken in Taiwan, and she was very, very happy with this. Plenty of flavors in the meat of the chicken instead of being bland.

Stir-fried short-necked clams with Thai basil (塔香炒海瓜子) - very fresh clams, and the Thai basil was very, very fragrant. We asked for the spicy version so this packed a little bit of heat.

Stir-fried bird's nest fern with dried fish (小魚炒山蘇) - I love bird's nest fern (山蘇) and it's kinda tough to get them in Hong Kong. Stir-frying with fermented bean sauce (豆瓣醬) and these dried silver-striped round herring (丁香魚) was classic.

Stir-fried rice vermicelli Hakka-style (客家炒米粉) - I love stir-fried rice vermicelli, and this version was more wet than the classic Taiwanese-style, but delicious nonetheless.

I popped open the last bottle of wine in my stash. I'm saving the rest for special occasions...

1997 Beringer Merlot Private Reserve Howell Mountain - drank 40 minutes after decanting. Sweetness on the palate for sure, but later turned a little more acidic with stewed prunes.

This was by far our best meal so far, and Sankala was very, very happy. We have one more day before our quarantine ends and we can get out. Very much looking forward to that!

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