Still Feeling Peckish

So I feel like a new person. After having weathered Covid-19 it’s nice to have energy back. I can’t imagine what it is to live with long Covid because the first few days of the illness I felt like a truck ran over me. But I was fortunate not to have fever and in fact the cough only insidiously snuck in on day 4 of illness.

After having tried to avoid Covid-19 for almost 3 years it was a comedy of several waves hitting the family at the same time. Yes, the BA5 variant seems incessant. It started first with kid#1 catching it from dance friends – we chucked him out of the house into Godma’s place as she had room and the family did have covid before. I was paranoid about the oldies getting it and kid#2 was also going to the UK the week after. But the inevitable happened and grandma developed symptoms 4 days after kid#1. But timing was good as both the oldies had got their Novavax booster just 2 weeks before so grandma’s symptoms were very mild and grandpa didn’t even catch it! Anyway a week later kid#2 developed symptoms when on holiday in the UK (it was the Scoot flight where coughing passengers refused to mask up). And the week after dear hubs got it (likely from his clinic). After all these I decided I might as well join in the fun and didn’t isolate myself. After all we are traveling soon and I though I might as well get it over and done now and not spoil my holiday.

So during the infection my appetite was really bad (new for me) and I had a weird craving for fried eggs and simple flavors. But luckily that faded pretty quickly! But because I hadn’t been out to the market I could only cook from the freezer and pantry and so I decided to defrost some striploin steaks and make some beef noodles.

My pantry is full of all kinds of shirataki noodles. I’ve managed to accrue all kinds of shapes – flat kway teow-like noodles, vermicelli-like noodles and round yellow noodle-like oat fiber shirataki. In the end, honestly it all tastes like bouncy shirataki noodles…cooking with shirataki noodles needs some adjustments as it doesn’t absorb flavor or gravy, unlike typical wheat or rice noodles. And it doesn’t char as well and so you will never get the smoky wok hei from frying under high heat. Still, it’s a decent trade off from not having noodles in the first place. I don’t think I could manage many local noodle dishes with spiralized zucchini!

This recipe approximates the local fried beef hor fun. Because the noodles don’t absorb liquid, there is a bit of gravy which is necessary to coat the shirataki noodles and give it some good flavor. I was encouraged when grandma gave high praise to the gravy. It pays to have a bottle of homemade sugar free kecap manis on hand! It made a good lunch with minimal leftovers!