Update 2020-04-13: A friend pointed out my comments about working at home is wrong. Most people who can do work from home now in Sweden. My apology for being part of misinfodemic 🤦!
I have been working from home for about a month now. It is actually not very common here in Sweden
where universities are still open.(👮 fake news!) Unfortunately, despite my effort, I still coughed 3 times today
🤔️. Not sure if it is just the spring or I have got Covid already.
How can we fight pandemic? By staying home. What should we do at home? Cooking, of course! It moves your body, drags you away from the computer for 30 minutes, and you have to eat something anyway, right?
So today I tried to cook a Chinese dish called 鱼香茄子, or Fish Flavoured Aubergine. If you are vegetarian, don't worry. It doesn't contain fish 🐟️ and it doesn't taste like fish. Probably it was invented by people who cannot afford fish to deceive themselves.
You need an Aubergine, some garlic, ginger, and green onion. I don't have any ginger or green onion, so I used onion instead. In a pandemic, we shouldn't fuss over ingredients. (We probably shouldn't not fuss about ingredients at any time. But I found this opinion is not very popular 🤐️.)
It's better if you have some Black Bean Sauce. (The sauce normally comes with a lot chili flakes 🌶️. But I have been soften by life in Sweden so I got a non-spicy one.) But any Chinese sauce should do. No one is going to accuse you cultural misappropriation since you are home alone 😀️!
Mix another source with two table spoon of vinegar, one spoon of soya sauce, a little bit sugar, and one spoon of corn starch. Add 4 spoons of water. This is is supposed to taste like fish. Doesn't it sound so?
Add a lot oil in a frying pan. Really really a lot. Triple the oil shown in the picture. No, quadruple. Or five times more 😱️. Aubergines are the SUV s for vegetables. They eat as much oil 🛢️ as you can afford.
Fry the aubergine chops until they are well done. Take them out and save the left-over oil for dinner. (You don't want to go to grocery too often now.)
But leave a little bit oil in the pan to fry the garlic and the (green) onion with the black bean sauce. Cook the onion to well-done. (Kill all the virus 🐛️ or anything alive on them!)
Mix the aubergine back and add the "fish" flavoured sauce. But don't eat it immediately. Add what ever herbs you have to make it look greener. Wait until the lighting is better and take a photo. (That's the trick of making it look more delicious 😍️.) Send the photo to all your friends and acquaintances to quench your loneliness. Then you can eat!
Final thought -- I recently realized, if I would become an astronaut and fly to the Mars, my life on the space ship 🚀️ probably would be quite similar to what I have now. So I do not have to go to Mars any more!
I can be a Martian 👽️ at home if I choose to! But what would a Martian cook 🤔️?