Eating Taipei....Again!

I recently had the chance to go to Taipei (that's land 'o iron eggs to you, Susan!) again on a whirlwind visit and just got back in town.

Even though I had covered it before, I thought you might like to see what I ate this time around!


So, we started with "tien bu la" with (from top left, going clockwise), roundish soft fish cake, a square of pig's blood glutinous rice (yum!), triangle of fried tofu, a round stick of chewier fish cake, beneath which is hiding sweet boiled turnip. The whole dish is drizzled with "soy sauce cake" sauce and the pink stuff is the ubiquitous sweet chili (ish) sauce.




We moved onto some much loved milk tea with black pearls (small ones) and bubbles (large ones), which turned out to be nice and chewy, as can be seen here.





Some of the other stuff I ate on the other days included:

mullet roe cake - this is a "cake" of roe which has been preserved and dried, which is then slowly baked in an oven and then thinly sliced and served with slivers of radish. It was chewy, salty and incredibly moreish. Went fantastic with the cold beer!



fried pork chop drizzled with worchechestir (that's how I pronounce Worcestershire) sauce, very yum, baby, very yum.





Shabu shabu of delicious pork...






and beef (look at the lovely marbling!)






Braised stewed pork with rice with marinated crunchy radishes on top





Chewy thick 'ho fun' noodles with a tangy sauce laced with chewy caramalized shallot bits






There were also things I saw but did not have time to eat, like this stand, from which you choose items, they deep fry it for you and then sprinkle it with delicious peppery salty addictive (I was going to say salty crack but that doesn't sound appetizing, does it?) seasoning and spice (optional).


This other stand did the same time but had different choices (do you see that light purple round puck like thing in the middle with three long finger indentations? That's made with taro root which has been beaten and mixed with something to produce a deliciously chewy taro cake!)



This was a huge mound of glutinous rice that the poor man couldn't seem to shift due to the relentless rain.





This was fried eel soup, incredibly popular with lots of takers, eaten with a few drops of dark, pungent vinegar. My pregnant friend seemed to enjoy this very much.





She was also very much taken with these little cakes, made by a woman simply on the back of her modified motorbike, this tiny 'cake stand' was churning out little cakes stamped with the word "egg". These looked somewhat similar to the HK snack of Gei Dan Jai but were decidedly different, with a very sponge cake like texture, without the egginess of our local treat.

I very much preferred our version...




This stand had different bits, parts and types of octopus/squidy type things on display from the grotesquely HUGE, big as my forearm tentacle, on a skewered, barbequed for you to eat on a stick to the more modest, smaller, chewier dark orange squares of octopus. The huge tentacle is the boy's dream come true. Unfortunately, he wasn't there to partake in the eating of the ocean denizen's bits.



All I can say was, damn Taiwan has some good eats!