Taipei eating on the drive

We hired a driver for our short sojourn to Taipei to visit my Grandmother, who was meeting the babe for the first time. We hired a driver for the journey as there were a lot of places we wanted to hit and there were 7 of us. The driver was a really friendly man to whom we chatted a lot about food. However, we knew that there was something special about him when we saw a cart selling my beloved pig's blood glutinous rice cakes on a stick in the lane next to us. He rolled down the window, somehow convinced the lady on the bike pulling the cart to pull over at the next set of lights to sell us 3 sticks.

So despite racing our way to the airport, we managed to cram in one last snack. Fantabulous.

F-odd:Sweet and Sour

One of my favorite things to take on planes and rides are preserved sour plums. I get travel sickness quite easily and these help with the nausea.


While I realize these are not exactly the kind of 'treat' Western peeps usually eat, nor the younger generation (ahem, myself included, of course), I do believe that people are trying to make them less mouth puckering and more pleasant for the youths of today.



One of the incarnations that is popular is using the plums embedded in hardened (maltose). While I enjoy these separately, I find that together they just seem a bit wrong.


Which is why I was reluctant to try the black sugar and plum one that my Mom bought from Sogo's Taiwan specialty food exhibition.


Black sugar is very popular at the moment and treasured for its health properties (hehe, any excuse to eat sugar).


So, how did it taste? Surprisingly delicious! The dark, slightly burnt taste of the earth sugar went very well with the sour, tart and slightly medicinal quality of the preserved plum.


I went back the very next day and picked up the last pack. I'm afraid you lot in HK will have to get yours on your next trip to Taiwan!

F-odd: Snip and poke

I had an extremely short trip to my favorite snacking city in the world, Taiwan, recently.

Although I was only there for an evening, I did manage to sneak in a bag o' treats between meetings (or rather pre-dinner).

I had an hour between appointments to kill and decided to go to the infamous Shilin market. Besides picking up three pairs of shoes for a song, I was stopped in my tracks by a queue of people. Being the nosy busy body I am, I had to have a look at what they were queuing for. Once I found out it was edible, I naturally joined the queue.

It was a large plastic box, mounted above a moped which had all manners of ...er ... brown bits.

I know it seems like brown bits isn't a very good description but it was exactly what it is. Bits which had been simmered in brown, flavored soy sauce for a long time, taking on the flavors of the sauce.

What kind of bits? Well, among the ones I saw, there were chicken necks, hearts, kidneys, livers, wing tips, pig skin, ears, and snout, duck gizzards, tongues, wings, dried tofu in a variety of shapes and some vegetables too.

These bits were cut into bite size pieces, tossed in the bag with a splash of chili oil, salt and white pepper and loads of tangy, sour-sweet preserved vegetables. You are given two skewers and a pat on the bottom and off you go. Actually you don't get a pat on the bottom. You pay extra for that. Two blocks down.

So what bits did I end up getting?

The pig skin, which you see as the bright brown red curls just above my skewers. These were lovely, all chewy, with no fat stuck onto the skin and the errant hairs plucked out (I've seen this being prepared before, they really do use tweezers on the stubborn hairs!).

Hey, before you go all "eww, grosss" on me, in the West you have crackling and pork rinds... leave me alone.

Nestled straight in the middle was a mushroom, next to a young bamboo shoot. Right at the bottom, the black speckled bit is congealed pig's blood with glutinous rice, above which is a delicious chicken heart. On the right, a bow type dark thing? That's wakame, thick, chewy seaweed. All the greenery you see there is the tangy preserved vegetables.

It was a highly satisfactory snack and reasonably priced at NT$80 for the lot (HK$20).

Long live brown bits!

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!

Taiwan fooding

I know, I know, a long time coming.

We arrived in Taipei on Friday night and bypassing the hotel, we went straight to Shilin night market and the first thing we ate was the infamous chicken cutlet.

I definitely feel there was some "mochi" powder in the batter as the chicken was so juicy! The chicken is first marinated and then covered in batter and deep fried to perfection. Very juicy chicken with a light but crispy outer layer that was chewy yet yielding. The chicken sellers refuse to cut the chicken, saying it compromises its juiciness.... I love cooks who refuse to yield to customer demands in favor of the flavaaaaaaaah! We had alongside the chicken, some spicy dumplings and smelly tofu. Mmmmn, once you get hooked on the smelliness, you start craving it!

Anyhow, we moved onto other yumminess including some Tien Bu Lah (sweet not spicy) which were flat cakes of . chewy fishcake that were deep fried and served with a sweetish pink sauce with marinated sliced cucumbers. Yum yum, I could eat buckets of these...unfortunately there IS a difference between the good and the bad these ones were average at best. Along these we had some Oh Wa Szen (fried oysters in literal translation) which was a baby oyster pancake with some gooey stuff inside served with the same kind of sauce

We then moved on to one of my favorites and if you're week of tummy (you wusses), you might want to skip the next paragraph.


It was pig kidney soup in loads of alcohol and ginger. Lovely, spicy and with a kick, one of my faves.






Along with it, my parents ordered a serving of squid soup for the boy. A bit bland with large pieces of squid and bamboo shoots.


I caught my dad mesmerized by the sausages, of which he bought a small baggie full along with chopped large chunks or raw garlic (sweet and smoky tasting but I'm not one for sausage, much to my English boy's dismay). My dad wanted some noodles so left him with a plate of fried noodles (and the luggage) while we went exploring for other things, including Oh Wah Misua which was oyster in thin noodle thick soup. Odd sounding but yummy especially with the toppings of coriander, sprinklings of dark vinegar and sesame oil.

We were starting to slow down by now...and and in case you think we were even MORE gluttonous than we were, we shared everything. Ok, I conceed that that the chicken cutlet was huge but everything else was small appetizer sized portions.

Following that, we had to try to new thing at Shilin, grilled mochi! We tried three kinds. The first one was grilled soy mochi and the second was ?? mochi. The lovely cook gave us also a sample of sesame sweet mochi. They were delicious but I have to admit that the soy mochi was the best.

Finally, we ended with taro and peanut ice. Pressed taro root into ice and pressed peanut ice they were both mouthwateringly good but we couldn't finish. They were each so good that after you swallowed, you could savor the taste in your mouth before drooling for more.

So, in conclusion, come for the chicken and stay for the ice, my two favorites of the Shilin night market. DEFINITELY worth a visit.

PS. I'll post this now in case you want to check out my Flickr account but I'll post with pics later.