New Direction

I would like to adjust the direction of this blog. Because finding Noah takes a photo of himself every day for six years, I realize that I can take a photo of my meal every, too. And write a subject a week like previous article. So that my blog would be richer and not become weekly report. I plan to start from next New Year but warnup recently. Hope I will carry on!

Glutinous Oil Rice

"Glutinous Oild Rice" ,briefly called "Oil Rice", is common for a snack in Taiwan night market and for a present of celebrating the first month of a newborn baby. Somebody would sacrifice oil rice when a traditional Chinese festival - "Qi-Xi". I'm not sure the origin of oil rice but it has a long history.##CONTINUE##
The main material of oil rice is Glutinous Rice, which was used in previous posted dish "Steamed Pork Slices with Glutinous Rice Flour". So that it tastes sticky, not grain of clear. Besides, the minced pork, Shiitake, dried shelled shrimp, and so on are indispensable as well. I introduced Glutinous Rice before hence today focus on Shiitake and dried shelled shrimp that enable to increase the fragrance. Both of they matched with each other and are used in many courses.

Shiitake, a sort of mushroom, is a usual material on Chinese food. Because it contains light not heavy flavor, we don't regard it as a primary material. However, it is perfect to play the second role or supporting role or even provisional actor. For the purpose of preservation and delivery, Shiitake would be dehydrated and then packeted. When preparing to cook, my mom dips Shiitake into water and waits it to expand. During the dip process, the fragrance would release much more because of chemical action.

We generally call dried shelled shrimp "Shrimp Rice" because its size is just similar to a grain of rice. Shrimp Rice is dried and has to dip into water before use like Shiitake. It also has a distinct fragrance and is suitable as a seasoning. I hated Shrimp Rice while I was a child because it tastes crisp like eating minced shrimp shell. But somebody love this texture. I feel not bad now with it in oil rice. In the picture, the grain of Shrimp Rice is bigger then general one and not be called "Rice", I think.

There are some other courses that looks like Oil Rice, such as Zongzi or Rice Cake in Bamboo Tube. (I will introduce them if having chance.) In addition, we eat that kinds of food with sweet spicy sauce. It's wonderful for that combination.

Pork Steamed with Pickled Mustard Cabbage

Don't belittle this bad-looking dish. Even though it looks dirty and decayed, it's a famous Chinese course. We call it "Buckle Pork with Mei-gan", which directly translated from Chinese name. Mei-gan is a sort of pickled vegetable and sounds like a female's name "Megan" :p I will introduce Mei-gan vegetable and explain why named "Buckle Pork".##CONTINUE##
A classical "Pork Steamed with Pickled Mustard Cabbage" is a time-consuming dish and need a complex procedure. According to my grand mom's recipe: besides choosing a good pork side, the side with skin, fat meat, and lean meat have to be layers of clear. So that Chinese call this cut "Five Pattern Pork" or Taiwanese call "Three Layers Pork", which comes from multiple layers characteristic. In restaurants or for banquet, the cook would cut into thick slice for beauty. But my mom just cuts into cube as thumb size. It's convenience for eating and without chopping them.

Before stewing, the pork would be taken to deep-fried in order to seal up the meat juice and avoid over cooking. The next step is to stew them with soy sauce and other seasonings, almost similar to "Stewed Pork with Brown Sauce". This step seems to be a groundwork of meat cooking. The color, luster and the taste, texture all depend on this stew process.
After that, neatly and separately arrange pork slices on the plate and put Mei-gan vegetable onto meat. Then place it into steamer and wait. Finally, after steamed pork is done, put another plate upside down on the top and buckle two plates with your hands and then turn them over. While you take the above plate away, a delicious "Buckle Pork with Mei-gan" is done. Now you understand where the name "Buckle" comes from.

You must be curious what the Mei-gan vegetable is. The title leaks answer. It made by a sort of Mustard Cabbage, whose seeds can process to mustard. Chinese pickle leaves with salt and then dry them until black. The "gan" of Mei-gan (乾) means "Dry". The "Mei" has two stories. The first "Mei" (霉) means "Mold" and describe its moldy appearance. The other "Mei" (梅) is "Ume". According to legend, Chinese made Mei-gan vegetable when the fruit of Ume is ripe.

Mom's Curry

  Curry is a well-known dish or sauce all over the world now. I have eaten curry in a restaurant in Czech when visiting Eastern Europe. Maybe we'll have a page to introduce that dish someday. Today, I still focus on my mom's curry and talk about our Taiwanese favorite flavor.##CONTINUE##
  Every body knows Curry comes from mysterious India. According to my colleague who have been India for business, Indian eats everything with curry (and by their hand), just like Chinese eats everything with soy sauce. In addition, Indian curry tastes very salty and spicy but I think that heavy savor is classical curry.
  Besides India curry, another style of curry is common in Southeast Asia, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand; we call South Pacific Ocean (南洋) Style. Locals add their most common material - coconut milk to the curry and you can smell its distinct fragrance. The Southeast Asia curry looks more dilute than traditional India curry but tastes still hot.
  Another popular style in Taiwan is Japanese curry. Taiwanese loves Japanese food very much because our tastes are similar. The characteristic of Japanese curry is that you can find a little sweet in it. Japanese would put fruit, apples usually, or honey in curry. I don't know if it causes by they like a lot sweet stuff :p So that Japanese curry is less salty and spicy than India curry.
  What a food kingdom Taiwan is. You can eat all styles here. However, most Taiwanese don't like so salty and spicy food like Indian; not like sweet stuff like Japanese, either. Most curry dishes in Taiwan are localized from Japanese curry and a bit more salty. I tentatively call that style the "Taiwan curry".

  My mom's curry can be regarded as Taiwan style. First, she bought a curry sauce cube (like bouillon cube) at supermarket. We always buy the Japanese curry cube because our taste is more similar to Japanese's and the food made in Japan means elaborate and dainty. After that she was not eager to boil curry sauce but prepare main materials. My mom would cut the meat, potato and carrot into cubes; then stewed them with soy sauce like the beginning step of "stewed spareribs with brown sauce" in order to let the meat and vegetables more savory. Finally put the curry cube and other seasonings. If you like hot, you can put spicy powder. If you want to eat Southeast Asia style, you can put coconut milk. It's delicious to put the cheese as well. (We learned from a certain restaurant.)

A curry recipe reference

Taiwan Mooncake - Yolk Pastry

Here a special new thing comes, the Taiwan mooncake! The Mooncake is one of traditional Chinese dessert especially for Mid-Autumn Festival. I don't want to explain this festival now, maybe next year instead. Although Mid-Autumn Festival already passed (August 15 in Chinese calendar), my mom still bakes them to feed us like pigs :p In fact, she will give some to her friend as a gift. As you can see, the appearance in my picture is very different from that in Wiki because this one we eat is Taiwan Style and we call it "Yolk Pastry". ##CONTINUE##
You can understand the key point of Taiwan mooncake from its local name: "yolk" and "pastry". The most common and traditional way is to fill with sweet bean paste and a salted egg yolk inside. The black bean paste and yellow yolk represent dark sky and a light moon respectively. Besides, the salted egg yolk is able to balance the sweet of bean paste. Nowadays, fat people so afraid of Cholesterol, especially in egg yolk, that we can buy fake yolk instead. It made by cheese and smells better. The other primary role "pastry" is the most difference from other styles mooncake. Only the skin of Taiwan mooncake made by puff pastry, just like another famous Taiwan dessert "Suncake". The puff pastry skin looks laminated as thousand skin and tastes crisp.

The mooncake has a variety of fillings from traditional ones "Lotus Seed Paste" or "Jujube Paste" to modern ones "ice cream" or "coffee". My mom also bakes a very popular sort this time: "Bean Paste with Mochi". This way comes from Japanese style and has an effect that balance sweet like yolk. Some people enjoy the taste combined with crisp pasty and sticky mochi. In addition, my mom bake her favorite filling, Taro Paste, too. However, I still prefer the most traditional one, sweet bean paste and egg yolk.

Stewed Tofu with Chinese Toon

We go to a restaurant for today's lunch. This restaurant decorates with old things and offers antique dishes. You can see a black TV, gramophone records, pulse tone telephones, the 1st generation mobile phones, and so on. You can seat in a log cabin and eat dishes which my mom or grand mom was eating when she was a kid. Some of them can be seen nowadays but others only are eaten at this type of restaurant. I recommend you welcome and feel the ambiance of early Taiwan stage. The Map below shows where it is. But you need a local to take you there because of no buses and no English signs. Especially, they have no English menu.##CONTINUE##
I try to take pictures for all courses. However, they are so much delicious that I forgot take them except the first two dishes. Finally, I just take photos of leftovers and a photo of a half my favorite "Stewed Tofu with Chinese Toon". By the way, I remembered that I also forgot my packet in Thailand because cared only for eating a Thailand snack. It's a bad record :$

Why would I like to introduce "Stewed Tofu with Chinese Toon"? Because I haven't eaten it before, either. I never ate food with Chinese Toon. So we chose it when we first went to this restaurant. The taste of Chinese Toon is similar to Oregano but they still have their own unique flavor. We usually use Basil instead of Toons for cooking. I think the flavor of Chinese Toon is more soft than Basil. It is better to cook with tofu. Although the appearance of "Stewed Tofu with Chinese Toon" is not pretty, it looks like green sauce pasta. I think "Green Sauce Tofu" is also a great western name ;)

After I was back home, I looked up the information of Chinese Toon on Internet and found it has some curative effects. Traditional Chinese medicine says that Chinese Toon is able to strengthen humen intestine and stomach, and make humen sperm stronger. Attention please every gentleman, you mush try this dish for your future life :p Besides, modern medicine finds Chinese Toon is anti-oxidant and help people healthy. What a wonderful food it is!

Finally, I'm not sure what style this stewed cooking way is. According to my reference, a Chinese style seems cold tossed. So I decide to label "Stewed Tofu with Chinese Toon" as Taiwan Style.

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New Labels

A new label "Outside Dish" is coming soon. I am going to introduce what we eat in outside restaurant so that you can see some different dishes that my mom is unable to cook.
And because we eat not only Chinese food but also other styles' food such as Japanese food, I will add style lables for each dish such as "Taiwan Style", "Japanese Style" and so on.

Steamed Pork Slices with Glutinous Rice Flour

You can see the yellow one, the minced pork with corn, and green one, Chao vegetable. A small piece of stewed spareribs with brown sauce lay on top right. Only one dish is new of today's lunch, which is "steamed pork with glutinous rice flour".##CONTINUE##
This dish has a distinctive appearance because the glutinous rice flour should be covered over meat. The white grain you can see is glutinous rice which play a main role of flour.
The glutinous rice is undoubtedly a genuine Chinese food. There are a lot of food made by it, such as "Zongzi", "Tangyuan", the most famous traditional Chinese food, and others less famous but common food. (It means so many food wait for my introduction:p) This rice is a special sort of rice and would become sticky after heat. That's why call it "glutinous rice". Because of its sticky feature, over-eating may cause indigestion.

Except glutinous rice, other seasonings are important in flour, too. Very many combinations of seasonings are used and bring many flavor on this dish. However, the five-spice powder is most often used in every combinations. If you want to find out the best steamed pork flour, an abundant experience is indispensable. I can image how hard to cook this dish for my forefathers because of complex procedure. I couldn't have change to usually eat "Steamed Pork Slices with Glutinous Rice Flour" if I was born in ancient time. Fortunately, we have instant flour package nowadays. My mom just marinates meat and covers ready-made flour. Then put it into TATUNG steamed cooker. Finally, I can eat a savory Steamed Pork Slices with Glutinous Rice Flour.

In addition, before steaming, you can wrap the meat with lotus leaves for traditional Chinese style, or put some sweet potato under the meat for Taiwan style, or substitute pumpkin for sweet potato. It's more complicated but more delicious.

Bamboo Shoot with Sliced Pork

The bamboo shoot with sliced pork is above, the middle of the stewed spareribs with brown sauce I introduced before, following fired vegetable, and the roe lay on the right.
##CONTINUE##
Every Taiwan child has heard of this dish even if he or she has never eaten. It's a funny extended meaning. We usually use "meat"instead of "pork" for Chinese food name and put the word "fry" into the major and miner material names. We also cut the meat into strips. So for example of directed translation, the "Chao bamboo shoot with sliced pork" would become a "bamboo shoot stir-fries meat strips". Besides, earlier on, Chinese teacher often punished students by slashing their palms(fingers) with bamboo pole. So use your imagination. A punishment that a bamboo is swung over some fingers(meat strips) becomes a name of a dish. This course is so popular but not because people like it; instead children hate it. :p

I have never seen foreigners eat bamboo shoot. Of course, I have never seen the bamboo except in Asia. The bamboo shoot tastes crisp and a little sweet. Sometimes we eat just with salad scream while finding the superior one, in order to enjoy its original flavor, juicy and tasty. It is also very suitable material for soup. The essence of bamboo shoot could be enhanced by simmering. Even though flavored with soy sauce, its fresh and juicy characteristic can make a dish more delicious.

Chao Eggplant with Hogs' Intestine

Here are three dished in my lunch: Zha(pan-fried) pork, Jian(deep-fried) tofu, and Chao(stir-fried) eggplant with hogs' intestine. OK! I know the strangest one for foreigners is the fried eggplant with hogs' intestine. So let's talk about it. You can see it on the top of picture.
##CONTINUE##
For Chinese food, eating eggplant and hog's intestine is very common. But I also eat the combination of them in my first time. My mother must buy the Chao hogs' intestine outside and then process it with eggplant. She, a career woman, sometimes prepared meals with ready-made dishes from whether overleft or outside to save her time.

In my impression, the eggplant I saw overseas is indeed round like an egg. I have eaten baked eggplant with cheese in western-style restaurant before. A ball-shape eggplant was cut half and covered cheese. I can't forget its savor smell so far. However our eggplant is long slender form like a cucumber and we cut it to block shape to cook. And the eggplant would become soft and meshed. Even many Chinese hate the eggplant. But I love meshed eggplant.

After hogs' diaphragm I introduced, the intestine of hog is the second organ of pigs I talk about. You can see how we like to eat the internal organ. Maybe foreigners regard them as offal but their nutrition and special taste lead them to become common materials. Furthermore, the large intestine of hogs is most popular organ in Chinese food. Many of famous dished are made by large intestine. Its chewing feeling is elastic but the superior one should be dissolved after chewing a few times. The best way you can figure out is tasting by yourself. :)

Fried Pork with Dried Tofu

I love all soy food. We think the dried tofu is different from tofu, like tofu skin. Although they are made by the same material - soy bean, their shapes are unlike at all whether for looking or eating. You mush be amazed at what many varieties of tofu. The dried tofu is indeed made by dehydrating tofu, but I consider from cooking aspect the dried tofu should be classified to its own sort. It is because dried tofu is harder and more flavorful than normal tofu. It is hard so that can be cut to many shape, such as slice or stick. And its structure easily let seasoning into inside. We Chinese call this feature "flavor-entered". Furthermore, the number of dried tofu dishes are never less than that of tofu dishes.
In Dasi, one town of Taiwan, the residents even developed a special variety of dried tofu, called Dasi dried tofu, which can be treated (eaten) as a snack.
Of course, my mom fried dried tofu and pork with soy sauce and sometimes with chili. It is appropriate to eat with rice. Chinese says this dish is "rice-swallowed", means people can eat lot of rice with it.

Fried Eggs with Soy Sauce

There are two kinds of fried vegetable, black pepper beef with onion, and fried eggs with soy sauce in today's lunch. Yes! My favorite fried eggs with soy sauce again. My mom would add this course to supply my lunch if dishes are not enough. Especially it is very simple and quick to deal with it.

Most time to fried eggs is just to put salt, not soy sauce. Mixing with soy sauce is our private dish. It is so easy that I could do it when I was a elementary school student. Sometimes we visited my uncle Yang when I was young, he would cook lots of fried eggs because he raised many chickens.
Another story for soy sauce is interesting. The importance of this sauce for Chinese is just similar to curry for Indian, cheese for European, and catchup for American (I guess:p). We almost cook everything with it. You can see my meals before; soy sauce is unavoidable everyday. Like cheese, there are so many sorts of it by difference of ingredient, consistency, brewing process and so on. It is mainly made by soy bean, but also made by fish or Kombu (a kind of kelp) especially in Japan. Because of brewing by salt, it tastes salty and comes little sweet like savoring wine. Hence when cooking, we usually replace salt with soy sauce. However, a bad soy sauce tastes only salty but not sweet. So the dish must fail, too.

Steamed Salted Duck's Eggs

Because busy on Wednesday, I just took terrible pictures. You wouldn't want to see the fragmentary dishes. Anyway, I bring my lunch made by Wednesday overleft today and can still introduce my mom's works. So today's target I choose is more acceptable for foreigners.

As you can see on top right of my lunch box, this dish mixed yellow and white looks like a strange steamed egg. Chinese originally have a traditional steamed eggs. But my mom's way is a little different. She puts more ground pork and less water. Hence, it becomes drier than traditional steamed eggs.
In addition, salted duck's eggs are used instead of chicken egg. It tastes salty and has special flavor. The chicken egg has no savor like it. Furthermore, my mom uses soft boiled egg. The yolk is solid and white is liquid. Then put ground prok and a little salt to enhance the taste.
Finally, after steamed in TATUNG steamed cooker, a savory steamed salted duck's egg with ground pork comes out! And the steamed way is unusual for home dish, but usual for restaurant. It requests much works so that you can see that the most dishes I posted are fried, not steamed. However, the invention of TATUNG steamed cooker makes steaming convenient.

Fried Bacon with Silver Sprout

This is my lunch today. You can see fried vegetable, fried egg with soy sauce, and fried bacon with mungbean sprout. In fact, it is a good opportunity to explain significance of soy sauce for Chinese because I love the fried egg with soy sauce so much. However, I prepare to talk about it someday else when I have enough time. Now I want to talk about the other special dish.

We usually name mungbean sprout "silver sprout" because it looks shiny and glossy just like silver. And it sounds more expensive than cheap mungbean. A noble name is able to rise its value. The mungbean sprout which can grow up every place and every season is easily gotten. We even experimented with it in natural course while I was a elementary school student.
We eat soybean sprout, too. It is similar to mungbean sprout. But I doesn't like it because of too stony. In other words, the soybean sprout is hardly cook to soft and tastes raw.
Moreover, mungbean can mix with a lot of materials. Its chewing feeling, cheap cost, and appearance let mungbean sprout become a common dish in the menu of bargain restaurants.

Fried Pork with Corn

I brought my lunch from home today as usual. It's an opportunity to introduce some rest of yesterday's lunch because today's lunch was made from Sunday's leftovers. Except stewed spareribs with brown sauce, there are fish stick, fried cabbage and fried pork with corn. So today, I just talk about my second favorite, fried pork with corn.

The word "Fry" seems not to be able to explain the Chinese cooking way because more than three sorts of cooking in hot oil translate into the same word, all called "fry". The first one and also most common one, fast cooking with big fire by turning over and over, is called "Chao". The key point is "turn over". The second one, cooking with much oil such as fried chicken and French fries, is called "Zha". The key is much oil usage. The third sort, cooking without much oil and without turning over, is called "Jian". In this way, oil can not cover the material and material is heated on one side. You can say that the "Jian" is the middle level between "Chao" and "Zha". If you use too much oil which covers the material, it's "Zha". And if you move and turn the material over and over, it's "Chao".
For this dish, my mom "Chao" pork and corn with soy sauce. You must ask me why soy sauce again. That's a long story. In addition, it is also very important for the size and shape of sliced pork. However, I have no time to explain now. Any way, we have a lot of tomorrows :p

Stewed Spareribs with Brown Sauce

Because I came home late and just ate leftovers, I could not take the beautiful pictures in time for today's dishes. So I chose my favorite one to introduce. And another excuse is that it's simpler to introduce one dish than all dishes. Maybe I would continue this pattern from now on: only choose the best one or the most special one a day, until I have enough time. Or please give some advices.

Stewing something with brown sauce is the common method for Chinese food. Even in some dishes, this cooking method is just one step of whole cooking procedure. And Chinese also cook fish, beef, chicken in this way. It can be regarded as one of the most important methods in Chinese food. Maybe foreigners do not like it, but we have not only "Sweet and Sour" way.
Yes! You may guess it. The main material is soy sauce, Chinese favorite. It's the reason why it looks brown. We stew spareribs with soy sauce, sugar and other flavoring. Although this is common dish in Chinese families, it doesn't mean everyone can easy prepare the delicious and good-looking stewed spareribs. Not only the quality of material but also heating control, sequence, and flavoring process are indispensable. I am so lucky to have a great mother on cooking.

Saturday Lunch

There are four dishes this noon. They just satisfied us. I'll try my best to introduce them one by one:

1> The diaphragm of hog:
Our Chinese eat almost every parts of pig. The pork as you see is the diaphragm muscles located between the 12th ribs and the 14th ribs. Because the muscle connects with the membrane, it tastes more flexible not like other general pork. The feeling of chewing is similar a bit to chewing the part adhered to the bone when eating spareribs. We usually eat them with garlic soy sauce.


2> Edible tree fungus flavored shredder pork:
There are two main materials. One is general pork, (unnecessarily explain!) and the other is black jelly ear fungus, which scientific name is Auricularia Auricula. It tastes like the harder jelly. It's so difficult to describe. Moreover, they was fried with silk ginger.


3> Fried sweet potato leaves with thousand-year-old egg
Sweet potato (yam bean) leaves were so common in Taiwan farm home in early age. According to the statement from my grand mother, these leaves was so cheap that the farmer fed pigs with them. However nowadays, people want to eat healthfully, so eat every easily available vegetables. Because modern people don't like to eat simply but creatively, they add the thousand-year-old egg to flavor. The thousand-year-old egg is a sort of preserved egg. The old Chinese preserved the duck egg with tea under special soil. Many foreigners hate it because it smells like urine. When I was young, my parent also kid me and said it was made by horse urine.


4> Fried Chinese cabbage
This the simplest dish of four. My mom just sliced the cabbage and fried it with less garlic.

Finally, I may introduce our rice later.


In conclusion, it is so very very difficult to explain Chinese food. So many materials even have no name in English or never be ate by foreigners. I spend about 4 hours to look for their names and post here. I am so tired and not sure it's a good idea to keep posting my home dishes.

The First Step

I live in Taiwan and have a super mother who can cook a lot of foods. Furthermore there are so many varieties of food in Taiwan. I try to introduce them in my poor English. Then you can see what we usually eat and taste them, too, when you visit Taiwan or China.