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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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.
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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.
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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.