t's

One of the most popular tshirts here has a red apple on it and says "Algebra is for lovers"

Nian gao

So here is my nian gao. I hope you can see the shape, which I enjoy. It's a little bit noodle like, but more solid and chewy from the sticky rice. The mushu at this place is fresh and delicious. You can see in the front that I got some taiwanese style pickled cucumbers on the side prepared with chili, garlic, and sesame oil alongside some sweet vinegar. It's crunchy and a nice counterpoint to the chewy nian gao.

Fried beef noodles

And here are the fried noodles with beef. On this day, my boss ate this but kindly allowed me to take a photo. You can see cabbage and onions and carrots which give it a nice flavor along with the beef.

fresh noodles.

They make their own noodles at this place. Basically that means that they keep this big hunk of dough under a towel until they need it (no pun intended). After kneading it, they cut it into a big pot of boiling water to cook briefly before they whisk it away to the back to be fried. You can see a flying piece of noodle near this guys curved blade if you look closely. The noodles are slightly uneven, which gives a texture i quite like.

Here are the small plates of side dishes that are available at this place. I usually get a kale type thing that has been sauted with garlic and chili and something sweet. They always have a variety of green things along with some tofu, noodles, and maybe a few pig's blood related items.

Food near my new job

So, I have a new job now and a few new places to choose from for dinner. The job provides free lunch for me, but it's pretty simple stuff. Maybe I will get some photos up of that soon. But today we are looking at one of the two places I like that I have discovered. This one has excellent, homemade noodles and Nian Gao. Nian Gao is made from sticky rice flour which is steamed into cakes and cut into oblong shapes. It is famous in a Korean style, but I get it here with mushu (mushrooms and pork).

Merry me!

i can't resist. someone was asking his girlfriend to merry him by dancing with cheerleaders and mascots during the break. it was a little embarassing to see him dance, but his future wife probably thought it was sweet for him to humiliate himself for her. hope you can see the sign clearly.

Coors girls

One of the joys of Taiwanese baseball is cheap beer brought to you by pretty girls. Here, Michael and I pose with our beer girls, one of whom seems to have a halo. I abhor coors generally, but what the hell.

companeros

Note my ridiculous yellow noise makers and suave black shirt from Thailand (perfectly matching the black and yellow coloring of the victorious elephants). Seated next to me are Michael (teacher from New Jersey of cuban descent - gave me his family's recipe for black beans), Dan (from Canada), and his girlfriend Rebecca (from Taiwan).

bows

At the end of the game, the losing team (losers!) applauded and bowed to their fans to thank them for their support. I was sitting with the losers as my yellow team enjoyed their triumph.

my baseball lunch box

Because the fried tofu wasn't enough, I also ate this "lunch box" at the game. It's pai gu fan (pork cutlet rice). On the left you can see a yellow thing (pickled radish - tastes sweet) next to a hard boiled egg (brown because they cook it in some stock with spices). On the right are pieces of sea weed tied in knots with carrots (salty - not the best version of this I've had), next to gray bamboo shoots (they have an interesting vegetal flavor) and a kind of pickled cabbage in the back (salty, this stuff shows up a lot. you might remember it on my gua bao).

drums and flags

without seeing my video, it's hard to understand the cacophonous nature of sound at a taiwanese baseball game. I bought stupid plastic horns that can be used to bang together or yell into like a bull horn or make terrible trumpet sounds with. The taiko drum and the marching band drum combine with the plastic noise makers to make a tremendous racket, over which the distorted mike pumps crazy cheers in mandarin. These pics show one of the drummers and the flag waver for the brother elephants. By the way, in the color sympolism here, yellow can sometimes mean perverted, which just adds to my enjoyment of the "think yellow" signs.

baseball 2

so, I made it to another baseball game a couple of weekends ago. My team (brother elephants) playing the La New Bears (who i don't like). Unlike the last game, it was a pitchers battle - we won 2-1. This is a picture of me (looking awfully scruffy) eating fried tofu on a stick covered with pickled cabage. yum.

oops

Sorry. Took a little break there. I haven't been eating anything new lately - just the same old stuff. But I have some news. I may have a new job where i will make more $$$ for less work, paid vacations, and no weekends in a beautiful school near to my home. It seems to be better in every way, but we'll see if it works out. I hope so.

I had a fun experience last weekend. I went with my buddy Dan to see a baseball game. Baseball is the most popular sport in Taiwan, and although most of the taiwanese people I've asked think the quality is too crappy, I had a great time. Admission is around $9 us and the stadium is more than half empty so sitting in the front row, or anywhere else is no problem . The game i saw had plenty of action (the pitchers suck) and at least one home run per inning for the first few innings. Taiwan beer (which is cheap swill, but not undrinkable) costs about $1.50 us, and is brought to your sear by beautiful girls in short skirts. The fans of the 2 teams sit on opposite sides, and when their team is at bat they chant songs in chinese (frequently to the tune of Popeye the sailor man) and play drums (a taiko style drum and a western marching band drum, in the case of the game we went to) along with those noise maker sticks and deep horns. It was a lot of fun. The teams we saw were the La New Bears and the Sinon Bulls. The bears won by one run. My favorite team in taiwan is the Brother Elephants - On the back of my baseball cap it says "We are all Brothers." I realize this doesn't have anything to do with food. just fyi, they don't have American ball park food. I ate sweet popcorn (not good), a fried chicken cutlet (ok), and some salty soup with grn. onion, cilantro, and pork balls (pretty good but a little too salty). After the game i went to a pub to watch arsenal win and had fish and chips (good, but no malt vinegar). sadly, i forgot my camera for the day - next time.

Speaking of drums and horns, the park where i go running is also the practice space for some Dragon dancers - I see them if I run in the afternoon. It's great to run with that throbbing drumming and resonant horn echoing around the park. And so cool to see them practicing the dance - without the dragon it looks the same as a kung fu form, with kicks and jumps and punches (which would move the thing around I suppose). All the kids doing it are covered in tattoos - my understanding is that young gangsters attach themselves to temples here and do this kind of thing. Great.

Korean Kimchee fried rice

Sometimes I need some extra variety at work. This pao tsai chao fan (kimchee fried rice) is really excellent. Not fiery hot, but with a good amount of kimchee flavor mixed in. The nori on top adds a nice salty-ness. You can see the extra kimchee in the back right of the box. In front of that is bean sprouts in sesame oil. And in front of that is seaweed and carrots. It tastes a little sweet and a little sour - I think it is sort of pickled. In the back is a basic dashi soup with big chunks of seaweed floating in it. They also give you some ginseng tea with the meal. After I eat this, I always feel very full but very good.

wonton soup

Since I've been here, I have learned how to make a fair wonton. But my home made version can't match this stuff I buy near my work (at the same place as the beijing tsong yo bing.) It contains at least three kinds of onion, with a funkyness that smells a little bit like lamb (I find this odor inexplicable.) The broth is rich and deep, with a nice stock flavor. The wontons are full of flavorfull meat, and they are generous with the wontons. You can have this with noodles added, but why bother. The wontons are the point, and they are delicious. Whenever I get this at work, at least one of my female coworkers will exclaim "hao xiang!" (good smell!) and look around to find the source and ask me where I got it. This place is a little expensive by local standards (this soup costs $2 us!!!) so others seldom go. But I love it.

tu two u gang

This is a fish soup that I quite like. It is a thick soup, with egg and probably corn starch thickening the broth. Mixed into that are pieces of cilantro, nice chunks of fried fish, and usually a little of the chili paste I like to add. It's not overwhelming, but there is a soft sweeness mixed with the herbal cilantro flavor and the flavor of the fried white fleshed fish that makes this an enjoyable meal, especially when the weather is a little bit cooler than it is now.

stinky tofu

So this is the fried version of stinky tofu (cho dofu). It is sold in little stands, seemingly in every neighborhood in Taiwan. You can usually smell it before you see it - it smells a little bit like old, foul gym socks. But when you eat it the stinkyness is just one of many strong flavors, alongside chili paste, sweet/sour pickled cabbage, minced garlic and/or ginger, and salty soy sauce. My favorite is the fried, though the bbq is ok. I don't usually like the stewed version - though that was Richard's favorite. A little too stinky for me. We used to get an extremely stinky version of fried tofu at work that would make the whole office smell awful. Everyone seemed to like it better and it was more expensive, but again, too stinky for me. I do like this version though. At night after 10 or so, the only food available is fried, so this is often a late night option. Like fried rice or congee, this seems like another example of not wasting old food that became a favorite as time went by.

My local fried rice

Fried rice is a pretty basic staple in chinese food. It's a good way to use up leftover rice and it tastes great. The place I get it here is always busy and always good. I think the key is a well seasoned wok on a very high flame. They bang the hell out of it too - Lots of banging and clanging as they stir the rice. The ingredients are fairly simple - you can see the one I get just has green onion, shrimp, and egg along with salt and possibly msg. But the high heat must carmelize the rice or some such thing as the flavor has a subtle smoky-ness. I always get some vegetable along with my rice - on this day it was fried cabbage, which they prepare simply with sweet, salty brine shrimp. Chili paste is involved and I get a delicious meal.

Chinese Class

This week I have started back into a chinese class with a private teacher. We meet every monday, tuesday, and friday for an hour each time. I really think this is going to help my chinese, especially my speaking and listening skills which are currently very weak. I don't understand everything my teacher says, but I like struggling to understand. I am doing homework every night, trying to write sentences with any new vocabulary I pick up and writing a short diary. It feels good to be getting back into my studies in a more serious way again.

Bing (ice)

If I haven't mentioned it before, the summers here are monstrously hot. Because of this, Taiwanese people have created a lot of delicious drinks and ices. This is one of the iced deserts you can find in most neighborhoods here. Basically, it's shaved ice, but whereas in the US shaved ice consists of just ice and sugary, artificially colored syrup, Taiwanese people bring the Chinese focus on texture and contrasting flavors to their ice. This particular ice has some sour apple green jelly (i usually get sour mango, ching ren guo, which literally translates as lovers' fruit, I think), black jelly (which has a subtle flavor almost like tea or coffee or chocolate, but is softer and isn't really any of those) and those strange little pearl things, which don't really have much flavor but add interesting texture. I may try to post a photo of one of the shops soon - there are usually a great many options including various flavors of jelly, various starchy creations (like these pearls, tang yuen (gooey rice balls), and other tapioca based things), along with fruit in syrup and other unidentified items. In Keelung, I used to get a simple version with taro soaked in simple syrup and an unsweetened custard. This was nice and not very sweet - I enjoyed putting a little lemon juice on it to give it a sour touch. Recently, near my work I had this with tang yuen (entirely textural), taro, and sour plums (the syrup gave the whole thing a nice flavor - for me the sour flavor is important). On a hot day this can be really good.

gua bao

I may have mentioned before that I'm not a big fan of the Taiwanese take on western bread. I have yet to have anything here that was better than okay, and most of what I have eaten is terrible. The same cannot be said of chinese style bread, which is great. This is a gua bao, sort of a Chinese version of a hamburger. It is wrapped in a steamed bun, the chewy, slightly sweet, breadlike thing that they do very well here. Inside, they put a big hunk of stewed fatty pork. Yum. They smear some chopped, pickled, salty cabbage on that, then throw cilantro and sweet, ground up peanuts on that. Peanuts and cilantro are an excellent combination, especially combined with the richness of the fatty pork, the salty goodness of the pickled cabbage, and the spongey base of the steamed bun. To top it of, I usually throw some Taiwanese chili sauce on top, because that's just how I roll. I get a bowl of some kind of soup and one of these little numbers, and I'm very happy.

Cold beverages 1

Because Taiwan can be so hot, there are an amazing variety of drinks available. And 7-eleven, center of life, has half the store devoted to drinks. Above, top left is cantaloupe juice. I am increasingly fond of cantaloupe and I often get this sweetened (only 20% juice) punch. They also have some cantaloupe sodas, which can be too sweet. The next one, honey herbal jelly, has a soft honey flavor with little bits of jelly floating in it. Taiwanese people seem to enjoy texture in their drinks, and while it takes a little getting used to, I'm getting used to it. The jelly has a delicate, slightly herbal flavor with just a hint of something like menthol that makes your mouth feel a little bit cool. The last beverage here is almond milk, which I love. Many stores have stands selling a version of the stuff and the smell is hard to resist. Unfortunately, I often find the stand version has more odor than flavor. This store bought stuff has a perfume-y flavor that is especially good hot in the winter (7eleven is happy to nuke it for you), but also good cold in summer.

Vietnamese Food - Keelung

Here are some shots from my favorite vietnamese place in Keelung. It's just a stand, at the end of the textile section of the market, with uncomfortable stools and a cd stand next door that keeps the same taiwanese song on repeat for the entire night, and has had that same song on repeat for going on a year, and my god, it drives me crazy, though I think it may be teaching me taiwanese. But I go there because the food is delicious and the old vietnamese lady who runs it with her husband is nice and usually understands my poor mandarin. Anyway, I get pretty basic stuff there. You can see the spring roll above, a rice flour skin with bbq pork, rice vermicelli noodles, basil leaves, and green onion inside. My favorite part is the sauce, which is a sweet brown bean sauce with peanuts, chili, and this sour-sweet pickled carrot radish concoction. You can also see it on my huh fen on the left. Those are fat rice noodles (I'm particularly fond of the) that you find in thai rahd nahr. This dish is served cool, with the noodles, slices of imitation turkey, actual pork preserved in it's own skin with black peppercorns and flavors I can only describe as french, peanuts, chili, more of the sweet-sour pickled radish-carrot concoction, chopped mint and basil, fried shallots, bean sprouts, and a sauce that is a mixture of lime juice, fish sauce, and sugar. On a hot day, this "cold" dish really hits the spot. I tried to create it at home, but, no.

Mohinga!

This is the mohinga I get in the burmese neighborhood near the nan shi jao mrt station. You can't see all of the details, so let me explain. It is an incredibly rich and thick fish broth with sweet little onions, rice noodles, boiled eggs, cilantro, and a cracker made of deep fried yellow dal, which adds wonderful texture. The richness of the flavor comes from whatever else they do to the broth as they liquify some unknown fish. You can see some chili in the right hand pic - that went in there too. It's a great mix of south asian and southeast asian flavors, and is the national dish of Burma, or Myanmar, or whatever. I usually order some burmese tea, which is the same as thai tea (orange, spiced with some unidentified spice - I've heard tamarind seed - and mixed with condensed milk) as far as I can tell. These pics were taken last friday - I went with my friend Lyon. He ordered 2 bowls of mohinga to go, and told me he ate one for dinner and couldn't resist eating the second. And I'm not surprised - it's the kind of thing you will eat even if you aren't hungry.

Crap!

The other night I noticed I had a very large moth in my apartment. How odd, let me just get a shoe, oh it banged into my arm and fell on the WAIT A MINUTE! THAT'S NOT A MOTH, THAT'S A GOD DAMNED COCKROACH! Needless to say, I pounded the hell out of it with my shoe and took a shower, scrubbing my infected arm thoroughly. I sometimes forget that those fuckers have wings - I wish that I could forget that forever.

curse of the golden flower

I just saw this movie. I was very impressed visually. Anyone who appreciates impressionism, and could imagine it animated with a psychedelic chinese palate would enjoy the first 2/3 of the movie. Zhang Yi Mou is a painter, and his composition and use of color are always amazing. Although the last third is also visually stunning, I would only recommend it to fans of over the top tragedy and wholesale slaughter. It's pretty bloody and pretty much everyone dies. Chinese people really seem to enjoy tragedy. Like Hero, I sometimes feel like the martial arts is thrown in to attract viewers, but it doesn't seem like Zhang cares very much, other than as an excuse to use more color and set up another tableau.

my shopping at trad. mrkt.

Here is a pic of all the stuff I was able to buy at the market for under 500 nt. Laundry detergent, 2 sponges, 2 potatoes, 2 jhong tse, I huge carrot, 3 bananas, 1 package mushrooms, 1 chinese eggplant, 1 massive mango, and one papaya milk. And I had change in my pocket.

jhong tse 2

Close up of my dumplings. The one on the left with the peanuts (and an egg you can't see) is northern style. The one on the right is southern style - slightly more expesive with mushroom and chestnut.

Jhong tse

I will probably make some factual errors below - I'm remembering the best that I can.

This was just before dragon boat festival (last week) so of course there were lots of jhong tse. These are traditional rice dumplings that I may have written about before. The story behind this holiday involves a patriotic man who was ignored by his king. In despair at seeing his country go down the tubes, he threw himself into a river. In his memory, on this day people have races in dragon boats, which I guess are symbolically racing to rescue him. They also eat these steamed dumplings, which have sticky rice wrapped in a bamboo leaf. Symbolically, I think they are for the fish to eat instead of the man. There are two types of jhong tse in Taiwan, Northern and southern style, the difference being that in the northern the rice is fried first whereas in the southern it is not. Inside the dumplings you will usually find some pork, and some combination of peanuts, shitake mushroom, egg, chestnut, and maybe something else. I find them pretty delicious - note the best ones are usually someone's homemade recipe made by grandma's hands, though these were very good as well.

fruit stand

Here is some of the fruit at the market. The selection here is really outstanding, and the quality is consistently good. On this day at this stand I bought a huge mango that I struggled to get down in one sitting. A huge breakfast for me.

traditional street market Banchiao

About 5 minutes from my apt., I have a traditional market, which consists of a covered street with a lot of stands. Here is a shot of some of the vegetables that I can get there. Communication isn't always easy - these guys don't get too much of my mandarin, and their taiwanese accents are pretty heavy for me. They don't speak too much mandarin here, actually, and I probably know about 10 words in taiwanese. But I get nice stuff at a good price.

hakka soup and tang yuan

The other thing I always get at this place is the tang yuan (soup balls). The come in this rich pork broth with lots of greenery and bits of pork floating in it. Shallots and cilantro give you little hits of flavor. Unfortunately, I don't have a good shot of the balls, but they have a unique, soft chewy consistancy, and the filling is more pork with various flavors. The joy of these is the contrast in textures - The chewy tang yuan with a solid pork filling contrasted with the crispy greens and the silky broth makes it a joy to consume.

hakka style fried noodles

I really like these noodles, and they are very cheap (35NT) because this is a student area. You can see the chinese chives on the left - they are soaked in a sweet soy sauce. Mixed in the noodles are bits of cabbage and fried shallots, for a nice base of flavor.. The piece of pork in here is not huge, but is tender and delicious. The noodles themselves, having been fried with the shallot and cabbage, have a surprisingly deep flavor, salty, oniony, sweet and delicious.

hakka place 1

The Hakka are a group of people in China who have been displaced from their homeland, so they are spread throughout china (and taiwan). This is a restaurant I like to go to near the main train station in taipei. It's decorated with wood and old style chinese stuff - nice!

Mochi ice cream

In the nightmarket, the idea is to walk around and graze on various things. On this night I wasn't that hungry, so in addition to the sausage I only had a mango mochi ice cream. Mochi is a gooey concoction mad from glutinous rice flour. I'm a fan - it's chewy and yet soft. And this particular mochi is filled with creamy ice cream, which makes a nice contrast, especially when You let it warm up a little so the ice cream is soft but still cold. I'm not a huge sweets guy, but I do like these. If you look closely at the green sign, you might be able to see the "Mike" flavor. My hope is that this is supposed to me milk flavor, but, you know, I'm not going to taste it.

sausages and dentistry

Shi Lin night market is famoust for their large sausages. I have a class of teenagers who do nothing but joke about the large sausages available there. The one I had on this particular rainy night was black pepper flavor, and it was pretty good, spicy and a little sweet.

In related news (and what could be more related to food than dentistry?), I went to the dentist today and found a little something. I have to go on monday for some more work - joy. Nice to be insured, though.

More Guo tieh and soup

Some more shots - the black pieces in the soup are the pig blood. I often see the signs for pig blood soup here, and while I appreciate people's willingness not to waste parts of an animal they kill, I'm just too American for that.

Guo Tieh and suan la tang

When I first arrived here, this is something I ate quite a bit of, guo tieh (pot stickers) and suan la tang (hot and sour soup). It's ubiquitous and cheap here - there are several chains that sell it and many independent stands have it too. It's cheap, easy to find food, kind of like a hamburger in the usa. The food pictured is from a chain near my apartment. You can see the 2 sauces they give with it - a mildly spicy sauce and a semi sweet soy sauce. I seldom use them, preferring a mix of soy sauce, rice vinegar, and a dash of sesame oil. And I generally add something similar to my soup. I like the soup from this place because it has a pepperiness and a strong, smoky onion flavor - I notice at least one kind of green onion along with white onions and shallots. Like a lot of the hot and sour soup here, this has the congealed pig blood in it - basically a dark brown strip with the consistency of tofu and little flavor other than a vague iron-y-ness. Still, I don't love it and have to avoid thinking about it or even looking at it while I eat it.

last shots

Here's a few more shots of the stand. They were happy to let me have a photo, but quickly covered the pot of boiling water, I don't know why. Maybe to hide the secret recipe. Note the chinese looking layout to the stand - it wouldn't be out of place here in Taiwan.

where I ate

This stand was right by a very busy road, and the air was filled with tuk tuk fumes and the roar of loud trucks and buses. I meant to get more of it in the pic on the left. In the pic on the right, you can see the remains of my tea, along with the water they wanted me to buy and my beloved spice rack. I'm especially fond of the chili in vinegar.

Thai Chinese soup

Walking on this busy street I saw something that reminded me of Taiwan - a woman sitting in front of a big bowl of a pork green onion mixture making dumplings! Of course I haven't seen this yellow style in Taiwan, and the very yellow noodles are obviously made from the same dough. I'm curious about the Chinese in Thailand - these guys certainly looked more chinese than malay or thai, but different from the people in Taiwan. I wonder where most of them come from. I was also very aware of the number of Indians in Thailand on this trip. Apparently, they make up the bulk of the tourists, and there is a very large community in Bangkok and elsewhere.

The soup was wonderful with a rich pork broth, at least two kinds of onions, and cilantro. Along with the dumplings and noodles there was barbecued pork and rich greens (I may have added a little bit of chili as well). The white round is a slice of daikon, which I'm not the biggest fan of. But that didn't stop this from being a fantastic dinner (along with the tea, spring roll, and papaya salad I had already eaten.)