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.)

Thai iced tea

This is a cart I bought some very good tea from. It reminded me a bit of the carts you see all over India selling chai, with a big pot of simmering tea and various containers of God knows what. He strained the tea through a muslin bag and mixed it with the thick milk. It was different from the thai tea I usually get outside of Thailand because it wasn't so sweet - although he added sugar, the condensed milk was unsweetened and I have to admit I preferred it. Again, very nice about the photo - hard to imagine why everyone was so patient with annoying tourist photo requests.

Spring Rolls

These were some little spring rolls I saw on the street right after my salad. Served very very hot with some sweet spicy sour sauce and a little toothpick to eat it with, the one I bought was really great. And only 5 baht, even for a tourist.

Papaya salad 2

Here are some more shots of the papaya salad. Note the long green beans in the salad - they taste a little bit bitter but add a contrasting flavor and texture to the salad. I should mention that Thai people, though aggressive with their business seem to be almost universally friendly and accommodating when there is no money involved. Everyone I asked about a photo (and this is in Bangkok) said yes and smiled for my shot. This lady and the guy to the right who sold juice were very nice.

thailand - Green Papaya salad 1

I'm back from Thailand. Unfortunately, I don't have as many photos as I would like - I feel slightly more paranoid about my camera in Thailand because of all the people grabbing at me to get my attention and sell me something. Not as relaxing as I would have liked, but of course I had good food. Above you see some green papaya salad I bought on the street. This little beauty along with some sugary orange juice concoction from the cart next door cost me about 40 baht. This salad can be ok outside of Thailand, but never seems to be anything other than great in Thailand. The truly sublime stuff has crab meet along with the fiery chili, lots of lime, fish sauce, sweet tomatoes, peanuts, and the little brine shrimp that show up in so much Thai food. While this salad was great, it wasn't my favorite - they used the dry chili instead of my preferred fresh, and didn't have the crab. By the way, 2 things I learned in thai this trip: prik = chili and alloi = delicious. Mei (with a rising tone, i think) seems to be the question word, so to ask if something is delicious you say Alloi mei?

papaya milk.

I'm not generally a huge fan of milk. But I like papaya and the combination can be nice. I think papaya is supposed to have enzymes that help digest protein, so I like to drink it when I eat meat. Note the huge bottle of water - I go through at least one of those every evening. Clearly, I believe in the value of hydration.

Shuei jiao

So, here you have an over exposed shot of my dumplings, along with the pot of boiling shuei jiao and the table on the street where the girl makes them at lightning speed. Of course she also handles the money and doesn't wash her hands much (occasionally she'll dip 'em in a bucket of water, no soap) but I figure the dip in the boiling water kills most things. So far, so good, touch wood. It's worth the risk, imho.

tsong yo bing

Here is my Beijing tsong yo bing. You can see that I couldn't wait and took a bite.

shuei jiao and beijing tsong yo bing

This was my lunch today. Tsong yo bing is popular in taipei, but the taiwanese style is more of a flat pancake, filled with some kind of green onions and is usually very oily. This place near my work does something different - a coil of hollow bread, just a little crispy on the outside with a soft, slightly oily inside filled with chinese chives. It's really good - slightly salty with a good onion flavor. I like it with chili sauce or by itself. It's 30 Nt.

I also had shuei jiao (I'm not bothering with pinyin, just writing it like I think it sounds, btw) from the place I like near my work. These are the standard water dumplings, homemade with a pork mixture shoved in a wrapper of dough and boiled in a huge pot. The ground pork is mixed with green onions, and sometimes a little black pepper, ginger, and soy sauce. They usually throw some sesame oil on top before they serve it to keep it from sticking to the box. I usually dip it in a soysauce, rice vinegar mixture which adds a nice salty sour sweet flavor. It's 50 NT (maybe 1.75 us) so it's a bit pricey, but worth it.

The end result, 10 minutes later

Well, that was good. If I'm a good boy, I will be regular with this. Future posts should look at my neighborhood traditional market, filled with amazing fruit and vegetables, along with chickens being slaughtered and pigs being butchered in front of you. I also have an excellent fried rice place and a fish soup place in my hood that I want to post about. I'm going to thailand soon, so that provide something. And I will be in a nightmarket tonight, so maybe I will add more later.

My dinner, sunday june 3rd

closeups

Dinner Time with foot

Liang Mian on the left. Mian Xian on the right. My foot on the bottom. Yum.

mian xian shop

This is the shop. Maybe you can see the menu and the prices. They also have tian bu la, which is their transliteration of tempura and literally means "sweet, not spicy." In taiwan, the tempura is different, usually involving a fish mash inside a fried coating. i like it - though i prefer the japanese version.

mian xian

big pot of mian xian. Note the pot of intestines middle left and the cilantro and cash in the upper left.

rebirth

So, I'm going to start posting again, at Charlie's suggestion, with a focus on the food I'm eating. Today I will be discussing Mian Xian (sounds more like mien shienne) and Liang Mian that I buy in my neighborhood. These are noodle dishes, they are both very delicious, and at 60 NT (under 2 us dollars) for both with all you can drink cheap tea, a great bargain. I ate them tonight and it was great.

I like the Uh Ah Mian Xian. Uh Ah is the onomatopoeic taiwanese word for oyster, and this mien xian has oysters along with fine noodles and a thick broth. Usually they sprinkle a little cilantro on top and I occasionally add a bit of chili, though it's not neccesary. I always have to ask them to omit the pig intestine they like to add - I tried it once and found it a bit rubbery with a fairly foul flavor - not for me. Without them, the mian xian has a great, smokey oniony flavor with meaty chunks of oyster and an herbal note from the cilantro. It is wonderful on a cold, wet night, but still good on a hot day.

Liang Mian means "cool noodles" and is perfect for a hot day. It's very simple, with fairly standard noodles topped with sliced cucumber and a slightly sweet, nutty sauce that I think is Miso though it may also have some peanuts involved. I never add chili to this because the flavor is pretty delicate, and I can't say I enjoy it as much as the mian xian, but I do like it and order it to balance the strong flavors in the mian xian. The crispy cucumbers and the soft but firm noodles are a nice contrast.

I'll try to get those pics up soon.