Taiwan 1.0

Location: Taipei, Taiwan

         So, this spring break I went to Taiwan with my brother and sister-in-law to visit her side of the family. This experience of going out of the country was a life changing trip culturally and culinarily. There were many new things that I had experienced in just one week. It would have been better for us to stay longer in order to explore more of the culinary culture of the culture. What is going to be posted is regarding the many foods that I had consumed and some of the places that we had went.

On the long flight over to Taiwan from LA, the airplane food was quite decent. For dinner, I ate a teriyaki style chicken w/ rice. It was actually really good but the chicken had an interesting texture. The extra stuff that came along with the chicken were outstandings. It was some sort of sesame bean curd which had shitake slices. Then for breakfast I had seafood porridge. Even though it is just airplane food, I thought it was a good start to the trip.

This is the first thing that I ate on Taiwan soil. It was some type of sushi roll thing from the 7/11. I'm was not quite sure what is was from the picture but it might have been some shrimp or something. The insides consisted of a creamy mayo mix with some unknown acidity. It was delicious.

Sesame Bean Curd w/ chile.
This was the dinner meal after a long and very wet, cold, and windy day at the gold mine. There was a small and narrow marketplace with many vendors and small restaurants. As we walked along, we went into this small establishment and went upstairs to an extension dining room. The type of restaurant is definitely different from the States. We sat on tiny plastic stools but what was to come was delicious. The bean curd above was very tasty with salty sesame with a firm texture. Along with this meal (no other photos), there were salted tea eggs (delicious with weird texture for an egg), fresh tofu, simple sauteed veggies, and a beef noodle soup with flat noodles.

 Peanut candy roll- this vendor had a thin rice patty/pancake and placed the shaved peanut candy ontop with cilantro and taro and mango ice cream.

 This was the rolled rice paper roll with cilantro, candied peanut and ice creams. This was very tasty with the peanut candy but what was interesting was the cilantro. It had acted as a savory/umami component which balanced with the sweetness of the taro ice cream. 

Sausage Vendor- There were numerous sausage vendors in the marketplace. Even though I could not understand the labels, they had looked similar to the Chinese style lup cheong.

 Mango "mochi" balls- After dinner and the peanut rolls, we stopped to get another dessert of "mochi" like dumplings in a red bean broth. What made it have the mochi consistency may have been rice flour.

Red bean soup w/ taro and mango dumplings
This soup was very subtle with limited depth but the textures of the dumplings went nice with the small chunks of red bean in the soup.

Shilin Night Market- Apparently the largest night market in Taiwan. Unfortunately, there was limited variation with many vendors selling similar things. After the dinner at the first marketplace, we went to go eat more.

The Stall of the Oyster Omelete
The oyster omelete was quite interesting due to the gelatinous rice noodle slipped inside with creamy oysters, fried egg and some type of brown sauce.

Taipei Yakitori My brother decided to pick up some octopus, chicken, and shitake. These were I think glazed in a spicy soy mixture. These yakitori were quite delectable in that there was the flavor of the protein and then the overwhelming spice of the glaze.

Well, that was just the first day in Taipei,Taiwan. Unfortunately I was very full, but fortunately this was only the beginning of a culinary adventure.