It's all about food (Part I)

While retracing my Taiwanese roots is important, in the end, it really is ALL about the food. 

In a way, the two are one and the same since such a large part of Taiwanese culture is the food. We love to eat the food. We love talking about the food. We love discovering new food. 

Just the fact that there's at least one daily television show (that I know of) dedicated to exploring all the popular places/foods to eat in Taiwan and it's been running for at least three years and going strong should give you some idea.

Beef noodle soup
My uncle talked about this place's beef noodle soup for weeks before I finally got to try it first hand. He compared every beef noodle soup we had to this place and none even came close.
I should explain that there are many different variations of beef noodle soup, depending on the type of noodles and the way you cook the beef soup.
I'm more partial to the knife-shaving noodles (when made/cooked properly) because it's more chewy. The picture on the left is the hand-stretched variety, which is really good too.
As for soups, I like the clear, more subtle-flavoured stock instead of the more intensely-flavoured red stock (they both have actual names, I just don't know how to translate it properly).

Anyways, the place was AMAZING! Their noodles was perfectly cooked that it still have the al dante consistency. The soup was just right, didn't overpower the beef, didn't leave you thirsty afterwards. Most importantly, the beef. The beef is the ultimate taste. Whether or not you have to chew a million times before swallowing. This beef just came apart in my mouth, releasing its flavours. My mouth is starting to water even as I type. It was just THAT good. It may be the best noodles I've had so far.

I also had the braised beef wrap. Delicious! I even brought some home to have as breakfast the next day. The fact that it was still pretty delicious after a day of sitting in the fridge was a true sign of its food goodness.
 
If it wasn't for the fact that this place was far from my house and I got sick the very last week of the trip, I would have surely visited it again and had more of this delicious delicious food.

McDonald's 
Part of me feels resentful that I spent two perfectly good I-could-have-eaten-elsewhere-far-more-delicious-and-more-Taiwanese breakfasts at Mickey D's. But alas, it was right by the subway exit closest to home and they were having a special breakfast deal. Sausage McMuffin combo for about $1 Cdn.
While I'm glad they finally put away the old Ronald McDonald statue that haunted my nightmares as a kid, the new one is even creepier (left). I mean, he's beckoning you to sit beside him. That grin, the vacant eyes, the way the arm is draped across the back of the seat. What kid/person in their right mind would want to sit next to him?!?!?! He looks like a clown with lewd-ish/pedophilic tendencies. Arg! I'm getting goosebumps looking at this picture.

On to happier images.

Deep-fried Stinky Tofu
Not as stinky as I remembered but still delicious. I had to share (gah!) this batch with 3 other people so I could only have one piece :(  There were tons of food already so I didn't order any more. This is what I get for trying to cram all the delicious food available from the Shilin nightmarket into one night. Which in retrospect, was the correct decision since I didn't get a chance to return.

Back in my glory days, I could have eaten 2-3 servings of stinky tofu all by myself. And a large bubble-tea.

More deliciousness from the nightmarket.

Left: Oyster omelet with egg. A classic.
Right: Squid stew. Vermicelli is optional. Yummm.

Look at that food I didn't get to try (Mango slushie, bubble tea, takoyakis, fried chicken filet...) Darn!

I guess it'll have to wait until next time.

Ranina ranina


FYI: "Ranina ranina" is not the chinese name of this crab. I had such a hard time finding its name in english that I figured I'd put in its scientific name too, since it's what finally led me to its name in english.

How it all started was this soup (left). If I were a comic character, I would have stars in my eyes and seafood dancing in the background after trying this soup. Western soup-wise, I tend to like creamy soups over broths, but this was like seafood concentrate. All the best parts of seafood without the funky seafood taste (I'm not explaining myself well, but that's the best I can do).

When my mom described the sea creature used to make the soup, what I understood was basically, "A crab with a tail...umm... kind of like a lobster, but not quite a lobster." You can imagine my confusion. So I decided to try to google this elusive crab-lobster hybrid. Yeah, typing "crab-lobster hybrid" did not get me anywhere.

And since my mom only knew its nickname (in taiwanese, no less!) I was pretty much left with nothing. In the end, I scoured seafood menus, googling everything that might be this mysterious creature. Finally I found it, which lead me to its scientific name, which led me to its english name -> Red Frog Crab.

Personally, I like "crab-lobster hybrid" better.

Stinky Tofu

There are so many different types of stinky tofu: steamed, grilled, and deep-fried (my fav, of course).
Here it is, grilled. I had the classic - special sauce with peanut powder and parsley.You can also have it with kimchi.
The trick to eating grilled stinky tofu is the skewers. You have to hold it like chopsticks, but not with too much force because you'll end up slicing right through the tofu and the bottom half will fall off.
It requires careful coordination and dexterity to eat one.

Lastly, we were in a town famous for their tofu (where we also got the grilled stinky tofu above) when I discovered this little novelty - tofu ice cream.
I wasn't too sure about it. Past experience with tofu-based meat products has left fear in my heart. But my mom already bought it so I figured, why not, I could always spit it out (discreetly of course) if it ended up tasting like... well... tofu.
It actually turned out much better than my expectations. No weird aftertastes and still somewhat creamy. Okay, the texture was slightly off, but I think it's more because of the sesame rather than the tofu. It's one of those I'm-glad-I-tried-it-but-the-real-thing-is-still-better items.