Category: foooood

taiwan breakfasts

speaking of eggs, breakfasts in taiwan are so good… though sometimes a little tricky. often the food is served in roadside stalls or makeshift shops with a couple of tables on the sidewalk, and you order by telling the auntie or uncle what you’d like to eat, or ticking the boxes in a sheet of paper that is fully written in chinese. 😅 my vocabulary for food is severely lacking, but with a bit of pointing and google translate, we got around to trying quite a few different things. it helps that we’re not very picky and could probably eat anything!

some of the meals we had included egg pancakes with different fillings, turnip cake, youtiao (fried dough sticks), scallion pancakes, warm soy milk, youtiao wrapped in rice and egg, a kind of youtiao sandwich, glutinous meatballs…

i think the scallion pancakes (with cheese) were probably our #1 though. the taiwanese version of them is a bit different from the chinese one, as here they are more fluffed up and not crispy, but they were delicious still.

we had so many of these that it’s amazing i’m not sick of them yet! 😅

century eggs

i don’t know why we never bothered to try century eggs while we lived in china. truth be told, i feel like we missed out on exploring a lot of chinese food while we lived there… and now, 15 years later, i regret not having made a more comprehensive study of it. anyway, clay-preserved duck eggs were something we’d never tasted before — but they are awesome, despite the strange look!

the eggs are coated in alkaline clay for some time, to let it dry around the egg and let the chemistry do its magic. it gives them this funky color, with a smooth, gooey center.

in taiwan, they’re eaten alongside tofu, accompanied by some sauce. i could not get enough and ordered some every time they were available as a side dish. definitely made up for lost time!

foooood in taiwan

old school taiwanese carton boxes

when you’re in a place where everything is new, your senses become attuned to all kinds of things that you normally don’t pay much attention to — manhole covers, street signs, the shape of benches, or all the different fauna and flora.

in taiwan, i was kind of fascinated by the old-school designs of the produce boxes we sometimes found in streets, piled in corners or stacked behind food stalls, each with the drawing of its contents. illustrated bitter gourds, cabbage, tomatoes….

i don’t know if the contents actually match the drawings, but they’re still beautiful to look at and admire their variety.

Post author By ana
Post date April 11, 2023
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foooood in taiwan

mochi

mochi are sticky rice flour sweets with different fillings. everyone knows them from japan, but they’re a big thing in taiwan as well, with different flavors and variations. there was a stall next to our airbnb in taipei that did them right there on the street, and they were amazing — especially the one with ground peanut inside, though the red bean was also pretty good.

our favorites though were given to us by a local postcrosser, and had fresh strawberries inside. 😍 so, so good!

i have some sticky rice flour at home, so i think i might try my hand at making them one day!

Post author By ana
Post date April 10, 2023
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foooood in taiwan

bubble tea <3

ah, the land of bubble tea! 😍 once you find the perfect balance of ice, sweetness and chewiness, it’s probably one of the best drinks out there. and to think we’ve been suspicious of the british all this time for putting milk in their tea… maybe they were missing the bubbles!

in taiwan, tea and drinks shops are everywhere, and so we’ve been having it as much of it as the fancy strikes. our airbnb in taipei has both a 50岚 and a tenren nearby, and they’re both really good. you order what you want, and the people prepare it for you in a couple of minutes — making the tea, mixing the right amount of sugar and ice, adding the little tapioca balls and shaking everything before pouring it into a cup. i’ve almost managed to make the whole order in chinese, but there always seems to be something tripping me… last time i got through almost to the end, only for the lady to ask me what size of tapioca pearls did i want. this is the issue with chinese: vocabulary acquisition is ridiculously time-consuming, and i can really feel that my vocabulary is not up to snuff.

anyway, it’s worth the learning curve for the joy that is walking around while sipping and chewing slightly sweet bubble tea on a hot day. and sometimes, it doesn’t even need to have tea inside — our favorite variation of the drink was just milk with brown sugar pearls, topped with burnt sugar, with taro flavor being a close second.

the only bad thing about it is all the disposable cups and plastic straws. most of the cups now are made of a kind of cardboard (since taiwan banned single-use plastic cups last year) but the straws are still problematic. if i stayed longer, i’d definitely consider a reusable cup, but they’re kind of useless back home… :( oh well.