Taiwanese Street Food (Part II)

Breakfast
Part of a complete Taiwanese breakfast is fried dough (I said "complete," not healthy). Turning a deaf ear to warnings about long lines, Mike and I went to Fu Hang Dou Jiang, the breakfast spot in Taipei. We waited about an hour, a quick 60 minutes when the line constantly moves and you have a Starbucks coffee in hand.

Essentially, there's sweet and savory. The sweet is a long piece of deep-fried dough the same shape as a churro, wrapped in sesame flat bread and dunked in sweet soy milk. To be honest, it's a lot of bread and if I'm going to have fried dough, I'd prefer it covered in cinnamon and sugar. To my surprise, I liked the savory better. It's a tasty bowl of soy milk curdled into tofu. Okay, maybe that doesn't sound terribly appetizing, but it was really well seasoned and I liked the floating pieces of fried dough on top.

Dinner
We had all kinds of street food items one evening: (clockwise in photo below) oyster omelet, ba wan (a mega dumpling of sorts), noodles, bubble tea and gua bao (a Taiwanese hamburger). My favorites: the tea and the burger. I know, the tea (aka, boba) is kind of a cop-out, but it's really good and it's different from ones you'd try at home (or in Shanghai). Taiwan is the birthplace of bobas, and they do them right, with soft, sweet tapioca balls swimming in milk tea.

The burger was fantastic: braised pork belly (minus the fat for me), pickled Chinese cabbage and powdered peanuts wrapped in a steamed bun. I loved the fusion of different flavors and textures. Every bite is salty, sour and sweet; soft, tender and crunchy. 

I know what I'm having for dinner the next time I'm in town.

Fatty Tuesday: Taiwanese Street Food (Part I)

Now I get it, now I understand the love for street food in Taipei!

It was a little challenging to get it all in between family meals, but we did our best. In fact, I think we did so well that I'm going to have to make this a two-parter. Here are some of the most interesting (and delicious) items we tried during our short trip to Taiwan -- Part I.

Grilled rice cakes
Have you ever tried mochi ice cream? Usually served for dessert after sushi, it's ice cream wrapped in a layer of rice that's been pounded into a paste. Imagine taking a big, rectangular piece of that paste, putting it on a stick, and grilling it until it softens and forms a crispy outer layer.

Once grilled to perfection, it's removed from the fire and topped with a squirt of your choice of sauce. Sauces come in a variety of flavors; we tried brown sugar and Thai curry. Both were liquidy and subtly sweet, and curiously tasted just as described.

If I lived in Taipei, I'd make it a goal of mine to try every sauce. 

Sausage-wrapped sausage 
Yes, a sausage wrapped in another sausage. It's a salty, sweet Chinese sausage that forgoes the bun for rice stuffed in a sausage casing (see the "sausages" in the foreground?).

Once both sausages are ready, the grillmaster slits the rice sausage down its middle and inserts the meat one, adding various toppings (such as kimchi and pickled vegetables) and sweet and/or spicy sauce(s).

Ice cream burrito
How could I not try this one? It's like two of my favorite things rolled into one. The "chef" first shaves peanut candy from a large block (see bottom left of photo) and places those shavings onto a thin Chinese crepe of sorts. He then adds two scoops of taro root ice cream and tops it all off with cilantro before wrapping it up like a burrito.

I won't lie, this one was a bit odd -- the cilantro, I just didn't get. But it was worth a try! 

We found these all of these goodies in the Ximen neighborhood of Taipei, not far from the subway station there. 

Off to Taiwan

Before we even knew China was a possibility, Mike and I traveled to Taiwan in the fall of 2011 after we had just gotten engaged. It was time to meet the extended family that lived half way around the world. The trip was great! Besides the fact that I couldn't utter a word of Chinese to anyone...

Well, Grandma isn't happy that we haven't gone back to Taipei to visit her since moving to Shanghai. Hopefully we'll make it up to her with this weekend trip. The tourist spots, thankfully, have been checked off the list so we can focus our efforts on the food -- and family, of course. Wish me luck as my new Chinese skills are put to the real test!

At the National Palace Museum in November 2011