Chimu - April 9, 2011

Outside the realm of the ubiquitous pollo a la brasa, what is one distinctive ingredient of the Peruvian cuisine? For example, for Japanese, one can easily tip off wasabi and raw fish; and for Italian, garlic and tomatoes. Mr. Kanda, of the famed Kanda, Tokyo, had once said that he did not think it was possible to cook real Japanese food outside of Japan, owing to the Japanese food’s heavy reliance on the freshness and the particularity of ingredients. In essence, Mr. Kanda is correct; that is why Torrisi Italian Specialty calls itself Italian-American rather than Italian. How many ingredients can a cuisine miss before it loses its authenticity and identity and becomes something else, a fusion? Imagine, how French will a “French” cuisine be without butter? Not impossible per se, but not very French, either: imagine a Dover sole meunière without butter. For the Peruvian cuisine, the vital ingredient – the distinctive and unique flavor - is aji amarillo. Despite being brandished as “hot,” “fiery” and “spicy,” the actual flavor of this yellow pepper is surprisingly fruity and bright (don’t believe all that you hear). A truly Peruvian restaurant must have aji amarillo and, with which, be able to make the delicious creamy, yellow sauce.

Casa de las Empanadas (and other empanadas) - November 24, 2010

Take out shop in Cordoba

Empanadas, you mean those greasy, grotesquely bright orange fried dumplings, sitting stale on some countertop and looking desolately unhealthy and unappetizing? Yes, I had seen them although I might have instinctively and rightly avoided them. When an empanada joint came into existence in the neighborhood, I watched it in disbelief, and when it went out of existence, I nodded in relief.

That was the pre-Argentina days.

Marinated Crab (Ganjang Gejang), Seoul, September 10, 2010

Have you ever heard of the "Drunken Shrimp"? Probably not.  It is a famous Shanghainese dish - yes, I am aware that you have not heard of it if you are based in the U.S. because the Chinese food here is plainly terrible or, terrifying, take your pick - made of raw shrimps dunk in a marinade made of rice wine and soy sauce and whatever other ingredients, the secret of which the chefs would probably kill to protect.  Going along the crustacean family tree, there is also the Drunken Crab.  Being alcohol-intolerant, I was initially concerned that by the end of the meal, there would also be a Drunken Zombie on the floor, but the alcohol mysteriously evaporates during the process so that I can contentedly split a dish of drunken shrimp and another of drunken crabs without an incident.  This was the state of affairs in the world of marinated crabs, that was, until I had come upon Ganjang Gejang.

Soy Milk Noodle (Kongguksu), September 11, 2010

After five weeks in China, my body was yearning for something healthy. Under normal circumstances, kongguksu would not have got a second glance from me; as a matter of fact, it did not get one of the multi-colored flags, which I used to mark the "must-eats" in my Seoul guidebook. However, as I reviewed my plan of attack on the capital of Korea, I found myself re-reading the description of this curious kongguksu. According to my guidebook, the soup was made of soy milk - no meat, fish or vegetables, while the noodle itself was made of whatever kind of flour with, what else, some soy powder - a sheer nightmare for anyone allergic to soy.  Hm...why would anyone want to consume so much soy? I guess it is good for menopause. Is this a preparation for some doomsday scenario where the only edible product left on earth will be soy?  Imagine, rice in rice milk, cheese in yogurt, goat cheese in goat milk... OK, OK, I am stretching it because the noodles are not made solely from soy, but surely you can understand;  the word, "redundant," does not have any positive meaning, does it? Mystery has its appeal:  Ever fallen for that mysterious someone because you just cannot figure out that person?  Fine, I would give it a try.

Bai Cuisine in Dali

Dali is the land of the Bai people. Again, I cannot and will not lecture you on the characteristics of the Bais, but you know how to use the internet (otherwise, how did you find me?). Dali is distressingly touristy; the town is totally infested with cheap-in-quality-but-high-in price souvenir shops (I don’t really buy the story that the Bais call a high price out of respect for the customer and as an invitation for further bargaining – I mean, how can it be so if they immediately dropped the price by 1/3 without any words from me? Am I not respected?), tourist-trap restaurants serving coffee, cheesecakes (Really, do you have to have them while you are in China? Why are you here?), fish and chips (I suppose it is simple enough to make, minus the malt vinegar), and buried among these are the locals (yes, they are there – just hard to find). In a town like this, how do you find good restaurants? – Of course, ask the locals. You can start with your hotel, but if they recommend their own restaurants, ignore and move on to the next self-respecting local with taste buds instead of a calculator.

Dai Cuisine in Kunming (Part 2 of 2)

Once I like something, I cannot just have it once. For the second round of Dai food, I came to傣家塞 (Dai Jia Zhai), located in a food court on Baoshan Jie. The waiters here were all very young and seem not to know anything about their own dishes, and the only recommendation they could give was “Oh, this is very typical.” Not deterred, I relied on an expert – my unfailing instinct for good food.

Dai Cuisine in Kunming (Part 1 of 2)

Who are the Dai people? They are one of the many ethnic groups living in Yunnan Province in China. In Chinese, Dai is written as “傣,” which closely resembles 泰, the letter meaning Thai; therefore, not surprisingly, Dai people seem to have originally come from Thailand. Beyond this tiny bit of anthropology/ethnology from me, you will just have to go to you-know-where, the venerable Wikipedia: Although my alma mater has forbidden the use of Wikipedia, but go for it, you have my explicit permission to do so.

With basically no reference point beyond a mere preconception that it was probably something akin to Thai food, I walked into 傣家竹楼 (Dai Jia Zhu Lo) in Kunming, after meandering in the side streets with a whining stomach, because apparently the Kunminites have long decided that street names did not need to be enlightening to anyone, including the locals (they had no idea when I asked for directions) and, God forbid, the foreigners… The waitresses were wearing yellow ethnic costumes, which looked the yellow version of the Singapore Airline’s Balmain uniform. The restaurant was quickly filling up at 6PM on a Saturday, so I was fortunate to have landed a seat on the balcony overlooking a not particularly pretty street.

Paomo in Xian (Part 2 of 2)

春発生 (Chun Fa Sheng) is another place to try the paomo, but not for the traditional lamb base. Here, the famous paomo is hulu paomo. Hulu is a type of melon actually, which you will find dried up and carved into an ornament as a lucky charm. However, hulu here does not mean melon but intestine: Hulu is the auspicious word or sound for intestine. I will join the frowning competition; I personally cannot verify, as I have no idea in which language hulu actually means intestine, but I assume it is at least more “elegant” than saying, “Give me a bowl of the intestine soup,” not that anyone who orders cares much.

You have to repeat the same crumbling process and do some people watching. See my crumbs? These are still not as fine as to be desired by the local crumbling bureau, but I am learning. After I attain enough calluses on my finger tips, I am sure I would finally win their approval.

There were two men sitting at the same table – not locals based on how big their crumbs were, tourists…what can you do? – and they were rightly rejected by the waitress when they asked for the soup. Ha!

Then you waive down one of the much harassed and highly reluctant waitresses to get your bowl filled with the hulu soup. How do you waive down such a grumpy looking waitress? – Be Chinese and be strong. You don’t have to leave a tip, you know? I assume you are not one of those discriminatory and hypocritical pseudo gourmet: Can anyone explain to me why the fillet is superior to stomach, hearts or the colon? The animal is already dead, OK? The very least you can do is to show some respect and treat all parts equally. As for myself, I practice total equality: I eat all kinds of animals and all parts of the body. If someone is going to eat me, I would appreciate it if whoever it is would eat all of me. Don’t you agree? It would be quite insulting otherwise.

I have again digressed. At 春発生, you do not get the pickled garlic but a pot of chili is already on the table. The intestines at 春発生 is tender, not fatty – all right, I did order the “lean” version, but you have to give credit to how thoroughly they removed the fat. Seeing the fat in the intestines makes me want to go straight to the gym: Do you think your intestines are healthier than what you are eating? The intestine has been stewed for so long that it is not tough at all, but very soft. The soup is richly white and very mild – no, I do not mean boring or bland – but just rich in flavor, smooth in texture and overall not “too much.” The soup has so much depth in it, and it is not from MSG. Rich means multi-layered goodness, not necessarily fat, which is a concept a little hard to get across in the U.S. Combined with my now expertly crumbled bread (after an admonition by the waitress), I think I can blend in as a Xianese now.

The two men, now finally re-crumbled their breads, are also enjoying the delicious hulu paomo. Everyone is happy.


Restaurant Info:
春発生 (Chun Fa Sheng): 碑林区南院門25号（Nanyuanmen No. 25）

Paomo in Xian (Part 1 of 2)

What is exactly paomo? Paomao is a popular, local specialty in Xian, China, and originally a Muslim dish. There are many specialized restaurants selling paomo, especially the yangrou paomo, the lamb paomo, in the Muslim Quarter. Lamb in China? You may think: Do not forget that the Muslims do not eat pork and Mongols also favor lamb. Xian has a longstanding Muslim community, and thus, the Muslim Quarter – it feels like Chinatown in New York, but the common tongue, the Mandarin, somehow gets you further than English in Chinatown: I suppose the Chinese tenacity will dominate the world eventually. I know I am dragging it and you just want to know what paomo is. However, an interesting dish deserves a bit of a lead-in, don’t you think? After all, a dish is a slice of living history – layered by the experience of the forbearers (“Experience is the name given to mistakes” – Oscar Wilde), the wisdom and the whim of the previous generations.

In order to explain what a paomo is, I should start from the beginning – the preparation – because this is a very involved action, as opposed to passively reacting to whatever is served in front of you. When you order a yangrou paomo, you usually get to pick a big or a small bowl – the small is usually enough even for a starving person because it is intensely filling, and I will explain why soon. At 老米家 (Lao Mi Jia), a small bowl would get you two white round disks – about 4-5 inch in diameter x 2/3 inch in thickness of bread, slightly brown in a pattern created from baking in the oven.

Now, this “bread” can be very big – there are special stores, which sell them, and they have some the sizes of miniature sun dials. I would hate to have to carry these miniature sun dials anywhere… This “bread” has gone through some seriously tough kneading, that is how to make good chewy manto (steamed bread), too, and then baked. These staples were meant to last in the old days prior to the refrigerator, OK? After all the abuse, the dough turns into a dense, a very dense, and yet somewhat moist white carbohydrate monster. Even imagining this “bread” has exhausted me momentarily.

What you must do with this bread is to crumble it: No, it is not simple at all – crumbling is a lot of real “work.” It is like Korean BBQ: Why am I cooking my own food in a restaurant? The crumbling is akin to grilling the meat: The restaurant has done the seasoning, but you are in charge of the ultimate texture of the dish, a final touch, which will decide your fate of whether your food will be a success or a total failure. It is a serious business, let me tell you, especially when the “bread” you are dealing with is this abused, hardened, meant-to-last thing. A very important tip: Do not slack and do not cheat – you must crumble them fine and well. Otherwise, the waitress may just not take your sorry mess and will tell you to redo it. You do not want such an ignominious treatment. I am not threatening you: It is true, I have seen it and been told it. There are a whole family chatting and scolding over the crumbling of breads, an old man seriously concentrating on it as if his remaining, dwindling years depended on it, and a couple romanticizing and joking over the crumbling… It makes an interesting people watch and it helps the process – you need the entertainment because crumbling takes time!

Now, once you have crumbled to your heart’s satisfaction, although your waitress would probably tell you to do it again, you call the waitress and she would carry the bowl of crumbled bread over to the kitchen. The kitchen people, in charge of a caldron of hot, bubbling, rich soup of lamb, would ladle out the soup over your crumbled bread along with some 粉糸 (fen si), clear noodles made from the starch of mung beans (see how useful I can be?).



At 老米家, your yangrou paomo will return to you accompanied by a small dish of hot pepper sauce and pickled garlic. Embrace the garlic and stop being a snob. The pickled garlic is a nice and necessary complement for the lamb. Finally, you are ready to dig in.


老米家’s soup has a couple of slices of tender lamb, and make sure you enjoy the paomo as it is first, then you do the chili and the garlic versions – a little variety is good, you know, don’t be such a bore. When you have tasted the pure version – the soup rich and opaque with the goodness of the lamb, you get a piece of the sweet pickled garlic to cleanse your palette, so to speak, but well, not much chance of that when you deal with garlic, I suppose. The cilantro sprinkled on top, not just sitting there looking pretty, also adds contrast to the soup and the lamb. Pay some attention to the 粉糸, the clear noodles you see – one dangling over that big piece of lamb – because it has soaked up the delicious lamb stock and is perfectly chewy, not soggy. A self-respecting restaurant will not serve it soggy; as pasta needs to be al dente.

Now the bread that you have worked on to crumble has been soaking up the beautiful soup all this time, right? This is exactly why crumbling is so critical: The smaller it is, the faster it soaks up. Therefore, if you have a chunk of bread – by the way, it won’t float, it sinks – it will just be like a rock in a pond. The locals will just look at you and shake their heads, “Foreigners…” You sip some of the soup and take in a few of the crumbs in at the same time and chew and enjoy. After this, you can just say, “ahhhh.” All your hard work has been rewarded: The crumbs still retain some chewiness – I told you, they are meant to last – but has now been softened and mellowed by the soup. Your heart also is softened: Warm and fuzzy feeling after several mouthfuls and a full-blown carbo food coma after the whole bowl.

Restaurant Info:

老米家 (Lao Mi Jia): 碑林区西羊市127号 ( Located in the Muslim Quarter on Xiyang Shi, No. 127.) I think, but just ask anyone. The people at the hotel told me only the name, and I just stumbled on it by myself: It must have been fate.

Vegan and vegetarian Cuisine in Taiwan (Part 4 of 4)

My last humble learning experience was at 玥飲軒 (yue-ying-shuen), which was actually a tea salon. We originally wanted to have tea here, but was just too intrigued by their culinary offerings: Milk tea hot pot, 客家 (ke-jia, one of the diverse Taiwanese ethnicities) 擂茶 (this ke-jia specialty is made of about a dozen different ingredients – barley, sesame, toasted rice, various beans – all ground together in a bowl with green tea, quite restorative and healthy, not to mention delicious) hot pot and vegetarian lion’s head (a.k.a. meat balls). So, we came back for dinner the next day to try out these very dishes.

The milk tea hot pot turned out to be the famous Taiwanese tapioca milk tea hot pot with black tapioca pearls. It was not sweet, don’t worry, and it was not bad, really, just totally befuddling. The fried dough, yo-tiao, dipped in the milk tea was actually delicious. But as the pot cooled, the soup (did I mention the importance of the soup base?) really turned into tapioca milk tea and it was just, well, weird. It is worth a try, once in a lifetime, you know, I must say.

Tapioca Milk Tea Hot Pot

客家擂茶hot pot, compared to the tapioca milk tea, was just uninteresting: The seeds and beans of the客家擂added depth to the soup, so it was more like soy milk hot pot than anything else. Therefore, even as it cooled, I had no problem finishing this one.

客家擂茶 Hot Pot

Curried lion’s head was the best dish of the night in terms of tastes. Its curry sauce was complex with spice and yet mild and creamy with coconut milk and just went down into my stomach really fast with the tea rice (just rice cooked with tea). The “meat balls” also had a perfect tenderness and complemented the curry sauce. Vegetarian or vegan or whatnot, it was a delicious dish.

Curried Lion’s Head

One word about service, again: The service was slow (the boy) and sulky (the girl). They say you get more energy, animalistic energy anyway, from eating meat. So, is the slow service due to the lack of meat? However, this is a tea salon and they have other omnivore dishes…so, this theory fails. On the other hand, what about sulkiness? Tea is supposed to calm the mind and give you time for introspection. Perhaps the girl needs to sit herself down and brew a pot of tea, huh? The good news is that they are looking to hire some new people, so you may have better luck than we did.

Restaurant Info:
玥飲軒:　 台北巿溫洲街80號　(02)83693963　
http://www.yys95.netfirms.com/

Vegan and vegetarian Cuisine in Taiwan (Part 3 of 4)

My rematch with vegan food was at the food court of a department store at a place called可楽鍋 (ke-le-guo). For those who understand Chinese, the word, “可楽,” must have already sent a red, flashing warning sign (or have at least awaken a few readers): It means cola, yes, as in Coca-Cola. Regrettably, this review is not about the fascinating cola hot pot in which the cola is supposed to soften the meat, but about the “meat” in one of their more conventional tomato-basil hot pot (the place actually features international hot pots – other varieties include Thai curry, which we also tried, and German sauerkraut, which we did not try). Thealleged “meat” were supposedly made of the stalks of shiitake mushrooms. How the beguiling fungus metamorphosizes into “meat,” I do not know. What I know is that it was “meat” and it was a stringy, healthy, lean red meat. Just see for yourself (if not taste for yourself): It is brown and it has the fiber and it has the taste.

No, I am not kidding you: These are the real pictures. You want more proof? See if these look like short ribs to you! I can tell you that these were softer and juicier than the previous “meat,” just like some good, tender short ribs… Crazy country, is Taiwan, I am telling you…

My Quest in Taiwan will continue tomorrow… Stay tuned.

Restaurant Info:

可楽鍋: Located in the Dayeh Takashimaya. http://www.dayeh-takashimaya.com.tw/food/food.html

Vegan and vegetarian Cuisine in Taiwan (Part 2 of 4)

My omnivore self was put to test for the second time at 衆流素食 (zhong-liou-xu-shi). We ordered a kind of cactus with passion fruit sauce, squid sashimi, braised fish with 樹子 (xu-tsu, type of indigenous fruits, which are bit like the leftover soybean after making soy sauce, which is used in many cooking – yes, I know you have no idea what I am talking about; this blog is not for the uninitiated), stewed dried bamboo shoot with 香椿 (xian-chuang), a crazy Taiwanese herb which I will explain more below, soup dumplings with 糸瓜 (si-gua, a type of melon) and sautéed vegetables. Now, we are talking about serious and quite inventive vegan cuisine (and I will skip the more mundane items, such as the sautéed vegetables), and let me start from the first wondrous eye-opener: The squid sashimi.

Squid Sashimi in a Melon Bowl and Cactus with Passion Fruit Sauce

The squid was made of konnyaku, supposedly. It had the perfect texture of raw squid, but the wonder did not cease here. This sashimi of allegedly fake squid had a squid taste. It really did. You don’t believe me? OK, I am willing to consider that maybe I was just shocked into believing by the supreme reality of the appearance and texture. However, my mouth assures you that it had a fishy taste.

The second wonder was the stewed, dried bamboo shoots with 香椿.

Stewed Dried Bamboo Shoot with 香椿

I took a scoop and put it in my mouth and I was totally dumbfounded: Why do I taste lamb? This herb, 香椿, confirmed by my vegetarian host so that I was not high on something else as to mistake its taste, had a lamby taste! The reason that I actually disliked the dish was because it was too lamby… believe it or not. My host told me that the first time she tried it in a fried rice, her rice was so lamby and gamey that she almost suspected that the pan used to fry the rice was actually used to cook lamb before her dish (but she were dining in a vegan restaurant). So, in Taiwan, a.k.a. “the treasure island”, you can grow herbs which taste just like lamb (and a very lamby lamb at that). Crazy island…

The third wonder of the day was the braised fish with樹子.

Very simply put, it was “fish.” Do I need to say more? The “fish” was probably made of taro (I am new to this game of guessing what my “fish” is made of, OK?) and it had seaweed wrapped around each slice of the “fish fillet.” My amateur educated guess would be that this piece of seaweed gives the “fish” its “fishiness, although this does not explain the squid, sorry, the fake squid. Once this “fish” was stewed with this indigenous Taiwanese fruit (no, it is not fishy fruit; one lamby herb is enough for one country, no?), which has a very strong flavor and umami (this word has got to be standard culinary word by now, right?), you have a beautiful braised fish. Do not frown until you have eaten it: the taro even gave it the fiberish texture of fish, if you know what I mean?

One word on the service: Our waitress, looking more porcine than vegan, together with a manager-looking woman with a heart not quite Buddhist, hurried us through the meal since the kitchen was closing swiftly at 8:45PM. It is healthy to be a vegan, no?

My Quest in Taiwan will continue tomorrow… Stay tuned.

Restaurant Info:

衆流素食:　 台北市龍江路102號1樓 （02-2516-5757 ）
http://www.wewi.com.tw/chongliu/

Vegan and Vegetarian Cuisine in Taiwan (Part 1 of 4)

As a die-hard omnivore, I have an inbred suspicion toward the word, “vegan.” Although my brain understands that some of my favorite foods can be quite easily vegan – chocolates, baguette, salads… Well, I have to admit that my imagination dries up there: if I started counting mango, papaya, dragon fruits, etc., it would be kind of cheating, wouldn’t it? However, what little did I know about the world of Taiwanese veganism! I am not talking about soy milk, tapioca pearls, grass jelly, taro pearls, sweet soft tofu and the endless variations of shaved ice, although on which I will happily substitute for three months, or longer, if you will allow me to include dairy products so that I can have my naisu bread (奶酥麺包 – an addictive concoction of butter and powdered milk, used as filling of bread, such as “the bomb,” in its most glorious form) as well. I digress. Here, I am talking about real and actual dishes, cuisines, creations or whatever you may call them, some of which are more real than Madame Tussauds’ wax figures (well, they are tacky anyway).

My first cognizant encounter of vegetarian food in Taiwan was at 佰菇園 (baiguyuen – a garden of hundred mushrooms – but please do not rely on my pinying): I went there to humor my vegetarian hosts who were graceful enough to suffer my free board for two weeks and also to bolster my vegetable intake as my body was getting worried to live on mostly carbohydrate. This restaurant was a part of a hot pot chain focused on literally a hundred kinds of mushrooms domestic to Taiwan and foreign. Of course, I had to pick the most enticing mushroom on the menu – the monkey head – among other kinds which my memory just could not retain. The key to a good hot pot, if you do not know, is the soup base: The ingredients otherwise can be mediocre (of course, the better the ingredients, the better the end product, what do you expect?) but the hot pot will still come out fine. Their soup was made of Chinese herbs and mushrooms, yet it did not have the typical medicinal and bitter taste of such herbs; in fact, it was quite delicious. Into this soup, we dumped in mushrooms, vegetables, konnyaku (a kind of jelly-like food, with no calories but lots of fiber, made from an indigenous root in Japan), tofu, and various vegan balls.* These vegan balls would have fooled me if we had not ordered a vegetarian course. Nevertheless, the hurdle of this first round seemed too low because, after all, we were having a hot pot of mushrooms, not exactly a full course vegan extravaganza. I have to mention, just in case you are vegan, the hot-pot vegetarian course comes with hand-made, freshly steamed mini buns, to be dipped into sweet, condensed milk. I am sorry if you are truly vegan because it was good. On the other hand, this is cheating, isn’t it?: How can anything to do with condensed milk be bad?

*A common ingredient in a hot pot is “fish cakes,” as translated on restaurant menus in the U.S. I think this translation is erroneous. These are not cakes: These are more correctly translated as “balls.” The main ingredient of these balls is usually fish (although sometimes shrimp), pounded into a paste and rolled into balls. Therefore, as you now know, they have nothing to do with “cakes.”

My Quest in Taiwan will continue tomorrow... Stay tuned.


Restaurant Info:

佰菇園:　 台北市仁愛路4段71巷17號　（02-8773-3160）