Taiwanese Chinese

[thdad]

Is Taiwanese Chinese food different in some subtle way from mainland Chinese food. Would there be a reason why mainland Chinese diners would be attracted towards a restaurant that serves Taiwanese Chinese food?

Thank you all for your insight.

Edited June 27, 2006 by thdad (log)

[Pan]

There is no way to reasonably generalize about "Mainland Chinese food" and then differentiate that generalization from Taiwanese food, I don't think. I figure that, irrespective of political considerations regarding what Taiwanese identity does or should consist of, it makes much more sense to consider Taiwanese food essentially as another regional Chinese cuisine. And then, there are things one could say about it. I've had some Taiwanese cuisine here in New York, and what I've had included thick and thinner soups and various dishes over rice, plus of course boba tea. What I noticed in the Taiwanese restaurant I've been to most often is that they like to have dishes that feature pig intestine or seafood with preserved vegetables, have a love of sausages, and a fair number of their dishes have a good deal of mustard or/and mustard greens or/and hot pepper. But I have yet to visit Taiwan, so I don't really put much stock in my superficial impressions of what one or two versions of Taiwanese food in diaspora are. We have Taiwanese members who will probably chime in with a fuller and more accurate picture of what the cuisine is like there.

[Kent Wang]

I believe milkfish is a common ingredient unique to Taiwan cuisine. There was a four-page article in Saveur about a year ago about Taiwan.

[Jason Perlow]

Basil is used heavily in Taiwanese cuisine. The popular "3 Cup Chicken" is a prime example of this.

Taiwanese shares some heritage with Shanghainese due to the expats who left the country during the revolution -- Xiao Long Bao is very popular there, for example. Also Taiwan has a special kind of hand cut noodles that's very popular. Taiwanese food is also spicier than Shanghainese. Taiwan is also known for its very high quality (and very expensive) varieties of Chinese tea that's grown there.

Edited June 27, 2006 by Jason Perlow (log)

[aprilmei]

I've been on eating holidays in Taiwan with my Taiwanese cousin-in-law, only to Taipei, sadly. Love the food there. There's a lot of Japanese influence, as you'd expect, and also from Korea. From what my cousin's husband tells me, the sushi/sashimi restaurants are excellent but I haven't tried them. But as Pan says, it's difficult to generalise about mainland Chinese food, the country is just so vast. Taiwanese food - what I've had of it - seems very intensely flavoured. Hotpot there is very spicy and has chunks of pig's blood in it. They eat lots of innards, it seems. We also ate some things that I had never tried before going there - dried mullet roe and "iron eggs" which are jet black, dense, chewy and delicious. And the zhoong have very little filling other than rice but they're really good - much lighter in texture and not as sticky as the Cantonese ones I'm used to. Oh, and the savoury soybean milk is also good - it's eaten for breakfast.

For sweets, they make delicious pineapple cakes and delicate cakes made with mung beans and sesame seeds. And shaved ice with condensed milk and jelly and beans - very refreshing when it's hot outside.

[stephenc]

It's a mix of Fujian, Hakka, and Shanghai cooking. Taiwanese people eat a lot of bubble tea, stinky tofu, beef noodles, and fast food from 7-eleven. They also eat at lot more kimchee than other chinese. The food in Taiwan is pretty good. Like others have said, it's usually pretty intensely flavored.

Edited June 27, 2006 by stephenc (log)

[yimay]

i don't know any formal differences but i would say from my experience taiwanese food is not as elaborate as other chinese cuisines. cooking methods and ingredients are usually simpler and integrates other influences like japanese and korean as mentioned before. it's also innovatively rustic where resources were scarce... like using corn or taro as the starch source for congee when rice wasn't available. lots of soups made from bones and leftover vegetables. it's not as spicy as sichuan cuisine, but definitely spicier than some northern cuisines like shanghai mentioned earlier. when i think of taiwanese food i think of street food, snack foods, small side dishes like pickled veggies, fried peanuts and anchovies, thousand year old egg or a block of tofu with some soy and chile sauce poured on top. also the "bien dang" or taiwanese bento boxes you can get at convenience stores like 7-11s which are usually a simple fried pork chop, pickled vegetables and a soy-braised egg. i kind of think of it as the "fast food" of chinese food.

[hzrt8w]

I found myself hooked on Taiwanese snacks: all kinds of beef/pork jerkies, rou sung (dried minced pork/fish) and pickled or dried fruits such as plums, olives, lemon, ginger, etc.. They make very tasty treats. I think they make this category of food better than any other regions.

[AzianBrewer]

In addition to the fusion of Fukien (Hokkien/Fujian), Shanghai, Hakka and other Chinese provinces, some dishes are result of the Japanese influence. Instead of using Shaoshing wine which is typical in mainland Chinese cooking, many Taiwanese dishes are flavored with rice wine or cooking sake.

Tien-Bu-La: Taiwanese Tempura

Or'Len: Taiwanese Oden

Pe Dan Dofu: Taiwanese Hiyayako with Thousand Years Old Egg (Some folks put pork sung in it but I like it without)

Edited July 7, 2006 by AzianBrewer (log)

[Evan]

I agree with yimay, Taiwanese cuisine is very simplistic and typically tries to be simple in their cooking, most of the dishes are either fried, boiled, or steamed, at least within my Taiwanese family. When I was in Taiwan, most of the meals consisted of meat, fish, vegetable and soup. Mostly stir fried vegetables with garlic or ginger, fried or steamed fish, boiled pork or chicken that you dip in garlic soy sauce and the water used to boil the chicken or pork would be used as the base for the soup. Also very common was soy braised bamboo, meats, and eggs and steamed ground pork in soy. Also we ate lots of mi shen (string noodles) flavored with soy from the soy braised meats.

Breakfast would be either gruel or you tiao with peanuts, rou song, picked bean curd skins and pickled vegetables. Lunch and dinner menu seemed pretty similar to me.

My favorite dishes for dinner made by my grandma would consist of stir fried ong choy with garlic, fried white pompano, egg with pickled vegetables and green onions, bamboo shoot and pork riblet soup, and boiled pork slices with garlic soy sauce.

[Portia_Smith]

My battered copy of 'A guide to the chinese cuisine and restaurants of taiwan' by Holly Richardson Donovan, Peter W Donovan and Harvey Mole, published in 1977 provides much information about Taiwan's cuisine - while acknowledging that it does derive from the cuisine of southern fukien and was also influenced by the Japanese occupation of 1895 - 1945, the authors say that it's worthy of more respect. Interestingly - they also state that it 'resists exploration' because most taiwanese resturants (in the 70's at least) have no menus and other menus exlude the best dishes - while social patterns mean the 'main body of the cuisine has remained in private homes or moved into stalls in simplified preparations'

The author's do describe a number of Taiwanese dishes - including

bamboo shoot salad - the cooked bamboo shoots are sliced and served with mayonnaise. they state that this is only good in spring and early summer when tender spring bamboo shoots are available.

'blood clams' - the authors state that the taiwanese love this variety of clam which are served scalted with boiling water then served cold on the half shell with a ginger sauce. the meat and juices are reddish - hence the name of the dish.

pork patties with salted egg yolk - literally 'dawn yellow pork' - hamburger like patties of ground pork topped with salted egg yolks and steamed.

stewed fresh side of pork - fresh pork is browned then stewed in a soy based sauce until tender.

oyster soup - shucked oysters cooked with minced ginger in a light broth

baked prawns with sea urchin 'catsup' prawns slit open along the back are brushed inside with a paste made from the pickled ovaries of the sea urchin - dipped in egg yolk and soy sauce, then roasted.

roast ribbonfish - large cross sections of the fish are grilled over a charcoal fire and served with lemon wedges and pickled cucumbers.

Can anyone tell me how accurate these dishes are and if you've tried them? The book also states that one of the few places that offers a wide variety of taiwanese cuisine is the Swiss Hotel in Kaosiung - on 42 Ta Li Street almost opposite the kingdom hotel. They recommend the serrated crab with rice cakes and the deep fried cuttlefish balls as well as the shark's fin stir fried with osmanthus.

i've done a google search and i don't think the swiss hotel is there anymore - that's the problem on using 30 year old guidebooks!

[yimay]

bamboo shoot salad - the cooked bamboo shoots are sliced and served with mayonnaise.  they state that this is only good in spring and early summer when tender spring bamboo shoots are available.

'blood clams' - the authors state that the taiwanese love this variety of clam which are served scalted with boiling water then served cold on the half shell with a ginger sauce.  the meat and juices are reddish -  hence the name of the dish.

pork patties with salted egg yolk - literally 'dawn yellow pork'  - hamburger like patties of ground pork topped with salted egg yolks and steamed.

stewed fresh side of pork - fresh pork is browned then stewed in a soy based sauce until tender.

oyster soup - shucked oysters cooked with minced ginger in a light broth

baked prawns with sea urchin 'catsup'  prawns slit open along the back are brushed inside with a paste made from the pickled ovaries of the sea urchin - dipped in egg yolk and soy sauce, then roasted.

roast ribbonfish - large cross sections of the fish are grilled over a charcoal fire and served with lemon wedges and pickled cucumbers.

Can anyone tell me how accurate these dishes are and if you've tried them? 

←

my guess is it's pretty accurate. my mom is from taiwan and i grew up eating the steamed ground pork patty with salted fish instead of salted egg, but i've seen versions with the salted egg, that's how my uncle in taiwan makes it. and my mom loves fresh bamboo with mayonnaise. we couldn't really get fresh bamboo in the states when i was a kid, so we ate steamed broccoli with mayonnaise instead. i don't know about blood clams but one of my favorite dishes in taiwan is the marinated clams served cold. probably something similar to what you describe above. the baked prawns dish sounds fancy. and chinese will pretty much stew/braise anything in a soy based sauce.

[AzianBrewer]

bamboo shoot salad - the cooked bamboo shoots are sliced and served with mayonnaise.  they state that this is only good in spring and early summer when tender spring bamboo shoots are available.

'blood clams' - the authors state that the taiwanese love this variety of clam which are served scalted with boiling water then served cold on the half shell with a ginger sauce.  the meat and juices are reddish -  hence the name of the dish.

pork patties with salted egg yolk - literally 'dawn yellow pork'  - hamburger like patties of ground pork topped with salted egg yolks and steamed.

stewed fresh side of pork - fresh pork is browned then stewed in a soy based sauce until tender.

oyster soup - shucked oysters cooked with minced ginger in a light broth

baked prawns with sea urchin 'catsup'  prawns slit open along the back are brushed inside with a paste made from the pickled ovaries of the sea urchin - dipped in egg yolk and soy sauce, then roasted.

roast ribbonfish - large cross sections of the fish are grilled over a charcoal fire and served with lemon wedges and pickled cucumbers.

Can anyone tell me how accurate these dishes are and if you've tried them? 

←

my guess is it's pretty accurate. my mom is from taiwan and i grew up eating the steamed ground pork patty with salted fish instead of salted egg, but i've seen versions with the salted egg, that's how my uncle in taiwan makes it. and my mom loves fresh bamboo with mayonnaise. we couldn't really get fresh bamboo in the states when i was a kid, so we ate steamed broccoli with mayonnaise instead. i don't know about blood clams but one of my favorite dishes in taiwan is the marinated clams served cold. probably something similar to what you describe above. the baked prawns dish sounds fancy. and chinese will pretty much stew/braise anything in a soy based sauce.

←

You guys are making me hungry!!! Especially with the marinated clams (La-Ar). The Taiwanese version of the steamed pork patty has chopped Taiwanese pickled cucumber (Hua-Gua) in it. And the mayo for the bamboo shoots is sweetened with sugar.

[ulterior epicure]

Two of my favorite Taiwanese cuisines:

Oa jien - basically, oyster fry

and

Shaved ice topped with all the trimmings!

u.e.