More Taiwan trip pictures!
Tue, Mar. 6th, 2007 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterAnd by more pictures, I mean more food porn!
Pictures taken by me,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rachelmanija and my dad.
Huge fish! After several strange meals at the very odd hotel, including one in which they served us the same soup twice, we had a very tasty lunch in Taichung, including a giant steamed fish and whole steamed shrimp. I think I had giant steamed fish and whole steamed shrimp about 3 or 4 times this trip, which was perfectly fine by me.
Then we walked around after lunch and went to a cafe, in which they had a very arcane little coffee brewer. I'm not sure how it works, but it was pretty nifty just watching it. It poured hot water from the metal container into the glass one with the coffee grounds, and then the weight shifted, which automatically snuffed the alcohol burner. Then some sort of vacuum thing went into play, and the coffee was siphoned back into the metal container.
The streets of Taichung -- we went shopping here a little before heading off to another Very Large Dinner, this time at a Japanese restaurant. Rachel and I got the coolest little Bleach and Naruto stickers with our names on them. I think the guy making them sort of freaked out when he saw how many we wanted.
Alas, my picture is blurry! The appertif of the Japanese meal, fish roe and something else on half of a fig-like fruit (wu-hua guo, no-flower fruit?).
Oh my god this was so good. Soooo good. Sashimi! In the little basket was salmon belly meat, like the salmon version of toro, which I have never had before. It was amazingly good. We also had this peach sparkling wine thing that was very tasty.
A close-up of the sashimi decoration. Little plum blossoms!
Deep-friend somethings. I can't even remember what was on the inside anymore -- possibly some kind of cheese -- but like everything else here, it was really good.
My salad, complete with tempura eel. The waiter helpfully told us that the eel was actually from Japan, and not Taiwan, so it should be sweeter.
They ended up taking the shrimp heads from the sashimi platter and deep frying them. They were really nice and crunchy, and I think I stole two.
Abalone in a thickish sauce, garnished with some sort of mountain plant leaf. The Chinese name is "mountain medicine." The sauce covered a mound of that white Japanese root that's sort of sticky and gooey, which I don't mind but everyone else seems to dislike.
This was the best thing of the meal, which is saying something, considering the salmon toro. Well, maybe the salmon toro was the best. But this was really good too! Black sesame agedashi tofu. The outside was crispy and melted away in your mouth, and the inside was some sort of thick black paste, and the entire thing smelled like sesame.
Beef tataki. Alas, not as good as the rest of the meal, as the beef wasn't nearly rare enough. But at that point, I was so stuffed that I didn't mind being able to pass on something.
And just when we thought the meal was over, this came out. Half a lobster head! I'm not sure if you can see, but the broth and the lobster were served on a giant sheet of paper, which was placed over a hot rock in the rock bowl, presumably to keep it heated while we ate. Very delicate broth, flavored with lobster and clam.
Thankfully, dessert in the form of red bean soup with soft, chewy white mochi came after this.
Rachel took this picture of yet another small dog while I was busy buying a cute pink trench coat and my sister was busy buying a giant poofy peach down jacket.
Ice Monster! I need to go to Taiwan in the summer some time so I can have the mango version of this, but the strawberry is already very tasty. It's a take on the traditional shaved ice desserts here, only with strawberry and sorbet instead of assorted sweet beans and tapioca pearls. They drizzle condensed milk on the top too.
Strawberry ice, only with strawberry sorbet instead of mango.
And now, we're at my aunt's for a cooking lesson. That is, if by "cooking lesson" you mean occasional spectator-ship and mass consumption of seafood. Though we did chop things for her! Above is a bowl of pumpkin waiting to be cooked with salty egg a la our New Year's Eve dinner, and bowls of something currently unidentifiable.
Veggies! Mmmmmm, stir-fried veggies...
CRAB! See how huge the pinchers are? They were so delicious! I think the top one has salt-and-peppered chunks of butter on top, and the bottom one is for steaming with ginger and scallion. Both were delicious.
And the third crab, waiting there in the steamer. Thankfully, "learning to cook" did not involve actually killing the crab, though I now know how. Also, the shrimp (not pictured) were still alive ("Very fresh!" my aunt said approvingly) and kept leaping out of the bowl. My little cousin wanted to keep one as a pet, but we ended up eating all of them instead ^_^.
And the now-done crab and shrimp. OMG SO GOOD. Am hungry again. Truly my aunt is an amazing cook.
We also had: tiny baby peas cooked with diced chicken, chicken soup made with two chickens that had been cooking for a good 12 hours, garlicky clams, lightly stir-fried veggies, and some really good sweet-and-sour-ish pork ribs for my cousin who (sadly) doesn't eat seafood.
On my sister and B's last day, my dad randomly decided that we should all attempt to do something vaguely touristy and took us to the Longshan (Dragon Mountain) Temple. It was really insanely crowded. By the way, that is Cho Hakkai/Pigsy/Zhu Bajie from Journey to the West, rake included.
Lots and lots of food offerings to the dead, and even more people bai-bai-ing (worshipping? praying? ensuring their dead are remembered? Not sure how to translate).
The temple itself isn't all that old, at least when compared to most Chinese artifacts stolen from the Mainland during the Communist Revolution. The entire place smelled heavily of incense, smoke and ashes, and people would crowd around shrines with incense in their hands and bow three times.
And since this is Taiwan and there is no land, there's a modern glass office building right next to the old temple.
Dragon and phoenix decorations on the roof of the temple.
People making peanut-sugar covered mochi (you could pick peanut or sesame for the inside) on the streets of Ximending, Taipei's "fashionable shopping district." You can tell it's fashionable because there's a lot of Japanese stuff there.
Yet another small dog, this time in sailor fuku on a Hello Kitty mat! Yup, still in Ximending. The dog was very well behaved, considering how many people there were and that it wasn't on a leash.
Apparently a very popular noodle place. The guy in the back was just churning out bowls, slopping noodles and soup in like clockwork. The store has no seats; you just buy a bowl and stand around and eat, which is what everyone's doing. I wanted to have some, but we'd just come back from lunch at a famous pork chop place that my mom used to go to when she was in college.
Another look at the famous noodle place. It was right next to a really, really good pearl milk tea place, where the people still hand-shook the pearl milk tea drinks.
A fruit stand in Ximending. See the dragon fruit in the lower left corner? Going clockwise from them are cantalope, wax apples, guava, watermelon, tomatoes, a giant bowl of lover's fruit (pickled unripe mangoes, so good!), and Asian pears in the center. Though I am snobby and like to think that the fruit at the market is probably better.
More candied fruit on sticks! We got the last of the candied-strawberries-on-sticks before running off to 7-Eleven. Rachel got a pork floss onigiri there -- Taiwan takes on onigiri include pork floss and kimchi. Then we headed off to KFC (yup, that's Kentucky Fried Chicken) for Portuguese-style egg tarts, which are some of my favorite things ever. Last year, they had a ginger-sweet-potato flavored egg tart. This year, they have them with cranberry jelly on top. I suspect cranberries are also a fad in Taiwan right now. It was good, but the original is still better.
And from our last Very Large Dinner, lobster tail. Mmmm.
During this dinner, Rachel managed to get into a near-argument about colonialism with one of my schoolmates. I was so busy eating that I didn't warn her until later that he was the same person I'd argued about feminism with last year (heavily weighted choices aren't the same as having unweighted choices!).
And if anyone is interested, I think I grabbed most of my trip reports andrachelmanija's and stuck them in memories.
Pictures taken by me,
rachelmanija and my dad.Huge fish! After several strange meals at the very odd hotel, including one in which they served us the same soup twice, we had a very tasty lunch in Taichung, including a giant steamed fish and whole steamed shrimp. I think I had giant steamed fish and whole steamed shrimp about 3 or 4 times this trip, which was perfectly fine by me.
Then we walked around after lunch and went to a cafe, in which they had a very arcane little coffee brewer. I'm not sure how it works, but it was pretty nifty just watching it. It poured hot water from the metal container into the glass one with the coffee grounds, and then the weight shifted, which automatically snuffed the alcohol burner. Then some sort of vacuum thing went into play, and the coffee was siphoned back into the metal container.
The streets of Taichung -- we went shopping here a little before heading off to another Very Large Dinner, this time at a Japanese restaurant. Rachel and I got the coolest little Bleach and Naruto stickers with our names on them. I think the guy making them sort of freaked out when he saw how many we wanted.
Alas, my picture is blurry! The appertif of the Japanese meal, fish roe and something else on half of a fig-like fruit (wu-hua guo, no-flower fruit?).
Oh my god this was so good. Soooo good. Sashimi! In the little basket was salmon belly meat, like the salmon version of toro, which I have never had before. It was amazingly good. We also had this peach sparkling wine thing that was very tasty.
A close-up of the sashimi decoration. Little plum blossoms!
Deep-friend somethings. I can't even remember what was on the inside anymore -- possibly some kind of cheese -- but like everything else here, it was really good.
My salad, complete with tempura eel. The waiter helpfully told us that the eel was actually from Japan, and not Taiwan, so it should be sweeter.
They ended up taking the shrimp heads from the sashimi platter and deep frying them. They were really nice and crunchy, and I think I stole two.
Abalone in a thickish sauce, garnished with some sort of mountain plant leaf. The Chinese name is "mountain medicine." The sauce covered a mound of that white Japanese root that's sort of sticky and gooey, which I don't mind but everyone else seems to dislike.
This was the best thing of the meal, which is saying something, considering the salmon toro. Well, maybe the salmon toro was the best. But this was really good too! Black sesame agedashi tofu. The outside was crispy and melted away in your mouth, and the inside was some sort of thick black paste, and the entire thing smelled like sesame.
Beef tataki. Alas, not as good as the rest of the meal, as the beef wasn't nearly rare enough. But at that point, I was so stuffed that I didn't mind being able to pass on something.
And just when we thought the meal was over, this came out. Half a lobster head! I'm not sure if you can see, but the broth and the lobster were served on a giant sheet of paper, which was placed over a hot rock in the rock bowl, presumably to keep it heated while we ate. Very delicate broth, flavored with lobster and clam.
Thankfully, dessert in the form of red bean soup with soft, chewy white mochi came after this.
Rachel took this picture of yet another small dog while I was busy buying a cute pink trench coat and my sister was busy buying a giant poofy peach down jacket.
Ice Monster! I need to go to Taiwan in the summer some time so I can have the mango version of this, but the strawberry is already very tasty. It's a take on the traditional shaved ice desserts here, only with strawberry and sorbet instead of assorted sweet beans and tapioca pearls. They drizzle condensed milk on the top too.
Strawberry ice, only with strawberry sorbet instead of mango.
And now, we're at my aunt's for a cooking lesson. That is, if by "cooking lesson" you mean occasional spectator-ship and mass consumption of seafood. Though we did chop things for her! Above is a bowl of pumpkin waiting to be cooked with salty egg a la our New Year's Eve dinner, and bowls of something currently unidentifiable.
Veggies! Mmmmmm, stir-fried veggies...
CRAB! See how huge the pinchers are? They were so delicious! I think the top one has salt-and-peppered chunks of butter on top, and the bottom one is for steaming with ginger and scallion. Both were delicious.
And the third crab, waiting there in the steamer. Thankfully, "learning to cook" did not involve actually killing the crab, though I now know how. Also, the shrimp (not pictured) were still alive ("Very fresh!" my aunt said approvingly) and kept leaping out of the bowl. My little cousin wanted to keep one as a pet, but we ended up eating all of them instead ^_^.
And the now-done crab and shrimp. OMG SO GOOD. Am hungry again. Truly my aunt is an amazing cook.
We also had: tiny baby peas cooked with diced chicken, chicken soup made with two chickens that had been cooking for a good 12 hours, garlicky clams, lightly stir-fried veggies, and some really good sweet-and-sour-ish pork ribs for my cousin who (sadly) doesn't eat seafood.
On my sister and B's last day, my dad randomly decided that we should all attempt to do something vaguely touristy and took us to the Longshan (Dragon Mountain) Temple. It was really insanely crowded. By the way, that is Cho Hakkai/Pigsy/Zhu Bajie from Journey to the West, rake included.
Lots and lots of food offerings to the dead, and even more people bai-bai-ing (worshipping? praying? ensuring their dead are remembered? Not sure how to translate).
The temple itself isn't all that old, at least when compared to most Chinese artifacts stolen from the Mainland during the Communist Revolution. The entire place smelled heavily of incense, smoke and ashes, and people would crowd around shrines with incense in their hands and bow three times.
And since this is Taiwan and there is no land, there's a modern glass office building right next to the old temple.
Dragon and phoenix decorations on the roof of the temple.
People making peanut-sugar covered mochi (you could pick peanut or sesame for the inside) on the streets of Ximending, Taipei's "fashionable shopping district." You can tell it's fashionable because there's a lot of Japanese stuff there.
Yet another small dog, this time in sailor fuku on a Hello Kitty mat! Yup, still in Ximending. The dog was very well behaved, considering how many people there were and that it wasn't on a leash.
Apparently a very popular noodle place. The guy in the back was just churning out bowls, slopping noodles and soup in like clockwork. The store has no seats; you just buy a bowl and stand around and eat, which is what everyone's doing. I wanted to have some, but we'd just come back from lunch at a famous pork chop place that my mom used to go to when she was in college.
Another look at the famous noodle place. It was right next to a really, really good pearl milk tea place, where the people still hand-shook the pearl milk tea drinks.
A fruit stand in Ximending. See the dragon fruit in the lower left corner? Going clockwise from them are cantalope, wax apples, guava, watermelon, tomatoes, a giant bowl of lover's fruit (pickled unripe mangoes, so good!), and Asian pears in the center. Though I am snobby and like to think that the fruit at the market is probably better.
More candied fruit on sticks! We got the last of the candied-strawberries-on-sticks before running off to 7-Eleven. Rachel got a pork floss onigiri there -- Taiwan takes on onigiri include pork floss and kimchi. Then we headed off to KFC (yup, that's Kentucky Fried Chicken) for Portuguese-style egg tarts, which are some of my favorite things ever. Last year, they had a ginger-sweet-potato flavored egg tart. This year, they have them with cranberry jelly on top. I suspect cranberries are also a fad in Taiwan right now. It was good, but the original is still better.
And from our last Very Large Dinner, lobster tail. Mmmm.
During this dinner, Rachel managed to get into a near-argument about colonialism with one of my schoolmates. I was so busy eating that I didn't warn her until later that he was the same person I'd argued about feminism with last year (heavily weighted choices aren't the same as having unweighted choices!).
And if anyone is interested, I think I grabbed most of my trip reports and
rachelmanija's and stuck them in memories.
(no subject)
Wed, Mar. 7th, 2007 12:41 am (UTC)Unrelated question: Doesn't this guy (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,257020,00.html) sound a lot like the weird guy who kept insisting that Naomi Novik had gotten her dragons all wrong? There are probably a lot of crazy people with dragon opinions, though.
(no subject)
Wed, Mar. 7th, 2007 12:50 am (UTC)*contemplates long spiel about minority racism and the complexities thereof and wonky politics therein and collapses onto keyboard instead*
(no subject)
Wed, Mar. 7th, 2007 01:03 am (UTC)Whee! Perfect opportunity to break out my latest icon!
Wed, Mar. 7th, 2007 02:50 am (UTC)