台灣 (Taiwan), Part 3: Braised Pork Belly

Recipe Source: http://www.nibbledish.com/people/anjelikuh/recipes/gua-bao-taiwanese-braised-pork-in-sliced-buns

One of the first things I realized about Taiwanese cuisine is that the pig is king. There's an abundance of good fish and seafood, and they do some pretty outstanding things with tofu. But pork seems to be the dominant protein over there, especially pork belly (滷肉, Lǔ ròu).

America's love affair with pork belly has been picking up steam. Just think of how many restaurants or trailers in the past year or 2 that have started serving main dishes out of big hunks of pork belly. It is the brand new hotness. Here's just sample of the porky goodness I had

Northern Taiwanese-style breakfast: a rice ball filled with braised pork belly, pickled mustard greens, tea egg, and crunchy fried pastry bits

Braised pork belly and cucumber on rice, topped with dried shredded pork (肉鬆, Ròu sōng)

Gua bao: braised pork belly, pickled mustard greens, tea egg, and sweetened crushed peanuts in a steamed bun.

When I got back home, I was seriously craving some gua bao, so I looked up a recipe. Whole Foods sells pork belly pretty cheaply by the pound, and the Asian market sells frozen buns and pickled mustard greens. Oh, it is on!

I had to make a few adjustments for ingredients, but in the end the pork belly was delicious. I realized that the recipe was a lot like one I tried from a Chinese cookbook, for "red-cooked pork." That recipe was a failure because I tried using lean pork loin. Cholesterol be damned, the fat is essential.

Before and After

I didn't look up how to make a tea egg, so I let some boiled eggs stew in the braising liquid with the pork, still delicious. I'd never used pickled mustard before, so I didn't know if anything special was done to it before it was served in Taiwan, so I just left it raw and chopped it. I told my friend at work, who's no stranger to Taiwanese pickled veggies, and shook his head in shame. Apparently, I'm supposed to sweeten it and cook it first. Whatever. It all came together pretty nicely with the buns and some chopped cilantro (Taiwan loves cilantro, and so do I).

Like the Detroit Grand Pubahs said, "we can make sandwiches."

Do you have any particular favorite pork belly (or bacon) dish? I wouldn't mind some inspiration for a future post.

Ingredients:

- 1/2 lb raw belly pork, cut to 1/2-inch thick slices

- 2 cloves garlic, smashed

- thinly sliced ginger, 3 or 4 slices, 1-inch long

- 4 green onions, chopped into 3-inch pieces

- 1/4 tsp Chinese Five Spice powder

- 2 Tbsp brown sugar

- 1/4 cup shao xing (rice wine)

- 1/2 cup dark soy sauce

- 1.5 to 2 cups of water (or enough to cover the meat)

- 2 soft boiled eggs, shells removed but edible parts still intact

- pickled mustard greens

- cilantro

- crushed peanuts, sweetened with some sugar

- steamed Chinese sandwich buns

Procedure:

1. Bring a Dutch oven to medium high heat and sear the pork belly to a good brown on all sides. No oil is necessary, the belly fat renders out nicely. But if you really want to, you can use a teaspoon of veg oil.

2. Once the meat is browned, add all of the following ingredients to the pot: garlic, ginger, green onions, 5 Spice powder, brown sugar, shao xing, soy sauce, and water. Bring the pot to a boil.

3. Once the liquid is boiling, lower the heat to medium and simmer for 1 or 1.5 hours. The braising liquid will reduce and thicken.

4. When the meat is done and the eggs are stewed, remove them from the braising liquid. Dice the eggs and the pork belly. Chop some cilantro and some mustard greens. Combine them into a bun, sprinkle the peanuts, and enjoy the sh-t out of your gua bao.

台灣 (Taiwan), Part 2: Night Markets

As I was saying in the last post, night markets are God's gift to the world. If a night market were a song, it would be my jam. I went to 2 of them, plus a few "old street" daytime/evening market districts and was fully immersed in the local street food scene. These were the top picks.

Jiufen Old Street

It was formerly a gold mining city in the early 20th century, until its decline in the 1970's. Since the 90's, it's been revived for its old town appeal, and is now a major weekend hot spot for Taipei city dwellers. When I asked my Taiwanese friend at work for trip suggestions, this was his #1.

For my first full day, my friend and gracious host, Jason, was excited to introduce me to 3 of his favorite Taiwanese specialties. Ba Wan (ground pork and veggie filling inside a shell of glutenous rice), Jiufen's special pork and fish ball soup, and taro ball soup.

All around Jiufen, there are shops and stands selling random teas, snacks, condiments, souvenirs, etc. One had a particular... odor. Not completely unpleasant, but certainly not familiar. It was the legendary stinky tofu. But we didn't eat it there, Jason said to save it for the good stuff at the Shilin Night Market. Besides, all of the snacking we'd been doing left me stuffed.

Keelung Night Market

After Jiufen and its neighboring city of Jinguashi, we went to night market in Keelung. Everybody knows about Taipei's Shilin Night Market, but apparently Keelung's has much more (and better) street food. The highlights: tempura fish cakes, gua bao (braised pork belly sandwich), mian xian (thin noodles in soup), oyster omelette, and Pao Pao ice. Another highlight, the mian xian stand's owner chatting with me and Jason, making sure I get a good impression of their country, and exercising whatever little Mandarin vocab I picked up.

Out of all of it, gua bao was my favorite. Pork is king in Taiwanese cuisine, and they have seriously got braised pork belly down to an artform. Imagine a fluffy bun, filled with chopped pork belly (cooked in soy sauce, rice wine, and Chinese 5-spice), tea- and soy sauce-marinated hardboiled egg, pickled veggies, sprinkled with crushed sugared peanuts.

Shilin Night Market

Any travel show or travel book about Taipei will have a segment dedicated to Taiwan's biggest and most famous night market. It's in the northern district of Taipei city, and it draws a huge crowd. Unfortunately, when I went I was still pretty stuffed from my lunch in the basement of Taipei 101, 6 hours earlier (best bi bim bab I've ever had). But I got myself some kumquat juice, grilled mushroom skewers, duck tongue (I saw Andrew Zimmern eat it, I had to try it), and the one and only...

Stinky Tofu

It's fermented tofu, deep fried and grilled again with a good sauce, and topped with cabbage. The smell: I don't know how to describe it, maybe like old sweatsocks or garbage. It's unmistakeable. The taste: slightly tangy but still really tasty with the sauce, definitely more flavorful than normal tofu. The aftertaste: kind of like how it smells. I was feeling a little self-conscious about my breath afterward. The verdict: I want more!

台灣 (Taiwan): Part 1

I began my trip with 5 days in Taiwan, staying with my good friend from grad school Jason, and my time there was nothing short of a blast.

As far as I've noticed, Taiwan isn't much of a famous vacation spot (unless you're of Taiwanese/Chinese descent, of course). It mostly comes up in people's minds as "that place where my MP3 player comes from," or "That's in China, right?" But Taiwan has a lot more going for it than most people would know.

It's tropical island, so it's nice and warm year round; in mid/late-November, the highs in Taipei were in the low 70's, and down south in Tainan it was almost 80. Most of the island (especially inland in the north) is mountainous with dense forests, and it's in a volcanic/seismic zone so there are lots of great natural hot springs. I didn't visit any of them, but there are great beaches all around, national park hiking trails, canyons, etc.

The island's seen more than its fair share of settlers and colonists back in the day, from the indigenous Taiwanese tribes, various regions of mainland China (in lots of waves), Japan, Portugal, Holland, Spain, and probably a few more. Fast forward to modern times, Taiwan became an economic powerhouse for real, and Taipei is at the center of it all.

From my tourist perspective, what were my biggest take-aways?

1. Night markets are the shit! Lots of cheap souvenirs, and even cheaper (yet delicious and safe) street food. Everybody's out and about, so it makes for fun interactive people watching.

2. Chinese food is far more diverse than the average American will ever know. What we know of as "Chinese food" is Americanized Cantonese food. Taiwan's food has influences from all sorts of Chinese regions (Fujianese, Sichuanese, Hakka, indigenous, etc). I didn't learn enough to identify influences, but everything I ate left me saying "Holy crap, this is the best thing ever!"

3. We, as English speakers, have it much easier when traveling abroad than many of us would expect. Japan and Taiwan make everything really accessible for us, with bilingual street signs and public transit, and info desk workers who speak at least some English. Then again, you'll sometimes find some... questionable translations here and there, like the one above.

4. Black people are a rare breed in Taiwan. I only saw 2 or 3 others during my whole trip, and I get the feeling many Taiwanese have only seen a couple of us in their lives (outside of the media). A tour group of elementary school kids saw me in the National Palace Museum of Taipei. After whispering amongst themselves "ooh, hēi rén," a few of them approached me, smiling and giving me their most enthusiastic "Hello!" One of them shouted "Hello! Obama!" I had to laugh out loud for that one. That same night, some teens awkwardly approached me at a Metro station to take a picture with me. Kinda surreal, in a fun way.

5. Taiwanese politics is probably more of a spectacle than American politics. I arrived right before their version of midterm elections, and they go way above and beyond the USA in terms of campaign ads. Yes, those are crowds of demonstrators spelling out "Change." In parts of Taipei, every street was lined with banners, flyers, and posters for candidates. In Tainan, I saw campaign crews on street corners and bowing to passers by, or candidates walking down streets with megaphones and their entourages. If I could vote, I would support the guy who wears polo shirts bearing his cartoon image.

Actually, my biggest takeaway was how cool the people are, how rich the culture is, and how freaking amazing and CHEAP the food is. I could definitely see myself enjoying an extended stay in Taiwan, should the opportunity come up.