My first spell at Taiwanese beef soup 🕯️🍜
Not flawless yet—but every simmer teaches me how to bend the broth closer to perfection.

Sichuan peppercorns bring that gentle, tangling heat, the beef turns beautifully tender, and somewhere between steam and spice… I finally conjured the umami I’ve been dreaming of ✨🪄

Still brewing. Still learning. Definitely delicious.

#beefsoup
#taiwan #taiwanese #taiwanesefood
#soup #souplover #beef #yum #food #cooking #witchshutcooking

One of my favorite Taiwanese recipes — oil rice or yóu fàn — with homemade Haishan sauce.

This is one of the dishes that turned me to cooking with lard which makes the flavor shockingly different. I now even have a lard jar in my fridge.

It looks like I am not the only one on lard and tallow. Pork and beef fat used to be free — just ask any butcher at any supermarket for scraps of the fat and they gladly pack you some on a styrofoam tray. Not any more. Especially at the stores like H Mart or 99ranch — my favorite in our area. Fat is now neatly prepackaged and laid out on a shelf with a price tag attached to it.

Oil rice features glistening sticky rice flavored with thin strips of shiitake and dried shrimp. A small amount of matchstick pork pieces, bamboo shoots, and carrots add to the texture.

Among other ingredients are soy sauce, michiu, black vinegar, shallots, dnd garlic. Oh, yes, and sugar! Very important. Taiwanese food is distinctly more mild and sweet compared to other Asian cuisines. It is strikingly different from food in Sichuan, Hunan, Shaanxi, Xinjiang, Beijing, Canton, and even Yunnan — those few cuisines that I learned to somewhat recognize. Sugar does not make Taiwanese food sugary. Combined with lard, it rather softens intense spicy-sour-bitter notes adding a different kind of depth and umami.

#food #cooking #taiwanesefood #oilrice #youfan

Forgive me, my Asian friends, for this mash up that probably should not be put together on the same table. I don’t know what I am doing — just love these flavors and textures so much!

And what do we have here?

— Taiwanese beef shank from Made in Taiwan — IYKYK, that’s all I can say. Three days in the making.

— Homemade liang fen — as it was discovered at Xi’an Muslim Quarter. Trying my hand and palate at the Q texture. For seasoning: scalded chopped garlic, scallion whites, shallots, sliced hot peppers, pepper flakes, red pepper powder, and sesame seeds with smoking hot peanut oil. A mix of soy sauce, oyster sauce, Chinkiang vinegar, sesame oil, salt, and sugar. Cilantro and scallion greens.

— Sichuan smashed cucumber salad — it is now ubiquitous — with mixed in greens from the garden which turned out to be very appropriate.

Wahatever you say — it was so good by the way — I stand corrected.

#food #cooking #homemade #taiwanesefood #chinesefood #beefshank #liangfen #smashedcucumbers #fooddiary

怒吃玉米味噌秋葵和花枝義大利麵
把日子過好
吃對，睡好，運動，刷牙
把自己照顧好
來迎接第三階段罷免的接力賽
—
我們一起親自送走這魔幻的戲碼
#taiwanesefood #fermentation #Taiwan

That feeling of loss. 回想起來2020年帶著小孩回台灣，居然找不到任何一家跟小時候吃到一樣的鹽酥雞攤子，全變成炸雞排或炸雞塊.... 那時帶著小孩茫然地看著台北街頭的霓虹燈。A true foodie feels sentimental about the loss of a childhood favorite. 坐在亞特蘭大想念大家在台灣外公外婆家吃宵夜的美好時光。Nothing but change is constant. And then I became vegan later that year in 2020. #nightmarket #taiwanesefood #taiwan #foodie #vegan #parenting #cuteness #cutenessoverload #changeistheonlyconstant #sentimental