Many Taiwanese can be shockingly, well, provincial when it comes to food matters. My in-laws have viewed “my” rice as odd and strange because it was jasmine (and I think the “奇怪” was more polite than what they were thinking); my sister-in-law has, in the past few months, had her first Mexican (OK, not such a surprise), Indian (!) (“What’s a curry dish?” / “It’s all curry, sort of” / “Well, what tastes like curry?” / “Taiwanese curry? That’s Japanese”), and Vietnamese (!!) dining experiences. And she’s a reasonably well-off Taipei resident.
Many people - everywhere, not just in Taiwan - will make a quick leap from “This is new for me” to “But you’re doing it wrong!”
Pizza can be prepared many ways and remain fantastic, but none of those ways include corn or mayonnaise. Gakh (sp?), however, can be prepared one way and one way only.
Oh, people WILL react with disbelief and horror if you’re drinking cold water during the winter. That’s just wrong and possibly near-toxic to them.
Well, it can’t be anything too traditional and arcane, they’ve only had broccoli here for a few decades, its ubiquity on Chinese Food menus at home notwithstanding.
I don’t recall seeing the two prepared together here. Most Taipei residents are such yokels that something they’ve never seen before pretty much translates as taboo.
[quote=“Taiwan_Student”]Let me clarify… No religious taboo. But the reaction surprisingly as strong. There seems to be strong ideas on which foods can be cooked together.
If you’d want a chicken dish, cook a chicken dish, maybe a few carrots or pineapple but not broccoli. You’d have to cook a broccoli dish. You can eat them together, just not cook them together.[/quote]
This coming from people who drink avocados, put beans in frosted cakes, and eat green eggs… mixed with tofu.
I’ve asked around the office -2 Taoists, 5 Buddists- and no one has heard of any specific taboo against broccoli mixed with chicken.
I’ve tasted chicken with green beans, carrots, lotus, all kinds of greenery here, so i find teh reaction …baffling.
Yes, examples of food combinations that are considered taboo based on traditional Chinese medicine are shrimp and pumpkin eaten together or crab and eggplant together. There’s a recent Hong Kong (or PRC?) suspense movie based on this premise involving a wife pressing this knowedge into service to get the better of her straying husband. (Can’t remember the name of the movie.) However, there’s no taboo against chicken and brocolli that I’m aware of.
i’d tell your friend to go get F*%$ed, she probably never held a pan in her sad life…
it really annoys the hell out of me when anyone who never cooks try to give advices
Chinese food is extremely varied…you could easily have cooked an authentic dish from another part of China that she has never seen/eaten before. Many foods and vegetables used here now were not part of traditional Taiwanese cusine. An interesting fact is that rice was rare until the early/mid part of the 20th century in Taiwan. I believe most people ate ‘Fan Shu’ or sweet potato which was probably the influence of the aboriginals and it’s supposedly very easy to grow in this climate. In addition cuisine varies quite a bit between Taiwanese, Hakka, mainlanders and aboriginals and also varies strongly in a line from North to South (down south the food gets stickier and stickier and more fermented). You’ll notice that stir fried sweet potato leaves are still a local favourite. In addition almost nobody ate beef until a few decades ago. I’m pretty sure dumplings/mantou were quite rare until the mainlanders showed up
Certain things don’t go well together as foods…that’s common sense…there’s no point lumping in rice with noodles…unless all you want to eat is starch with your meal.
Interestingly, lots of ingredients we use daily in western cuisine originated in China … ingredients you’d never expect … because they are not used in Taiwan … blowheads!
And to me vegetables in Taiwan are so boring, you have carrots and cabbage and more leafy vegetables, oh … and onions … more leafy veggies … ok, broccoli and cauliflower … that’s about it …
In Europe, we have so much more new exciting veggies right now, and all those colours and tastes … Taiwan is really boring ingredient wise …
[quote=“headhonchoII”]Chinese food is extremely varied…you could easily have cooked an authentic dish from another part of China that she has never seen/eaten before. Many foods and vegetables used here now were not part of traditional Taiwanese cusine. An interesting fact is that rice was rare until the early/mid part of the 20th century in Taiwan. I believe most people ate ‘Fan Shu’ or sweet potato which was probably the influence of the aboriginals and it’s supposedly very easy to grow in this climate. In addition cuisine varies quite a bit between Taiwanese, Hakka, mainlanders and aboriginals and also varies strongly in a line from North to South (down south the food gets stickier and stickier and more fermented). You’ll notice that stir fried sweet potato leaves are still a local favourite. In addition almost nobody ate beef until a few decades ago. I’m pretty sure dumplings/mantou were quite rare until the mainlanders showed up
Certain things don’t go well together as foods…that’s common sense…there’s no point lumping in rice with noodles…unless all you want to eat is starch with your meal.[/quote]
The OP’s friend probably meant she thought the way you cooked the dish was odd. When I first cooked what I considered to be Chinese food in China, my Chinese friends were all amazed at how oddly we Westerners cooked. I didn’t chop the meat and vegetables the correct way, I put ingredients together that they would not, and I put too many ingredients in one dish. A stir-fry should not have many different vegetables, for example (according to them), just one plus maybe some onions.
For a tribe that will pretty much eat everything above, below, and in the midst of, the sun, it’s full frontal hypocrisy for any mouth morsel to be called taboo.
Padded Bras should be taboo, yet we won't get very far with that, now will we?
