Foreign Alterations to Local Food Favorites

I’d like to start a thread where people post recipes or stories about slight alterations they’ve made when preparing or simply buying local delicacies.

For example: Last night I was looking for food well past Taiwan feeding time (5-9) so I sauntered over to the night market and nothing really caught my eye, until I noticed two stalls side by side, one was the classic Taiwan deep fry and the other a DongNanYa girl spinning up some papaya salad, and that is where my idea came to me. I ordered deep fried chicken pieces, deep fried squid bits and deep fried sweet potato fries as well as a small bowl of songtam (papaya salad or as the TWese say mugua sala). When I got home, I dumped the deep fried bits on a plate and then covered it with the papaya salad.

Needless to say it was frikkin awesome, and instead of lamely plodding through a bunch of junk I was enjoying something that I will definitely get into again.

Cho do fu. Somewhere between a swipe and a dollop of cream cheese or philadelphia. Topped with a slice of of dill pickle.

A nice whores de ouvre

[quote=“Charlie Phillips”]Cho do fu. Somewhere between a swipe and a dollop of cream cheese or philadelphia. Topped with a slice of of dill pickle.

A nice whores de ouvre[/quote]

Interesting…Another thing I like to do is buy dumplings, and fry them up in a pan with sauce(soy plus hot sauce) green peppers and onions and then eat the whole thing like it was a stir fry (a bit of thai chili sauce, ketchup, or mayo to flavor if need be).

Egg Salad Sandwich:

Instead of a regular hard boiled egg, use a preserved duck egg or a “pee-dan”. Also use Western-style mayo like Hellman’s or Kraft (not the sweet Taiwan mayo).
Mush the egg and mayo together till it looks like lumpy grayish-black puke. Spread it thick on some quality French bread (a baguette). Sprinkle or pile on some dried bonito (tuna) flakes, and/or seaweed flakes.

I periodically buy a big box of that vegetarian stuff from those places with the inverted swastikas. Tastes like a car tyre wrapped in toilet paper.

Fry up some garlic and onions (two essential ingredients which those hippies don’t use) and some thinly sliced chicken. Fry in BUTTER with a dash of soy sauce. Chuck the noodles and arbitrary pieces of rubber in the pan. Add GREEN tabasco sauce and fry further for a minute or two.

[quote=“Deuce Dropper”]
Interesting…Another thing I like to do is buy dumplings, and fry them up in a pan with sauce(soy plus hot sauce) green peppers and onions and then eat the whole thing like it was a stir fry (a bit of thai chili sauce, ketchup, or mayo to flavor if need be).[/quote]
oooh, I do this too. It’s my stand-by freezer meal, for when I haven’t had time to get to the market. I cut up some of the frozen shuijiao, then stir fry with onion, garlic, frozen broccoli/cauliflower/carrot mix (from Costco), any other vegs I have on hand, and soy sauce. Not high cuisine, but not bad for a fall-back meal.

frankly i am tired with the non variety of dumpling flavors here…spinach, shrimp, pork …buy the dumpling skins from the market. add meat of your choice, put some kimchi inside. not spicy but tangy.
the other one…the famous friend chicken here, you can’t change the chicken, but you can change the batter, add some oregano, basil, paprika, any herbs…it’s great.

My first Taiwanese shabu-shabu experience was at Cash City in Ximen. It was maybe my second day in Taipei. I knew enough Chinese to say “beef” and “noodles”. That’s it. They brought me the veggies and noodles, along with an egg, which I promptly dropped into the soup, thinking, “Hmm, do-it-yourself hard-boiled egg. OK, cool.” I’d been to American approximations of shabu-shabu (and sukiyaki) and the raw egg always came (cracked and out of the shell) in a side dish (on request). I guess I didn’t really think about it. Whatever. Next came the sauce. I carefully watched another diner prepare his dipping sauce and followed suit. Heavy on the red chili, garlic, and onion – a good dose of soy and shrimp paste. OK, great. Then the beef came, and I went about my business.

Halfway through the meal I thought, “You know, the soup really doesn’t have any flavor.” So I shrugged and dumped the contents of my dipping sauce into the pot. It was a revelation. Now instead of bland, watered-down chicken stock, I had a brilliant hot-sour concoction. Once the beef slices started leeching fat into the mix, I had what I created what I believed at the time to be the greatest soup of all-time.

Right about the time I got to the corn cob, I remembered the egg boiling in the pot, so I removed it and let it cool. Then I peeled it while the server girls watched in amusement. Got another dish of dipping sauce, rolled the egg in it and – chomp – it was fantastic. The only thing missing from the entire experience was a dash of salt, which would have really tied the soup together and added a nice bite to the egg. What do the Spanish say about that? Something like a man without a mustache is like an egg without salt?

And that’s pretty much how I’ve done it since. Except now I always bring a little packet of salt and pepper mix from home whenever I have shabu-shabu – or any other restaurant for that matter. I know that some places have salt and pepper if you ask, but it’s just not worth the effort sometimes, even in Westernized places, the kids look at you like you’ve got three eyes and a horn growing out of your forehead. I get a lot of static about it from my friends, sure. I am the only foreigner they’ve ever met who brings his own spice mixture to dinner. And yes, I do feel kind of strange pulling it out and surreptitiously sprinkling salt all over the place, but I don’t really care enough to stop.

A cha sha roa -L-T.

Wicked stuff.

Hollandaise sauce on shui jiao.

Gently simmer whole garlic cloves in olive oil until thoroughly cooked and nicely browned. Dip in hot sauce. Cut a slit in each shuijiao (preferably the best hand-made ones in your area) and stuff one clove into it. Dice remaining cooked garlic and mix with soy sauce. Dip each shuijiao in this and arrange on a plate. Sprinkle with sesame. Enjoy.