More Taiwanese Treats, Part Two

Fried broad beans in several different flavors, including curry.

Auntie working on some more pan bread.  I asked her if we could make it together, but apparently with all the waiting it takes about five hours.

It comes out shaped like Biscotti, but it’s nice and soft and chewy.

Homemade stir-fry with celery, onions, peppers, “dried tofu,” and squid.

Auntie’s sister brought over a pita filled with raw veggies and hummus.  I thought I’d have to wait until Turkey for one of these.

Marinated tofu skins.  Taste kind of like BBQ ribs.  “Kind of.”

Chocolate-coated sunflower seeds.

At long last, a new street-food: julienned and then deep-fried taro (left) and sweet potato cakes.  The perfect warm, crunchy, chewy, fatty, spicy or salty (depending on which sauce you slather on snack to munch on while walking along the boardwalk.

Another homemade meal.  Celery and oyster soup, snap pea and button mushroom stir-fry, and sauteed  purple greens.  I’m betting there’s another dish hidden behind the hot pot, but I don’t recall.

Rice, three veggies, and one fried thing for $1.50 or so.

Hotpot.

Hotpot places generally have a little buffet where you can make up your own dipping sauce.  Sesame powder, slices of green onion, chili flakes and oil.  Oil and fat and spice, ooh yeah.

Hot pot, again!  This one is Schezuan style.  Nowhere near as spicy as real Chinese stuff.

Tim the artist was too busy painting to enjoy the coconuts that dropped down onto his driveway.  Luke and I, on the other hand, needed something to do in between rounds of tossing the frisbee.  I

In the city, we found a bus stop called “fruit street.”  The green things on the left are some kind of cross between an apple and a jujube.  The red ones on the right are wax apples, all light and watery and crisp, something like what celery would be if it were sweeter and not so stringy.

Taidong is also known for its “Shijias,” which I’ve heard called Custard Apples and Buddha’s Head fruits.  Beneathy the warty surface is a big clump of ice-creamy stuff.  These cost about $4 a piece in Taipei, but only $1.50 per pound down in Taidong.  Unfortunately, none of these were ready to eat!  We bought a whole box only to find that all of the fruits were rock-hard.  Still waiting for them to soften up so we can chow down.

There were only two restaurants near Tim’s place, so over the four days we had a chance to visit them both.  This was the Vietnamese one, where for about $3 each we got a six-course meal.  Here’s the appetizer: fresh spring rolls, with shrimp for the omnivores and dried tofu for me.

The other place was Italian, run by a Sardinian named Michele.  Not only did I get to break out my extremely rusty Italian, but I got to have some real authentic stuff.  We ordered one of everything on the menu – tomato and eggplant sauce, pesto sauce, oil, chili, and garlic sauce, and vegetarian carbonara.