black bone, blood rice, and stinky curd

food memory is different from other memories. you could recall or crave a flavor so vivid you practically taste it, or it could sneak up on you like a good mix, leaving you satisfied and perhaps with a deeper appreciation of what you had just experienced.

my feelings for taiwan are mostly about food. i don’t mean physical hunger, although that plays a big part, but more memories of a different life lived long ago. for instance, the extreme sourness of salted plums (my brother john calls them “salt bombs”) is synonymous with lazy saturday afternoons at my grandma’s the few years before we left for the states. more intriguing is the very acquired taste of stinky tofu, which i have forgotten completely until its foul odor invaded my nostrils and brought back memories of trips to the neighborhood market with my obasan (babysitter) for a quick snack. for whatever reason, that smell – daphne says it’s just like shit - was the gatekeeper to vivid recollection of the colors and textures of egg and seaweed soup, clotted blood rice, and other forgotten taiwanese delicacies of my youth.

i met chloe early one morning for “a day of food, books, and music.” the first stop was yonghe, a popular breakfast spot known for its soy milk. it was a little after 8 and there was already a line, mainly locals and tourists from hong kong and the mainland, snaking down the block. we worked our way to the counter after about 30 minutes and ordered two salty dou jiang (soy milk), a rice roll wrapped in scallion egg, and two sets of you-tiao (fried cruller) with shao-bing (sesame pancake). it was probably one of the best breakfasts i’ve ever had. pieces of green scallion and golden-brown you-tiao bobbed in the silky rich milk. add soy sauce and vinegar and the whole thing transforms into a delicate and aromatic custard suspended in briny and slightly acidic whey.

after breakfast we traveled to taipei’s southern exurb where the sleek yingge ceramics museum and the “old town” neighborhood, the historical heart of taiwanese ceramic industry, are located. we wandered the open-air markets with their colorful wares, and picked at grilled octopus, ai-you (sort of a green mango) jelly drinks and spicy dried-tofu until we felt sick.

chloe suggested we head back to town for some “real nourishments”. we ended up at a joint off yun-kan street that specialized in wu gu gi or blackbone chicken. a peculiar breed with black skin and bones and seemingly bluish-gray meat, it was so tender and tasty that i devoured it before realizing the dish was, according to the menu anyway, “especially invigorating for women and good for treating liver ailments and sharpening eyesight.”

we spent the rest of the day hopping around tea houses and book stores, including this musty basement joint where a shifty-ass clerk tried to charge me 20 bucks for a used record by tiger team, a 90s teenpop sensation. i must have had a sign on my forehead that said “fuck me.”

before chloe dropped me off at my hotel, we swung by a restaurant that she’s been telling me about all day. it was closing time but the owner was nice enough to let us hang out for a bit. the place was homey and cozy, and decorated top-to-bottom with everyday artifacts from the 60s the owner himself had collected over the years. it was more than a theme restaurant, it was as if someone took my childhood and saved it for me.

Posted by cellpharmer at February 28, 2007 07:50 AM