rice cake confessional

I’ve been saving the best for last.

The Night Market was my first meal in Taipei. After the giddiness of seeing my MV buds simmered down we MRTed it to Shilin in the drizzle to partake in one of Taipei’s best traditions. There’s also a story here of Jeff forgetting his Blackberry and harassing an unsuspecting security guard to check his email but that’s less interesting.

There are heaps and heaps of good food at the Night Market. Come hungry. This is NOT snacktime.

Our first victim: oyster pancake.

Egg with crispy edges = good, bits of green onion = good, oysters = good, gelatinous clumps of unknown origin = weird but palatable. I *think* it’s some concoction of rice flour. But why?

Follow the crowd. Hop into the long line in front of “Large Fried Chicken” (real name) and be rewarded with obvs genetically enhanced fried chicken.

Too bad there’s no size context on this because it is HUGE. I had to hold the thing with both hands. It has a familiar five spicy taste (reminds me of the pork chop at DTF). We asked for it spicy so there’s a bit of a bite thanks to that sprinkling of red stuff. Julia and I shared this and couldn’t finish. I lovingly refer to this as 8 chickens since it’s about the size of 8 chickens. The crowd does not lie.

Jeff disappeared while me, Julia, Ellen, and Kim lined up for big chicken. He returned with two servings of dumplings swimming in peanut sauce. This was an unlikely favorite of mine. It’s the peanut sauce that’s the winner here. It’s more salty than sweet with a bit of heat at the end. Reminds me of good satay sauce.

We strolled down several streets with Jess and Jeff leading the charge and stopping periodically when they came across their faves. This stall served baos with meatballs.

This was just alright for me. Tastes how it looks. Meatball with bao dough all around. Bonus points for being piping hot.

Turn the corner into another line of street stalls. They are big on sausage in Taiwan. Lots of street stalls with an astounding variety of sausage. Impressive.

The bestest stall of them all – scallion pancakes. I could probably eat these nonstop for several days. In Taiwan they are made even more delicious by a plethora of sauces – bbq, curry, etc and the option of adding eggs and/or bacon. The cakes come out flaky, buttery, and piping hot. My mouth is watering just thinking about them. After Julia and I were left hangin’ by the toilet restaurant we stuffed ourselves with scallion pancakes. OMNOMNOMNOM.

This vendor makes itty bitty mochi balls filled with red bean and rolled in ground peanuts. Pretty cool to see her doing her thing. Also pretty cool how easy it is to procure mochi desserts in Asia.

Alright. What we’ve all been waiting for. Stinky tofu. You can smell it from a mile away. My nose wrinkles just looking at this next picture.

So. I tried it. I didn’t spit it out. The verdict? It tastes like it smells.

So concludes our jaunt through Taipei. Not bad for 4 days, right? I’m ashamed to say I did not have boba (tapioca balls in the milk ice dessert kinda counts though) or thick toast. Who’s up for Taipei Round 2?

Homestretch now. Here’s quick rundown of other eats that are not quite full-post worthy but certainly not to be ignored.

Number 1: Korean Cartoon Horse Candy

If you go to Korea please get me some of this grape flavored, horse cartoon-stamped candy. I jacked this tube from Jlin. She didn’t seem to mind so much. They’re like Sweettarts except not chalky or tart. Lots of good artificial grape flavor.

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Odd title.

After an afternoon at the hot springs to help us recoup from our fun evening out (see: taiwanese breakfast post for non-details), Jessica’s aunt was nice enough to take us to one of her favorite restaurants. As is the common theme of this trip, no clue where in the city this is. The only landmark I have for you – this is near the first McDonald’s in Taipei.

Most of the dishes they ordered were vegetarian but she also got 2 meat dishes for me and Julia. This was interesting. They came out with a bowl of what appeared to be rice krispies. Then came a bowl of sweet and sour sauce with veggies and shrimp. They poured that entire shebang onto the rice krispies (yes, it snapped, crackled and popped). The result is oddly good. It tastes like your average sweet and sour dish but the krispies give it an interesting texture since they retain a bit of their crunch.

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I’m behind a few days on the TPE-week. Let’s do some catching up.

Jess had planned to take us to hotpot on Friday after our trip to the Palace Museum. Which, ps, we did in a record 1.5 hours. Some say that’s not enough time to see the crazy huge treasure trove of Chinese artifacts. For 3 ADD tourists, it was a smidge rushed but acceptable. If you visit, give yourself 3+ hours to enjoy.

But, I digress.

When Simon heard of our plans he mocked us for our choice in hotpot venue and told us to swing by and join his friends at Orange Shabu Shabu. Since Simon is probably the most useful person we know in the whole universe, we easily agreed.

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I have emoted at length about the mango sago of Hong Kong so when the homies said that we had to leave some stomach real estate post-lunch together for mango dessert, I was all about it. Full stomach be damned! After these two bowls made their way to our table, I suddently had all sorts of appetite left.

Mango ice cream atop a generous portion of sweet, fresh mango and mango jelly nestled nicely on shaved ice and drizzled with sweet condensed milk. Why have I spent 27 (ok, nearly 28) years on this earth without indulging in such goodness?

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Ladies, want to know how to torture your guy friends?

Take them to Hello Kitty Cafe.

As with most of the places I visited in Taipei, I have no idea where this is so you’re on your own should you need to hunt the location down. You might get lucky if Jess stops by and adds a comment with the address to some of these places. What I do remember is that this is near the really big Sogo at the MRT station that sells deliciously smelling Baker Boy buns.

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Woot woot! It’s Taipei week here at ze food blog. I’m fighting some major sleepies to bring you a post tonight. Without further ado, let’s explain the rather not-food-friendly title, shall we?

Everyone loves a good theme restaurant right?

I had heard of the toilet themed restaurant before but didn’t think there’d be enough time to hit it up during my short jaunt to Taiwan. Plus, it’s kind of weird to want to go to this kind of restaurant. Luckily, Jess and Julia were both down to give it a shot (or should I say flush?).

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Hypothetically, if you find yourself coming out of one of those 24 hour karaoke places in Taipei at 5:45 in the morning, you can go straight to breakfast.

You could even get Taiwanese breakfast – the kind that comes with you tiao aka oil sticks aka deliciousness and hot steamy soy milk in a bowl.

It would probably, most likely cost you a little over a dollah (just an educated guess). Hypothetically, you would enjoy, in that binging-after-a-long-night-of-debauchary kind of way, dipping the crunchy, donut-like, deep fried sticks in the yummy soy milk. You might have the entire meal on a few rickety stools on some random sidewalk. The other diners would probably be far more rested than you and eye you suspiciously. You would just continue with the slurping.

Hypothetically.

But it kinda looks like it.

I have been almost tricked by otah several times. They have buns here with otah filling and if you’re in a hurry the darn thing kinda looks like a piece of fried spam in a pandesal. Anyway.

I had my first taste of otah a few Fridays ago because Chandra was denied rice by the fried tofu stall he ordered from and then was denied rice again by the otah man unless, of course, he ordered otah to go with his rice. Since Chandra is a herbivore, fish-based otah was not gonna happen for him so he passed it off to me.

Otah is fish that has been mashed up and mixed with lots of spices, rolled in banana leaf, and then grilled. When you order it comes out lookin’ like this:

This is a pretty big slab of otah. I’ve seen much smaller versions at other stalls. Notice the little toothpicks holdin’ it together? Once you unwrap your present, you get this beauty…

This picture makes you think my spam comment earlier is totally out of line but I promise you that if cut properly it really does look like spam.

Back to the otah. The texture is pasty and it doesn’t hold up much on it’s own. You can definitely taste coconut milk and curryish spices mixed in with the flavor of banana leaf and fish. I think the taste is probably acquired. I didn’t hate it but I certainly didn’t love it and probably wouldn’t ask to try it again. In any case, something fun to try as it seems to be pretty popular with locals. Another local favorite crossed of my list.

Irene promised to introduce me to the finest Singaporean local cuisine a few weeks ago and we were finally able to get together this weekend to do the deed. I asked Therese to come join too so that I could have a fellow expat (a Pinay no less) to try new things with.

Since Irene grew up as an Eastie she suggested the hawker center at the Bedok Interchange. She jetted by to pick me up collect me (more Singlish) around 5pm and Therese MRTed over. We basically ate for 3 hours.

Consider this your warning. We ate a TON of food. If you’re hungry, this would be a good time to get a snack. Otherwise, your blog reading might be interrupted by a lot of stomach growling.

Black carrot cake. Neither carrot nor cake. I liked this tons better than the white version. Radish cake fried with egg and a sweet black sauce. It reminds me a bit of char kway teow and that is definitely a good thing.

I *think* this is called soon kueh. Honestly though, who can keep track of all the different kuehs around here. This was my least favorite of the stuff we had tonight. It had that semi-smelly/fermented radish taste from the filling that I’m not a fan of. The black stuff is a very potent dark soy sauce. The chili on this was good though – not too sweet. The MS book says that the outside of these are made with yam flour.

I had low expectations of chwee kueh since I tried something similar at a Vietnamese restaurant near work and it was not so good. This version was much, much better. The rice cakes are very soft. They look a bit like puto but they don’t have the same consistency. Radishes make another appearance on top. This time they are fried with garlic and soy sauce and are not stinky tasting at all. The chili sauce is a good addition too.

It’s a little bit unbelievable that I haven’t had nasi lemak in my entire time here but here’s its debut. The rice is pandan flavored and not as sticky as ho-hum steamed rice. Pandan is called screwpine in English. It’s very fragrant and is a common flavoring in Asian desserts.

That spam looking thing is… you guessed it – otah. This was better, more hefty, less pasty. The fried chicken wing was delicious. The little pile of mess on the left are my favorite ikan bilis and peanuts. Yum, yum, yum.

Rojak is just plain weird. Who thought of this? Our rojak had pineapple, apple, cucumber, bean sprouts, fried dough, and fried bean curd. The sauce has a base of shrimp paste. For good measure, they throw in a boatload of ground peanuts.

Let’s replay that back: veggies, fruits, shrimp paste, peanuts. Raaaaaaandom.

Weirdly good though. Something about sweet and salty together. As long as you’re ok with the shrimpy aroma, rojak is actually quite nice.

Okay where are we? Dish number 6? Prawn Hokkien Mee comes with plenty of eggs, two types of noodles – egg and rice – a few bits of cuttlefish, a spoonful of chili paste, and 2 shrimp. The kalamansi is a good complement. Simple and tasty.

Therese had to peace out to catch a play but we soldiered onward with dessert.

Brown stuff = sea coconut. On the top = sweet palm nut things. On the left under the kalamansi = aloe vera. On the bottom = ice. Multicolored madness = tadpoles. Okay, not REAL tadpoles. But they sure look like ‘em.

SEE?

Okay, phew. I’m spent. That was the ultimate Singapore hawker food evening. Thanks for the fun times Irene!

Bedok Interchange Hawker Center