Saturday, January 26, 2008
The Perfect Mash
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Wat's in store for 2008?
Sunday, January 13, 2008
A banana in Taiwan
Lemongrass juice. I felt I was downing a bottle of insect repellant. My coliks loved it though - said it was very refreshing.
Next was better, a plateful of colourful fresh taufus, vegetables, fishballs and meatballs. Taiwanese seem to love freshly cut capsicums.
There was a special sauce prepared to go with the steamboat. Yeap. Its blended lemongrass leaves with a dark sauce. Hmmm this was ok.
You wouldnt be able to guess what this is.
Salt baked fish! And true to the day's theme, it was stuffed with lemongrass! Arrrgghhhhhh
Taiwanese food is always packed beautifully. We had packed lunch boxes on one of the days. They use coloured rubber bands and tied them around the boxes to form patterns.
Woo hoo! not like our regular economy rice pack eh? Pan fried salmon and roasted chicken drumstick, tempura sweet potato and a big juicy prawn... mm mmm. Lots of colourful side dishes too :)
On one of the nights, we went to a shop that was famous in Tainan. For cooking minced meat in a pot that is n-e-v-e-r washed. See the man scooping from that pot over there?
ewwww... I'm not sure what the speciality is but i gather from the conversation that the pot will keep the fragrance of the meat and the dish gets tastier the longer the pot is used.
This is the bowl of noodles with meat from the old unwashed pot. Till date, that pot has held out for 5 years without a wash.
The helpings are small too and people would usually order several bowls. As the Chinese say, One bowl, one mouthful.
There were other pretty unique dishes in this shop too. These are slices of fish eggs served with cuts of white radish. The fish eggs were tasty and pretty strong but it was balanced by the slight bitter taste of the radish.
Slices of fish skin. Another unique Taiwanese dish. Deliciously smooth and went well with the sweet dark sauce.
They also served it in soup with ginger .. yummy.. light and refreshing.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Cheers!
Ben Franklin said:"In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria"
In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 liter of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. coli) - bacteria found in feces. In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop.
However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or tequila, rum,whiskey or other liquor) because alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting.
Remember: Water = Poop, Wine = Health
Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk silly, than to drink water and be full of crap.