Taiwanese Breakfast

We should never ignore the breakfasts of great food cultures. Breakfast usually consists of simple, starchy, easy to digest items and can be an excellent look into what a culture considers "comfort foods," things best eaten when suffering from heartbreak, rejection, fever, hangover (all part of a consistent state of being in your early 20s).

Breakfast is kind of a big deal in Taiwan. From my childhood visits to Taipei, I have wonderful memories of mornings walking down to the breakfast shop next to my grandmother's apartment to fill up a tin can with sweet, steaming hot soymilk and carrying it back with a plastic bag full of greasy delights to be enjoyed at the kitchen table. So, during my recent return to the motherland after more than 10 years, I was insistent on eating authentic Taiwanese breakfast every goddamned day.

The most popular breakfast items in Taiwan are dou jiang (soymilk), and a number of savory starchy items: you tiao (fried dough sticks: light, crispy, and savory, can be dipped into the soymilk), shao bing you tiao (you tiao wrapped in thin, flaky sesame bread), fan tuan (glutinous rice stuffed with you tiao, pork sung, and minced pickles), dan bing (egg pancake), luo buo gao (savory daikon cake, usually includes some ground pork for additional flavor), and man tou/ hua juan (steamed buns in various shapes and sizes).

Top left, clockwise: dan bing, shao bing you tiao, fan tuan

The most important item is the soymilk, which can be sweet or savory. The sweet version is smooth and creamy, and can be enjoyed hot (served in a bowl with a spoon), or cold (out of a cup with a straw). The savory version is always served hot, curdled with vinegar, and includes minced pickles and chopped you tiao.

Savory soymilk

I'm not sure if this stuff is so irresistable to me because of my partial Taiwanese roots, but I'm pretty sure it's just because it's damn good.

More Taiwan posts to come...

Nose to Tail Dinner at Eccolo

goat tongue, endive, beet salad

house cured charcuterie & cheese

I LOVE ICE CREAM SANDWICHES

Haiku for the Superior Bagel

Hard and crunchy shell
and a warm, inside yielding.
New York through and through.

(Salt bagel with scallion cream cheese from H&H)

Vegan Dinner Party?

This post is long overdue. Vegan dinner party = A's worst nightmare. The night turned out to be a series of failures minus the sauteed kale. We made the pumpkin ziti from Veganomicon (needed more salt, oil, flavor? idunno) and sauteed kale (in lots of earth balance) and an apple crisp (not pictured, not crisp).

Anchor & No Hope

Image courtesy of SF Mag

All seriouslyfood-ers were present as we celebrated our 9-5's by spending our hard earned cash on a bottle of bubbles and some fries with eyes. Our anticipations were high on the recently opened, nautical-themed restaurant Anchor & Hope (same owners as Salt House and Town Hall). The decor was cafeteria-chic (or open and lofty), and our service was equally cafeteria-like with 8 different servers waiting on us.

I met Erica and Allison there, who were already clearly sauced up for the night. The minute we received the menu, Allison exclaimed her items of choice, "Pork belly! Bacon wrapped oysters! Fries with eyes! Broccoli rabe! Garlic soup with anchovy tapenade!" After I calmed her down with some gentle taps on the head, we settled on the Angels on Horseback (bacon wrapped oysters), Fries with Eyes (deep fried smelts with remoulade), and a side of broccoli rabe to get those greens in. The seaweed and sea salt garnishings decorating the Angels on Horseback might have been more memorable than the dish itself, which was good but not GREAT. The remoulade accompanying the less than crisp "fries" tasted like a fancy (or not so fancy) version of thousand island. And the side of broccoli rabe, while nice and garlic-buttery, were maybe overcooked? I thought so at least; my problematic-untouching teeth had a difficult time chewing.

All would have been forgiven on the average appetizers (after all, they are appetizers) except that our entrees were just as unremarkable. In retrospect, the appetizers may have been the highlight of the meal. Erica's boullaibaisse was boullai-bad. Allison's lobster pot pie with brandy cream sauce, tasted like buttered brandy (not creamy!) with undercooked celery root and a shred of lobster. I ordered the petrole sole with preserved lemons and almonds after securing that 1) the dish was the server's favorite entree and 2) the preserved lemons did not have a strong presence (after Allison expressed her dislike of the pinesol-tasting slivers). Props for having fish with bones and props for filleting it for me (I knew there had to be a catch when I saw fish with bones on the menu, and we were the only group of Asians). The sliced almonds were a bit distracting as I couldn't differentiate an almond from another fish bone when all mushed up in my mouth (poor fillet job, bud). The fish could have used more flavor, or some salt. I kept eating only in anticipation that the dish would get better (which it didn't). At last our meal ended with earl grey tea on Erica's side and some over-baked gingerbread served with a, as always, less-than-enough scoop of gelato. We went dutch on the bill and signed away a half day's worth of work.

Two blocks away, Erica hurled her boullaibaisse out, and Allison and I left feeling stuffed without an ounce of happiness.

Seriously?

I know we aim to be serious here at seriouslyfood, but woah