Sweet and Sour is not Real Chinese Food

This is a side dish in Noodles Stands (麵攤), Bento Stores (便當店) in Taiwan. Yes, it's everywhere. You can make hard boiled eggs into Taiwanese Braised Eggs or Japanese Marinated Soft Boiled Eggs (Ajitsuke Tamago 溏心蛋). We love to eat chilled braised eggs or Ajitsuke Tamago in the summer. Here is the recipe, hope you like it!

This is normal cooking dish of every household in Taiwan. We can buy this everywhere in the traditional supermarket, noodles stands, braised food stands... Everyone knows dried Tofu is very easy to turn bad. I can buy this from an Asian grocery store around here, but I like to make by myself. At least I know what ingredients in my homemade dried tofu. It's very easy, but it takes time. :)

The traditional Hakka Salty Pork (客家鹹豬肉) only used salt and cooking wine to marinate. Now I add other spices to enhance the flavor. (Well, it is nice to say to enhance the flavor, in fact I want to blend the pork smell.) Here is my recipe, hope you like it!

About Taipei

Taiwan Three Styles of Duck It is derived from Beijing Duck. We cook duck by hanging in a furnace. Taiwan Three Styles of Duck starts first by using slices of duck skin and duck meat without bones, and we roll them in to a very thin spring-roll style "wrapper" with sweet bean sauce and green onion (as known as duck pie). Secondly, if we run out the wrapper, we will eat the duck skin and duck meat to dip with sweet bean sauce. Thirdly, we chop the remaining duck bone and meat to be stir-fried with sweet bean sauce, chili sauce and basil. Taiwan Three Styles of Duck is very popular. There are two way to sell Three Styles of Duck in Taiwan. One is in the restaurant, the other one is street food style selling by food truck. If there is good taste duck, you have to make a reservation or get into the line to wait for 2 hours. There is no authentic Taiwan Three Styles of Duck in Austin. Duck is always too salty to me. They did not use spring-roll style "wrapper" to roll with duck. And we never have stir-fired the remaining duck bone and meat. I want to cook this kind of duck for a long time. Finally, I found the way to hang the duck. I made the spring-roll style wrappers by myself as well. It is not really difficult at all after making this dish.

Jelly Fish Chinese eat Jelly Fish since the 10th century. In Taiwan, we normally mix with shredded baby cucumber and carrot, and seasoning with garlic, salt and sesame oil. taiwanesekitchen

Hakka Braised Pork Thigh We call this dish Hakka "Fone" Meat. Hakka has this dish in banquet and Chinese New Year. I am Hakka, I have this dish every day during Chinese New Year when I visit my relatives (grandma, uncle, auntie, cousins...). We use low heat to slow pan-fried the fat out of pig thigh then put seasonings to slow braise the pork thigh and put dried bamboo shoots. Hmmmm so good! 客家封肉 封肉是小火慢燉，我記得我阿婆會說"炆"控肉。在客家筵席中和過年一定會吃到這道菜，我過年每餐都吃到這道，從東家吃到西家。小火將肥油煎出後加上調位料慢燉豬蹄膀最後加筍乾（節節高昇）。吃起來油而不膩真是讚到爆！

Braised Pork (Hõng Ròu) It’s original from Taiwan. It is also one of popular street food in Taiwan. We have two different kind of braised pork, one is ground pork (Ru Ròu), the other one is chunk of pork belly (Hõng Ròu). Hõng Ròu is chunk of pork belly with soy sauce, sugar and spices to slow cook until soft. We eat Hõng Ròu over the rice or with steam bun (Taiwanese hamburger).