Home-cooked Taiwanese Cuisines

by: Hongzi Pan

Taipei Taiwan: Hui Ji Zheng 2008, $250.00, Paperback
ISBN: 978-986-84831-5-6

Reviewed by: Jacqueline M. Newman
Spring Volume: 2010 Issue: 17(1) page(s): 22

Forty-two recipes in Chinese and English provide the ingredients as a paragraph, the method with steps listed is in standard style. Wish publishers always listed the ingredients, too. Less chance to make errors.

Each recipe has a full-color photograph of its completed dish. Every recipe includes many unusual ingredients. They entrance as does the Steamed Salted Yolk with Ground Pork which stands tall in taste. We used belly pork and had the butcher grind several pounds for us. Never thought to do that before. It is a great idea and an item we will use often in the future as it is valuable in a great many other dishes. A few tablespoons improve a soup, casserole, or almost any, no make that they can improve almost every dish.

Deep-fried Prawn Toasts sounds typical but looks and tastes special. In it seeded pieces of watermelon and salted duck yolks decorate the top while squid, pork, and shrimp flavor it. Even the jelly fish (in this book called sea jelly) tastes better than usual. Why? The author cleverly enhances it with bonito essence, black vinegar, soy paste, and sesame oil.

Steamed Salted Yolk with Ground Pork
Ingredients:
1/4 pound ground streaky pork
3 Chinese black mushrooms, soaked until soft, stems removed, then minced
3 teaspoons cucumber juice
1 teaspoon rice wine
1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon ginger juice
1/2 clove garlic, crushed
2 pieces heat-proof plastic wrap
2 salted duck yolks
2 sprigs fresh coriander
Preparation:
1. Mix pork minced black mushrooms, cucumber juice, rice wine, white pepper, soy sauce, and sesame oil, and stir well. Add garlic and ginger juice and stir well and until sticky.
2. Line each of two tall individual metal pop-over-type pans with the heat-proof plastic paper.
3. Flatten duck yolks and put into bottom of the lines pans, then divide pork mixture in half and fill each pan with half the port mixture. Make the top level.
4. Steam over boiling water for forty minutes, then remove from the steamer and invert on two serving dishes, and garnish with coriander. Then serve.

Flavor and Fortune is a magazine of: