Hualien Fare

Hualien City, Taiwan 

So the train after lunch at Mr. Brown’s coffee shop in Taipei, brought us to Hualien. Nice city / township, very small and quiet unlike Taipei.

It was dinnertime when we arrived, so we had a walk around the night markets to look for dinner. Stopped by a little restaurant whose name I’ve forgotten, and had regular Taiwanese food. They were advertising that they make their own noodles so we tried that.

To start I got us some century eggs. I love this shit, as you can tell from here. Apparently they are good anywhere around the world.

I had the seafood soup noodle. Not much seafood here, just a few squid rings and I don’t remember what else. Only so-so.

 

My friend had stir-fried vegetables with kimchi sauce on rice, I don’t know how that went. 

 

Some home-made noodle slices here in kimchi sauce, stir-fried as well. They’re probably not what you’d call noodles, just dough that’s cut into trapezoid slices. But this was good.

Then some stir-fried beef and vegetables to share, these were very flavourful as you can tell from the thick sauce. A tad too salty to be had alone but we all had noodle/rice so that’s fine. Not bad, I was satisfied.

Continuing on we had some dessert but I only have this one pic of hot Tau Fu Fa with peanuts. My friend had the other one, a black herbal drink that I didn’t try, and since it’s just a cup of black liquid I decided not to take any photos either.

While they were buying dessert I went across the street to the convenience store, Family Mart if I’m not wrong, to buy me some of my kinda dessert, the local brews. This was the only one left by the time we got back to the dorm. Seen here posing in front of the Laphroaig which I picked up at the airport on my way into Taiwan.

I am too lazy to go thru all my old posts to check if I mentioned this, but if not, another thing about Taiwan, alcohol there is so effin cheap, so cheap I want to move there. I’m serious too. I was totally entertaining that thought each time I step out of the 711 or bottle shop with a new purchase. This can? It’s 500ml, that’s a pint, and only $1.30.

DAAAAAAAAAAyyyyyyyymmmnnnnnnnnnnnnn……

Ramli Burger - $0.94

Outside Most 7-11s in Malaysian Cities

This… now THIS… yes this.. this is t3h bomb. Ramli burger. No Malaysian doesn’t know it. It’s the unofficial Malaysian dish. In fact maybe by the next generation it will be the official Malaysian dish, overtaking nasi lemak.

What I got this time is a “Burger Daging Special”. Daging = meat = usually means beef, special = means they will add an egg in. I wonder why I didn’t get the Burger Daging Double Special, which means 2 meat patties.

This here… cheap bread, REALLY cheap meat of questionable sources, cooked in butter, cucumber slices and sauce. Sound normal? Yes. However, the secret here is the sauce. Maggi brand soy sauce and ANY cheap-branded chilli sauce and mayonnaise (probably Lady’s Choice, a local brand). It’s essential. Try making a Ramli burger without these and it will fail MISERABLY.

What they do is take the burger buns/bread and put it on the giant wok/grill, that’s usually completely layered in butter. Then they take a piece of Ramli brand meat patty, slice it in the middle and slap it onto the grill. If you asked for a Special, which I did, they will crack an egg on too, and drop that piece of meat patty on top of it. Then right before the egg completely solidifies, they fold the egg over and around the meat, enveloping it.

The rest is standard fare; lettuce (sometimes) and cucumber on the now-hot-and-buttery bread/bun, put the meat on, squeeze your sauces and you’re good to go.

The pics show exactly how bad the “quality” of the burger is. However, its taste cannot, CANNOT, be rivaled. I mean I like my Mushroom Swiss from Chilli’s, or my occasional McD’s too, but this is a whooollleeee different story.

This is orgasm in every bite. This makes it into my list of top 5 stuff you HAVE to try in Malaysia.

If this is all a little incoherent, it’s cos I’ve had quite a bit to drink. And no that’s not what makes these so ridiculously awesome. I think.

Beef Noodle Soup from Shilin Night Market - $~1.40

Shilin, Taipei, Taiwan

Happy 2010 everyone, just back from a 3 week long trip around Taiwan. Well, 3 weeks ago, but I only have time to post now.

I’ve taken over 100 shots of the stuff I ate there, so I’ll probably be posting for weeks to come. I also probably won’t be as descriptive as before, and instead go ahead with mostly photos and accompanying captions. Since I don’t speak a word of Mandarin I should say now that I’ll be making up the names for most of the dishes. Also, I never took note of how much each and every dish were so guesstimates are all you’re gonna get. You’re welcome. Also, all the shots were taken using only a point and shoot. It may be a spectacular camera my S90, but with little to no photographic forethought before each shot, it can only do so much, so excuse the quality and lack of artistic flare.

We start off at Shilin Night Market, one of the more famous night markets in Taiwan. We went there on our very first night in Taiwan, but ended up there on our final night in Taiwan as well so expect to see more from this place much later on.

Here we have Beef Noodle Soup, from one of the many noodle stalls within the night market. More specifically, it’s beef chunks, tripe and stomach. You get to pick what type of noodle you want, for example egg noodles, rice noodles, vermicelli, etc. Nothing incredibly special about this. The price is between $1-1.40.

This is what my friend ate, rice with beef stew. Pretty unappetizing IMO. The beef stew was not all meat, half of it was fat. It’s not much of a complete meal, probably more of a snack or space filler or a deal closer and as such only costs about $0.60 maybe? I noticed it was really glistening with oil so I went to look for where this was prepared, and found the source. This is what the “stew” looks like. Ugh.. however I discover later that it’s sold all over Taiwan, so it must be a well known Taiwanese dish, and now I kinda regret not trying it.

Since I took a few more shots that night, I’ll include them in this post. It’s the only time you’ll see SLR shots of food, as it was the first day and I was excited enough to want to shoot everything  with the SLR.

The drink was a letdown, I think it’s supposed to be primarily kumquat juice with a bit of herbal tea and jelly. Well I only tasted the kumquat which is fine, but the jelly had no taste at all, yet it is served in pretty big bite-sized chunks. So when I was done with the drink I had about over a quarter cup of jelly with absolutely no taste. Probably cost me around $0.30 - $0.60.

The next you see someone frying vegetables and Ho Chien, or omelette with oysters which I believe is Hokkien. I never sampled it in Taiwan, cos from the many times I’ve seen   it cooked, I wasn’t really in the mood to. One thing I noticed about Taiwanese cooking, it’s oily as hell. I mean ridiculously oily. Like 7 layers of paper towel under this dish and it’d still soak right thru oily. But anyways we get this dish here in Malaysia so I’ll do a follow up one day.

Finally the last pic shows someone grilling Taiwanese pork sausages. These are available EVERYWHERE but I only ate this later on in the trip and not here where I took the pic, so I’ll post about it later.

The night isn’t even over yet, after this we walked on and found some more stuff to eat, but I’ll talk about that in another post.

See, told you I’d keep it short didn’t I?

Century Eggs - $0.41

Malaysian Chinese Hawkers – Lobak Stall

Since somebody’s being a lazy hobo (name starts with an e and ends with an rnest), I figured I’ll post the promised follow-up to the Balut post. Well not so much a follow-up as it is a related post and since I mentioned it there…. yeah you get the idea.

Century eggs. Very dark brown bordering on black, translucent, coral/snowflake patterns on the egg white (technically black), Dark grey-ish green yolk, again bordering on black.

Contrary to what Americans think of it, and that it is actually a 100 year old egg, it is not. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I did see at least 3 different and separate occurrences of this, one being Fear Factor. If that is indeed what you are thinking, give yourself some time now and think that through and you’ll see why that is impossible. I’ll give you some keywords to help the with the thought process : hatch, rot.

Century eggs are actually preserved eggs, the process of which include ash, clay, salt, lime and rice straw, lasting for several weeks to several months (Source: Wikipedia). The egg has a very strong ammonia smell to it, which brings us to popular misconception #2, and that is that the eggs have been marinated in horse urine. They haven’t.

But it does have a very strong taste to it, and the ammonia smell plays a big part in that. Once I bought some and steamed it (it’s always served hard boiled), it wasn’t ready yet but somehow the genius in me decided to give it a try. The egg-white was barely taking form. It was like jello, breaking form on contact. Because it was still steaming hot, when I took a bite the ammonia scent whiffed up my nose and I started tearing. All in good fun, I still ate it all. The yolk is the best part, having a custardy texture to it if cooked right and tasting/smelling like sweet and salty sulfur.

I don’t know if there are any health benefits to eating this, I’m guessing there are none. Popular dishes that have century eggs as an ingredient include the Century Egg and Lean Pork porridge which is mostly available during Dim Sum breakfasts.

There’s also the Penang Lobak (hence the suggestion to find this at the Lobak stall in any Chinese hawker), a mixture of fried tofu and other stuff (these eggs included) cut up into pieces and eaten with sweet sauce. I don’t normally eat Lobak, hence this post focusing only on century eggs rather than Lobak.

(Ed: I wrote this MONTHS ago and never posted it. I figured there was no point to it since this blog was dying. But *someone* promised to stop spending so much time on the Xbox 360 and post more, so here’s to keeping that promise, hobo.)

Balut from the corner of a dark street at Lapu-Lapu, Mactan Island - $0.25

All over Philippines.

My final Philippines post. Before going there I didn’t know what to expect of the country, its people, and the food they ate. But I knew about this one, and it was my mission to try this before leaving. Ironic that I should only find someone selling this on my very last night in Philippines. I was excited as hell, and wanted to eat it the way it’s meant to be eaten; by the side of the road where they sell it off a box behind a bicycle. But for the sake of taking better-lit pictures, I bought 2 to bring back to the hotel where the toilets are well lit and the toilet bowl is well within reach in case it really is as bad as people make it sound.

I’m no expert but as far as I know, balut is boiled (or steamed?) duck eggs at its mid-growth foetal stage. I was told it’s 2 months after they’ve been laid. And I don’t know how to make that not sound dirty.

It’s available all over Philippines and as far as I know they’re the only culture that eats this.

They mark the egg with an X where you are supposed to open it. I believe that is where the “clearing” is, as the other side is where the egg white and duck foetus is clinging to. You want to crack it open at the opening so you can drink the fluids that are in there, foetal juice if you will.

Being a smartass I decided to open the other end (the top of the egg).. and was met with egg white. So I peeled the whole thing vertically and there you have a side-view of what’s inside the egg.

The egg white is nearly inedible as it is really tough. It also has this veiny overlapping feature that… well I think they’re really veins. And along the entire egg is a black strand swirling around, thicker and darker than the other veins. That, I believe, should be the umbilical cord.

Although the overall structure of the bird is visible; beak, eye slit, feathers and all, but on contact the bird is actually very soft, almost jelly like. I suppose the bones aren’t fully formed yet, hence why I keep calling it a foetus instead of a baby bird.

Now I was REALLY excited when I bought these eggs, as I’ve been meaning to try this for a very long time now. However, after the slow process of unshelling the first egg, I lost my appetite, much to my surprise. I LOVE eggs, of any kind and any method or style of preparation, even ones that are black and translucent (look forward to this post in the future), so this should be no different. Yet somehow, no. Not this time. My friend pointed out that it could be due to the fact that i was standing over a toilet bowl. Maybe… maybe.

Anyhoo, after some slight hesitation and deep breaths I ate it. It just tastes like stale eggs, with a slight poultry taste to it. I know I’m not being overly helpful with the description here but YOU try eating a foetus and be descriptive about its taste. It’s eaten with salt and chili vinegar.. I tried it with and without and can’t decide whether there is any improvement with the extras or not. They don’t smell as bad as people make it sound, and they don’t taste as bad as people make it to be. It doesn’t taste GOOD, no siree, but it doesn’t taste bad. But it sure was an experience and I’m glad I can check this one off my list now.

Border Scramble Omelette from Bob Evan's - $7.99

402 Eagle Run Road, Newark, DE - (302)369-3122

The border scramble omelette is a three egg omelette stuffed with pepper-jack cheese, Bob Evans sausage, home fries, diced tomatoes and onions in a Ranchero sauce. Then it's topped with sour cream, scallions and more pepper-jack cheese.

Don't know what to say about this one except that I enjoyed it thoroughly. And if you like this one then check the next post...

Soufflé from Panera - $3.35

1191 East Ogden Avenue, Naperville, IL - (630)548-5070

I've never actually had a soufflé before, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it combines two of my favorite foods - eggs and croissants. Well, that's not completely accurate, because I don't believe the breaded part is technically a croissant, but it has the same flakiness to it. The best comparison to a soufflé I can come up with off the top of my head is that it's like eating a fluffy omlette set atop croissant bed. MmMmmmM...

The middle picture is of the turkey, sausage and potato soufflé and the bottom picture is for the spinach and artichoke soufflé. Each is about the size of a CD.

Sausage, Egg, & Cheese McGriddle from McDonald's - $2.30

1401 Governor's Place, Bear, DE - (302)836-1308

It seems all breakfast sandwiches are a combination of sausage/bacon/ham, egg, and cheese. This one's no different, but at least they tried to do something creative with the bread - the bun has been injected with syrup to give the sandwich a much sweeter taste.

I've heard people say they love it or hate it, so at the very least, it deserves a shot.

Monster Burger from Red Robin's - $9.79

101 W Main St, Christiana, DE 19702 - (302)455-9000

This burger normally comes with two beef patties, American cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, onions, mayo and pickle relish. But my arteries crave more cholesterol than that so I added a fried egg, and surprisingly, they didn't charge me any extra.

I wouldn't say there's anything outstanding about the burger, but it's a solid menu item that I would order again if I'm a little on the hungry side. It also comes with fries (see Pot Roast Burger for picture).

Unless your name is Cameron Diaz, this burger is will probably be too tall for your mouth to bite into comfortably, so expect a messy meal if you plan to eat with your hands instead of a knife & fork.

Sausage, Egg, & Cheese Croissan'wich from Burger King - $4.58

1170 Pulaski Highway, Bear, DE - (302)838-1900

The item is just as its name states - a croissant with sausage, egg, and American cheese in the middle. For some reason, they list the price of $4.58 for two sandwiches instead of listing $2.29 for one sandwich. It must be their marketing ploy to get fatties such as myself to order two instead of just one... and apparently it works because I end up ordering two whenever I go.

Anyway, I'm a huge sucker for croissants so this is probably my favorite item off their menu. I think you can substitute the sausage for either bacon or ham, but I always go for the sausage. (Insert gay joke here).

Enormous Omelette Sandwich from Burger King - $3.19

1170 Pulaski Highway, Bear, DE - (302)838-1900

This sandwich is 730 calories of heart attack goodness. The layers go: bun, egg, sausage patty, two strips of bacon, egg, cheese, and then bun. It's a good sandwich, but there's one other item I prefer to get over this one (to be posted tomorrow).