While working in Beijing two years ago, Ting Yuan-ju (丁員如) visited a Sichuan hot pot restaurant that had done something different: rather than allowing customers to pick and choose items to boil in a blood-red broth, chefs fried the customer’s chosen ingredients and served the steaming concoction “dry” in a large stainless steel bowl. The unusual hot pot Ting found at Longshunyuan (龍順圓) is famous in China’s capital and after a meal at Red Monster (紅魔王麻辣香鍋), her Taipei rendition of the Beijing original, it’s easy to understand why.
Located five minutes on foot from exit No. 2 of Zhongxiao Dunhua MRT Station (忠孝敦化捷運站), the restaurant’s small interior is framed by non-descript white walls. A half-dozen square tables each seat up to four and three booths in the front are roomy enough for six. Spices from Sichuan used in Red Monster’s dishes are on display in a glass case embedded in one wall.
Our party ordered the set meal (NT$598) for three to four, which came with the dry hot pot, soup, rice and tea. We then chose how spicy we wanted the food on a scale of one to eight, from “not spicy at all” (一點都不辣), to “psycho spicy” (變態辣). We opted for six, or “big spicy” (大辣).
The bitter melon soup, which I usually avoid for its strong flavor, pleasantly surprised with its light broth that had chunks of melon and ginger as well as blanched peanuts and clams. We also ordered some appetizers, including a dish of sweet green chili peppers with black beans that stood out for its unique smoky flavor.
Unlike spicy hot pot — the ingredients of which begin to taste the same after five minutes of boiling — dry hot pot retains the individual flavors of the chicken, beef, prawns, crab, noodles, broccoli, tofu and cabbage, while delicate hints of ginger and cardamom were discernable through the spicy sauce that the mixture was fried in. Vegetarian hot pots are also available.
Ting said that the biggest difference between the Beijing and Taipei restaurants is that hers doesn’t add salt to the food and she uses considerably less oil, which became apparent as we finished off the last morsels (there was only a tiny puddle of crimson oil at the bottom of the bowl).
If you go to Red Monster, its “water from heaven” (甘露水, NT$150), a clear, sweet drink made from corn, sweet potato, lily root and sugar cane, is highly recommended. It will cool the taste buds after a spicy and delicious meal.
Common sense is not that common: a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania concludes the concept is “somewhat illusory.” Researchers collected statements from various sources that had been described as “common sense” and put them to test subjects. The mixed bag of results suggested there was “little evidence that more than a small fraction of beliefs is common to more than a small fraction of people.” It’s no surprise that there are few universally shared notions of what stands to reason. People took a horse worming drug to cure COVID! They think low-traffic neighborhoods are a communist plot and call
Taiwan, once relegated to the backwaters of international news media and viewed as a subset topic of “greater China,” is now a hot topic. Words associated with Taiwan include “invasion,” “contingency” and, on the more cheerful side, “semiconductors” and “tourism.” It is worth noting that while Taiwanese companies play important roles in the semiconductor industry, there is no such thing as a “Taiwan semiconductor” or a “Taiwan chip.” If crucial suppliers are included, the supply chain is in the thousands and spans the globe. Both of the variants of the so-called “silicon shield” are pure fantasy. There are four primary drivers
The sprawling port city of Kaohsiung seldom wins plaudits for its beauty or architectural history. That said, like any other metropolis of its size, it does have a number of strange or striking buildings. This article describes a few such curiosities, all but one of which I stumbled across by accident. BOMBPROOF HANGARS Just north of Kaohsiung International Airport, hidden among houses and small apartment buildings that look as though they were built between 15 and 30 years ago, are two mysterious bunker-like structures that date from the airport’s establishment as a Japanese base during World War II. Each is just about
The female body is a horror movie waiting to happen. From puberty and the grisly onset of menstruation, in pictures such as Brian De Palma’s Carrie and John Fawcett’s Ginger Snaps, to pregnancy and childbirth — Rosemary’s Baby is the obvious example — women have provided a rich seam of inspiration for genre film-makers over the past half century. But look a little closer and two trends become apparent: the vast majority of female body-based horror deals with various aspects of the reproductive system, and it has largely been made by men (Titane and The First Omen, two recent examples
RSS