Sichuan food is hugely popular in Taiwan, served everywhere from street corner greasy spoons to top-ranking hotel restaurants. During its enforced sojourn in Taiwan, Sichuan cuisine has changed so much that many food writers claim that it has long since ceased to be authentic. Now, with greater exchange between China and Taiwan, the divergent streams of Sichuan cuisine are flowing back together, and the results are on display at events such as the Sheraton Hotel’s Sichuan Food Festival, which runs until April 4.
This festival has been preceded by a recent fact-finding trip by senior kitchen staff to Sichuan. According to executive sous-chef Lin Cheng-ching (林正青), such trips are not a simple case of going to the source in search of authenticity. “What is Sichuan food today? In China, the food and beverage industry is hugely competitive, and everyone is looking to find ways of distinguishing their food,” said Lin.
Abby Chen (陳玥琪), marketing communications supervisor at the Sheraton, said that one of the most interesting results of the trip was the inclusion of upgraded versions of Sichuan-style street food to the festival’s menu. “Everyone in Taiwan is familiar with banquet and family dishes such as kung pao chicken (宮保雞丁) or mapo tofu (麻婆豆腐), but street food is not so well-known,” said Chen.
Photo courtesy of The Sheraton Hotel
This can be seen in dishes such as the intensely flavored Sichuan skewer (四川串), which is composed of highly spiced bamboo shoot chunks, beef tendon, duck intestine and pig’s kidney, or the simple stewed goose heart (山椒滷鵝心) with marinated wild zanthoxylum (野山椒) (also called Sichuan peppers), which are playful and elegant concoctions based on foods that you might expect to pick up at the Chengdu long-haul bus terminal.
Dishes such as the beef tripe with shrimp (牛百頁旺蝦) have elements taken from Sichuan-style pork intestines (五更腸旺) and duck blood in spicy broth (麻辣鴨血), both widely available in Taiwan, but here distinguished by the use of fine leaf tripe, large fried shrimp and a chili broth of deep complexity.
Chef Lin said that adapting such dishes is about finding the right balance of flavors and textures for the modern urban palate. Pointing to the giant grouper in spicy Sichuan sauce (水煮龍膽魚), he said that in Sichuan, such a dish would be served floating in oil, the better to carry the spicy flavors. “That would be normal there, but would not be acceptable here,” he said.
Photo courtesy of The Sheraton Hotel
The clever use of chocolate habanero peppers, combined with the ubiquitous zanthoxylum, gives the dish a low intensity burn that accentuates the delicate flavor of the fish rather than smothering it.
Lin also said that the expectations of what constitutes Sichuan food varies considerably in Taiwan and in the cuisine’s home region. “Pretty much all these dishes have been toned down in terms of the intensity of their spicy hotness,” Lin said. “In a normal Sichuan meal, not all the dishes are spicy, but those that are pack a real punch, more than most people here could stomach.”
What Lin and his team have done is to create a menu of largely spicy dishes that form a spectrum incorporating a wide variety of nuances, rather like a series of variations on the theme of spiciness. Levels of hotness vary from the mild pork intestine with chili pepper (尖椒肥腸), which uses a slightly sweet green chili commonly referred to in Taiwan as the glutinous rice chili (糯米椒), to the stir-fried seasonal vegetables with minced pepper (剁椒炒時蔬), which uses hot green chilies. The smoky heat of sun dried red chilies in the fresh shrimp with spicy pepper (椒麻鮮蝦) offer yet another distinct taste. For the chili lover, it’s all spicy, but each dish is different.
Lin was also keen to point out that traditional Sichuan food, as one of the eight main regional cuisines of China, had plenty of dishes that did not feature chilies as the main ingredient or flavoring. As befits any major cuisine, some of these dishes are technically demanding to prepare, such as the pan-fried duck pancake (鍋貼煎鴨餅), which features half a de-boned duck fried in a heavy pancake batter, or the steamed pork belly with red bean paste and sweet glutinous rice (紅豆甜燒白), the kind of intensely flavored dessert that somehow manages to taste divine despite the slices of fatty pork belly on top.
The Sheraton Hotel’s Sichuan Food Festival is subtitled “100 flavors of Sichuan” and the wide variety of dishes, ranging from seldom seen classics to unexpected twists on popular items, makes for a great miniature culinary tour. Main courses range from about NT$350 to NT$800.
The festival menu is available at the The Guest House restaurant (請客樓), which is open from 11:30am to 2:30pm and 6pm to 10pm on the hotel’s 17th and 18th floors. The Sheraton is located at 12, Zhongxiao E Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市忠孝東路一段12號). For bookings, call (02) 2321-1818.
Taiwan has next to no political engagement in Myanmar, either with the ruling military junta nor the dozens of armed groups who’ve in the last five years taken over around two-thirds of the nation’s territory in a sprawling, patchwork civil war. But early last month, the leader of one relatively minor Burmese revolutionary faction, General Nerdah Bomya, who is also an alleged war criminal, made a low key visit to Taipei, where he met with a member of President William Lai’s (賴清德) staff, a retired Taiwanese military official and several academics. “I feel like Taiwan is a good example of
“M yeolgong jajangmyeon (anti-communism zhajiangmian, 滅共炸醬麵), let’s all shout together — myeolgong!” a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Dongtan, located about 35km south of Seoul, South Korea, calls out before serving a bowl of Korean-style zhajiangmian —black bean noodles. Diners repeat the phrase before tucking in. This political-themed restaurant, named Myeolgong Banjeom (滅共飯館, “anti-communism restaurant”), is operated by a single person and does not take reservations; therefore long queues form regularly outside, and most customers appear sympathetic to its political theme. Photos of conservative public figures hang on the walls, alongside political slogans and poems written in Chinese characters; South
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) announced last week a city policy to get businesses to reduce working hours to seven hours per day for employees with children 12 and under at home. The city promised to subsidize 80 percent of the employees’ wage loss. Taipei can do this, since the Celestial Dragon Kingdom (天龍國), as it is sardonically known to the denizens of Taiwan’s less fortunate regions, has an outsize grip on the government budget. Like most subsidies, this will likely have little effect on Taiwan’s catastrophic birth rates, though it may be a relief to the shrinking number of
Institutions signalling a fresh beginning and new spirit often adopt new slogans, symbols and marketing materials, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is no exception. Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), soon after taking office as KMT chair, released a new slogan that plays on the party’s acronym: “Kind Mindfulness Team.” The party recently released a graphic prominently featuring the red, white and blue of the flag with a Chinese slogan “establishing peace, blessings and fortune marching forth” (締造和平,幸福前行). One part of the graphic also features two hands in blue and white grasping olive branches in a stylized shape of Taiwan. Bonus points for
RSS