taiwaneats

Purple Mountain Yams  紫色山藥

Organic and fresh from the Ba Gua Mountains.  Shan Yao are a common food used in Chinese Medecine.  They are very good for you; useful in improving your qi.  This purple variety is less common than the white type used in medicine.  The flavor/ texture is simple, earthy and starchy; sort of like a potato.  However, there is a sliminess excreted when you cut them fresh very much like aloe.  I have to believe that this is essence of the good “stuff” in them.  There is a bit of crunch to them when fresh like jicama.  I am experimenting with cooking them but so far they have proved to be a nice addition to miso soup and stir fried vegetables.

蘋婆(Ping-Pong)

I haven’t posted for a long time.  Why?  I’m still eating things.  My diet has changed significantly with the absence of meats.  Its great eating vegetarian in Taiwan.  There are so many fruits and vegetables that I have neither seen nor heard of before.  Take this type of chestnut here for example.  I started seeing them in the past few weeks when I was on my way out to the mountains.  Some people sell them from the back of trucks near the highway entrance ramp but I bought mine from a nice Vietnamese lady and her Taiwanese husband out next to my favorite hiking area- “Qing Shui Yuan”  They are very rare and a specialty of the local area; very local to this part of Changhua county.  They have the texture of a chestnut but a slightly different flavor that you could compare to a floral yam.  Super tasty and nutritious, I hear they are good for your memory. The outside shell is already open.  You pull out the inner black oval nuts and boil them for about a half hour.  Then they are ready to eat.  You peel off the black shell and eat the inner yellow/ orange part.  Its wonderful to continue finding new exciting things to eat here.  Thanks to Chinese Culture for knowing of and about all things edible in the plant world!

Wu Wei Tsao Tang

more photos…

Wu Wei Tsao Tang 無為草堂 Taichung, Taiwan 台中，台灣  Second Visit

My second visit to this beautiful Teahouse up in Taichung.  Getting a little closer to figuring out the menu.  This time I had the dark roasted Dong Ding Wulong.  It was pretty good, but not my favorite type of tea.  I guess the only tea that you can get for the lower price is their House Ali Shan Wulong.  next time I’ll try this and then after that probably start bringing my own tea.  its a little expensive to have theirs and, as mentioned in my first post, the environment is the really special thing about this place.  This time I was able to sit at the little Japanese room that I noticed people taking an afternoon nap in before.  It is perfect for one or two people and you can enjoy a great view down on the pond.  I took a little time to read a wonderful tea book that was gifted to my by a new friend.  You couldn’t hope for a more ideal and relaxing place for reading a book about tea.  I’ll let the photos speak for themselves; there are just so many unique and special things that are naturally placed in this tea house!

Yo Sir Coffee House 右舍咖啡店長， Yuanlin, Taiwan 員林，台灣

Starbucks just isn’t good enough for Taiwan either!  This is the local high quality coffee shop right here in little Yuanlin.  I was surprised to see coffee of this caliber here in Taiwan, but what did I really know. Moving here from Portland, I may have been a little arrogant in thinking that I had already seen the best.  People tend to love their local top coffee roaster/ shop and Stumptown http://www.stumptowncoffee.com/ is tops but there’s lots of coffee nerds out there trying to harness all the best flavor from that bitter bean.   Any culture that can take Chinese Tea Culture to such a high level can certainly also master coffee brewing.  It seems the coffee people of Taiwan have learned quite a bit from friends up in Japan, where many folks are willing to go all out nerdy when it comes to food and drinks.  I was in a Japanese grocery store up in Taipei when I first got here and noticed quite a large selection of coffee brewing paraphenalia. Vacuum presses are quite esteemed.  The manager of 右舍, A-Yea, learned his skills up in Taichung where there is a growing group of coffee shops/ roasters.  They use a Faema Espresso machine very exactly pulling super perfect shots for the espresso drinks.  For single cup coffee they carefully grind and weigh the beans per cup for a cone filter drip.  I believe that A-Yea is more into sour flavours; so I hear.  I’ve seen African and Latin American beans being used here but they probably have a lot more.  There is coffee being grown here in Taiwan but I guess the quality is not up to local Coffee maestros’ standards yet.  Honestly, I’m more in to tea and don’t often get coffee here.  Sometimes I get hot chocolate.  Everything I’ve had is superb though.  The phenomena of the Taiwanese Coffee Shop of this style is not only the amazing quality of the product.  Its the coffee shop culture that is duplicated from the North American/ European model right down to the espresso drink art and the aesthetics of the decor.  It seems that the model is admired and people here are starting from this foundation to develop it to greater heights.  Many coffee shops in America just go with the style but fall way short on quality.  Here there is no room for one without the other.

 Di Hua St., Datong neighborhood, Taipei, Taiwan

This is the second oldest neighborhood and has character for days.  If I could live up in Taipei, I think I would choose to live in this section of the city.  It includes the previously posted Wang’s Youji Teashop as well as the smaller above pictured teashop which has just as much history.  If you can read Chinese, check out what he has listed as his special teas on the sign.  He both sells fine rare teas and deals in antique cast iron Japanese kettles which is his niche market.  He was so full of joy and spirit, a pleasure ti be around.  A great old man willing to profess the wonders of tea and share his knowledge with a random tea lover from a far away land like me.  I the short time spent in his shop, I am thankful to have learned some rather specific tea growing information.  Someday, I will go back and find this shop again.  I plan to write more about this delightful aged neighborhood in the future but for now check out the above pictures as a sort of preview.  Let yours eyes soften and walk these quiet lanes by way of these mere photos.  Thanks!

Wang You Ji Ming Cha, Taipei, Taiwan   王有記名茶，台北，台灣

I visited this famous tea shop back in February when I was up in Taipei for a week.  Surprising, I learned about it from “Rough Guide, Taiwan” of all places.

Housed in a beautifully restored building, this teashop was first established in Fujian, China, in the 1880’s and opened here after the family fled the mainland in 1949- you can sample high quality Taiwanese tea inside.

I thought it was definitely worth a visit based on that short description but still couldn’t help but be a little skeptical due to the source.  Well, I certainly wasn’t let down; to this day, 3 months later, its still some of the best tea I have found so far in Taiwan.   I walked in and paused a minute to say hello to the beautiful pet bird proudly perched on display.  I was greeted by the lovely proprietor of the shop with a cup of one of their specialty teas; Qi Zhong Cha 奇種茶.  We began to discuss their teas and she quickly realized that i knew at least a thing or two about Chinese Tea.  We sat down to try their special Tieguanyin Oolong  鐵觀音烏龍.  I introduced myself by telling her a little about my background with tea businesses in America that import Chinese and Taiwanese Teas.  In addition, I’ve spent countless hours teaching myself all I can about tea by way of both practice and research.  Things are somewhat limited in America in this respect but I am thankful and feel fortunate for having met those tea lovers and experts that I have in San Francisco and Portland.  I openly let her know that it was my aim to continue learning, meeting more tea lovers/ experts/ visionaries, writing with an experiential anthropological approach and living all things tea culture in Taiwan.  She asked me if I drink my tea strong or light.  I replied: not always the same.  She further specified with the gaiwan before her, “1/8, 1/4 or 1/3 full of dry leaves?”  I pointed somewhere between 1/8 to 1/4.  I was amazed at the way she made this Tieguanyin.  As we continued to talk the tea kept steeping probably over 3 minutes.  For the amount of leaves in there, it seemed rather long.  She poured the tea directly into our cups Chaozhou style.  It was ruby red and flat out the best Tieguanyin Tea  I have ever had.  I realized that the water she was using was hot but quite a bit below boiling in order to really pull out the deep flavors in the first steeping.  This tea is rolled very tight though and lasts for so many steepings.  I have since shared this tea with quite a few people and they have all been very impressed with it.  We then took a brief tour of the operations behind the storefront.  It was a small tea processing factory.  They actually make the tea here.  This was my first time laying eyes on this type of operation.  I started to realize that now I was in the source- no longer drinking teas that have been shipped half way across the world.  Wang’s only has two shops in Taiwan but they seem to have quite a few customers and shops in Thailand, Malaysia and Japan. 

I managed to make it out of there with out buying too many things.  Just two types of tea; the Tieguanyin and the Qizhongcha which I was anxious to try out at home.  At this point I still didn’t know where the company would decide to have me live and teach in Taiwan.  I was hoping that I would be placed in Taipei so I could be so close to all the great tea culture.  Its been 3 months now and I still haven’t been back but have since been happy too discover that there are great tea friends to be found in all parts of this island. 

Ba gua Mountain Tea Farm, Zhushan Nantou Taiwan

We drove down to Zhushan a few weekends ago without any specific destination in mind other than hopefully making it all the way to San Lin Xi.  Zhushan is now for its higher production of Jinxuan, Jade and Siji Oolongs so I was hoping to somehow stumble on some better examples of those varietals of Taiwan Oolong.  I haven’t come across much of them so far in Taiwan.  Qing xin Oolong defenitely seems to be the most prized.  At the local tourism office we stopped for some Nantou maps and the friendly woman there recommended we drive out to this Tea Farm for some picturesque scenery.  We figured it was worth a try so followed her directions.  It was much further out of town than we could have imagined.  Heading deep into the mountains we crossed washed out roads, admired vibrantly green bamboo forests and noticed the weather change many times.  As we climbed higher and higher we grew more and more concerned about the amount of fuel left in the tank.  Eventually we made it.  Up in the clouds they grow Qing xin Oolong not the lower elevation varietals.  At this farm they relegate some machine cut leaves for nicer style tea bags and then the best hand picked stuff top grade high mountain style oolong.  It was a fine example of the famous tea with the hallmark creaminess, throat coating effect, returning aftertaste and full bodied sweetness.  The proprietor at the tasting room let us know that we could consider the tea “San Lin Xi” because the farm is located so near that area and the earth type is the same.  I gazed out on the rolling tea fields and wondered what it would be like to live out in the mountains on a remote tea farm like this.