Taiwan Sugarpalm

On the road back to Hualian my family and I had dinner at Jian-rou-szan-zhang villa(Chinese:劍柔山莊). It is a Garden full of aboriginal herbs and trees. I think its a great place where you can introduce others the aboriginal plants and culture in Taiwan. There are some Taiwan sugarpalm branches in a warehouse near the restaurant. Its peeled translucent fruit looks like litchi. I have seen  some monkeys and birds eating this fruit before.

I peeled one red fruit and couldn't help to eat it, then I felt my month and throat like many ants biting it. I asked the villa owner:"Can this fruit be eaten?"
She was very surprising and saw me with a big opened mouth said:"It can not be eaten, and it will make feel bad. Don't worry,  you will not sick or die."
The bad feeling is last about 4 hours. A terrible experience.

芶芡原理

說到芶芡，用到最多的當屬太白粉。太白粉可分為兩個種類：台灣太白粉、日本太白粉，差別如下：

種類	台灣太白粉	日本太白粉
色澤	較暗	較白
黏性	弱	強
還水	易	不易
價格	低	高

太白粉加水遇熱會凝結成透明的黏稠狀，在中式烹調（尤其是台菜）經常將太白粉加冷水調勻後加入煮好的菜餚中做芶芡，使湯汁看起來濃稠，同時使食物外表看起來有光澤。太白粉不能直接加熱水調勻或放入熱食中，它會立即凝結成塊而無法煮散。加了太白粉水煮後的食物放涼之後再次加熱，芶芡溶液會變得較稀，此現象稱為『還水』。

除太白粉可芶芡外，其他還有一些的粉亦可用於芶芡如地瓜粉（蕃薯粉）、玉米粉。地瓜粉呈顆粒狀，有粗粒和細粒兩種，通常家中購買以粗粒地瓜粉為佳。地瓜粉與太白粉一樣，溶於水中後加熱會呈現黏稠狀，而地瓜粉的黏度較太白粉更高，因此，在中菜芶芡時較少使用地瓜粉，因為黏度較難控制。地瓜粉較常使用於油炸，但由於黏性強，量多的羹類亦用它來芶芡，可以以較少的份量達到較大的效果。其中尤以台灣料理的肉羹、麵線羹、魷魚羹等最適合，不但省料，效果尤其好。玉米粉的功能和太白粉一樣，可以炸也可以芶芡，價格卻稍貴。最大的特色是用它做芶芡濃湯時不會發生像太白粉隔餐產生沉澱分解的還水情形。一般在西點製作上多利用玉米粉來使材料達到黏稠的特性而不使用太白粉。

芶芡物質原料雖都是澱粉，但澱粉的來源不同，性質還是不一樣，其芶芡效果亦不盡相同，例如透明度，加水、加熱而糊化的溫度，以及流動性都不同。

澱粉要當增稠劑，則必須在水中適當的加熱，當澱粉在水中加熱時，會產生糊化現象。糊化主要為澱粉顆粒吸收水而膨脹所造成。要形成良好的糊化，應使澱粉先均勻的散佈在水中，可先將澱粉先與水混合或溶於水中，使之充分溶解後，再加熱使之糊化。當澱粉吸水膨脹時，其密度會降低，顆粒將會增大，而其內部摩擦力亦會隨之增加，黏性便增加。糊化過程中，溶液的透明度會改變，藉由透明度的變化來判斷糊化是否完全，但仍要視澱粉的種類。影響澱粉糊化的因素有：澱粉的種類與濃度、加熱的溫度與情況、添加物的影響等。

Tomatoes with eggs(番茄炒蛋)

Tomato is full of umami but a little sourness,  so my mom add sugar to decrease the sourness and add salt, but soy sauce, for the umami material can be produced by fried tomatoes.

The traditional Taiwanese cusisine.

Integridient(4 people)

1. 4 tomatoes
2. 3 eggs
3. 2 bowls of water
4. 6 dried mushroom
5. 1 tbsp tea oil
6. 3 tbsp water
7. 2 tbsp
8. 1 tsp salt
9. 4 tbsp sugar

Direction

1. Add oil into wok over middle heat.
2. Fried the eggs until its side being brown.
3. Take out the fried eggs and add the mushroom sliced by hand
4. Fried the mushroom until smelling the aroma.
5. Add water and cubed tomatoes and boil the soup
6. Decrease the heat to small for 10 minutes.
7. Meanwhile in a separate pan boil the water to cook the noodle for 5 minutes
8. Add salt and sugar into the soup.
9. Put the noodle in the bowl with some soup and then put a fried egg on the dish.

Taiwanese wood ear salad

In 2016 QingMing Festival, my mother made wood ear salad for us.

Ingredient:

Wood ear	500g
Ginger	370g
Chili peppers	40g
Suger	20g
Soy sauce	1 tea spoon
Vinegar	1 tea spoon

Procedure:

1.Wash the wood ear with water, then tear it into 2cm pieces.
2.Put the wood ear into the clean water about 10 minutes, then the wood ear will be soften.

2.Slice the ginger, chili peppers.

3.Mix all the ingredients into a big bowl.

4.Cover it for half hour.

And eat it.

Fried Cabbage

My father send me a lot of cabbages. I made the fried cabbage for my daughter and wife.

Fried aroma(Chinese:爆香), a common Chinese cooking skill, is fried the spices or some aroma ingredient(ex. mushroom, chili) with oil to yield the aroma. Oil with heating greater then 120°C will let the sugar, aroma material and protein to yield the special aroma. The common fried aroma foods are as following:

1. Mushroom
2. spices
3. celery
4. chilli

Ingredient

1. half cabbage
2. brown sword belt(Chinese:柳松菇)
3. 2 mushroom
4. a tbsp of wolfberries
5. oil

Direction

1. Heats the oil until 120°C
2. Add the dried sliced mushrooms and brown sword belt into wok and fry them until the smell the aroma and displaying some brown in the food.
3. Add water, cabbage and wolfberry, and boiled them until the cabbage softening. 

tomato noodle

My mom usually make tomato noodle with my father's tomato harvested from my grandpa's farm on the middle of FongShan Reservoir(Chinese:鳳山水庫)  when I come back from Hualian.

The tomato is full of umami but a little sourness,  so my mom add sugar to decrease the sourness and add salt, but soy sauce, for the umami material can be produced by fried tomatoes.

Integridient(4 people)

1. 1 packet of noodle
2. 8 tomatoes
3. 4 eggs
4. 2 bowls of water
5. 6 dried mushroom
6. 1 tbsp tea oil
7. 1 tsp salt
8. 4 tsp sugar

Direction

1. Add the oil in the pan with middle heat.
2. Fried the eggs until its side being brown.
3. Take out the fried eggs and add the mushroom sliced by hand
4. Fried the mushroom until smelling the aroma.
5. Add water and cubed tomatoes and boil the soup
6. Decrease the heat to small for 10 minutes.
7. Meanwhile in a separate pan boil the water to cook the noodle for 5 minutes
8. Add salt and sugar into the soup.
9. Put the noodle in the bowl with some soup and then put a fried egg on the dish.

Taiwanese 100 Percent Whole Wheat Mantou

Mantou (Chinese: 饅頭, also called Chinese Steamed Bun) is a most common Taiwanese breakfast. Every day I steams 3 mantous and 3 cups of soy milk for my family.

Why we called it mantou?
A popular Chinese legend relates that the name mantou(饅頭) actually originated from the homophonous word mántóu(蠻頭), which literally means "barbarian's head".

The legend was set in the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 CE) when Zhuge Liang, the Chancellor of the state of Shu Han, led the Shu army on a campaign against Nanman forces in the southern lands of Shu, which correspond to roughly present-day Yunnan, China, and northern Myanmar.

After subduing the Nanman king Meng Huo, Zhuge Liang led the army back to Shu, but met a swift-flowing river which defied all attempts to cross it. A barbarian lord informed him that in olden days, the barbarians would sacrifice 49 men and throw their heads into the river to appease the river deity and allow them to cross. As Zhuge Liang did not want to cause any more of his men to lose their lives, he ordered his men to slaughter the livestock the army brought along, and fill their meat into buns shaped roughly like human heads (round with a flat base). The buns were then thrown into the river. After a 

successful crossing, he named the bun "barbarian's head" (mántóu, 蠻頭, which evolved into the modern 饅頭).Another version of the story relates back to Zhuge Liang's southern campaign when he instructed that his soldiers who had fallen sick from diarrhea and other illnesses in the swampy region be fed with steamed buns with meat or sweet fillings.

Taiwanese whole wheat flour
I didn't know that there is some farmers plant wheat in Taiwan before, and a day I read a book which introduce a company(喜願小麥農友團) plant and produce the Taiwanese whole wheat flour. It's surprise me so much that someone plants wheat in my country. Then I went out and bought one bag of this flour. 

I modified the normal flour mantou recipe for the whole wheat flour and keep the direction simple and fast. Whole wheat flour version has more water then the normal version. The water in the dough is about 66% but the normal flour only 45%.


Ingredient:

whole wheat flour	500g	100%
water	370g	66%
sugar	40g	8%
oil	20g	4%
dry yeast	1 tea spoon
salt	1 tea spoon

Direction:

1. Combine water, sugar and yeast into a mixing bowl and stir it until developing a foam on the mix.
2. Add the flour into the mix, knead it to become a dough for 10 minutes.
3. Form the dough to ball and put it in a medium bowl, then wrap a small cloth for 1 hour.
4. Roll out the dough into 1/4" thin flat on the mat, then roll the flat dough into 2" wide log. 
5. Cut the log dough into 12 cubes.
6. Let the cubes stay for 40 minutes until double bigger.
7. Stem the cubes for 15 minutes.