Our epic journey continues on in the run up to xmas and we started day 5 with a visit to a large department store in Zhubei called 四川吳抄手 遠百竹北店 and it was Michelin recommended for a few dishes, the slow roasted pulled pork being one of them:
It was very rich and flavourful but I thought the pork could have used more cooking time as it was a bit chewy.
The next day we went to an all you can eat buffet in Zhongli where I learned a few things…
1. There is lots of food including these amazing dimsum:
2. There are other food bloggers who seem less guilty about piling loads of food on their tables and taking a stack of images from all kinds of angles:
3. Some customers target certain choice foods. We saw one crazy person pile soft shell crab on 3 plates and make off with them leaving a trail of salty batter for everyone else to cry over. I hope she was sick.
In the evening it was home to Yangmei where the father in law had made his own version of slow cooked pork belly:
This was different to the one we had the day before. Same texture but the gravy / stock was much richer and silky. I think it probably had a much higher fat content. Either way, very nice and seems like home cooks over here and pretty ninja.
He also handed me some condiment I’m not sure at all about:
I’m not sure what fried gluten is or even that you could isolate it from flour. If any good readers have some guidance that would be cool. It tasted just weird and sickly.
And Xmas day was nearly up on us so what better way to spend Xmas eve than an, er, BBQ, Taiwan style:
We drank a stack of whisky and beer so all was good. I can’t remember much of what I ate TBF.
On Xmas day we took the Taiwan HSR down to Kaosiung and headed over one of the Lao Chiang Black Tea joints where I had a curry bun:
This was nice. The dough was more like sausage roll dough you get over in the UK and the curry filling was flavourful and like the curry you might get in a samosa.
This was nice and the pancake was light and fluffy but it needed some kind of dipping sauce like soy or chilli.
And there we are! Xmas Taiwan style and I’ll be adding more posts in the next few days. In the meantime, if you have any comments or advice about Xmas in Taiwan, hook me up in the comments!
Another goddam foodblog 