Dining in Taiwan 2011 part 2

Did this pic on our drive to sun moon lake. Took the pic with my iPhone and used the colorburst app. Anyhow, not bad with an iphone and doing the photo work with your finger on a bumpy car ride up a mountain. This is part two of my food post for my trip to Taiwan. It's been really neat, I've seen a ton of interesting stuff like, temples, lakes and mountains (we got up to 13,000 ft) and of course the food. So much neat food  and I have so many pictures I decided I needed to just pick out a few highlights and go from there. 

Interesting preparation: TIlapia sliced length wise stuffed with greens and aromatics. Then folded width wise  tied and deep fried fried. The fish is extremely tender and the exterior fins and bones are completely edible.  

Green Tofu with sesame and peanuts in soy vinegar sauce. Auntie said it was made from green beans (perhaps as opposed to white dried soy beans for soy milk). Maybe fresh soy beans like the edamame you eat in restaurants I was unable to get a clarification. The really neat thing is that the restaurant where this dish and the fish above were taken, all of the produce is literally grown right outside the restaurant. Talk about local sourcing! Super fresh food and the most tender Chinese water spinach I've had.

Hands down the most unusual breakfast I have ever had. Mexican stone leaf (i think it's a succulent type plant) two types of bitter gourd, Clams in Soy sauce broth, salted duck egg, two types of siu mai braised tofu, jelly fish salad, dragon fruit, boiled sausage, and of course bacon. I crowded the most interesting things into this one plate. It's a little weird but for both the ham and the sausage they were "boiled". They had the traditional Congee as well, and they had some other stuff that I just couldn't get to. It's good to see that no matter the culture bacon still makes the breakfast menu.

We went to Fulong city they are famous for they're train bentos. One of my cousins was telling my sister, "oh yeah if you go to Fu Long you've got to get their bento". This box of food is produced out of a very small kitchen. You don't get any choices here the only question the person in the kitchen asks is: "Ji Ge?" How many? There was a line of easily 50 people ahead of us ordering stacks of these boxes. It's the simplest of lunches, five spice braised meat, tofu, and egg, pickled mustard greens, sauteed fish cake, slab of braised pork belly (which apparently is everywhere here), sausage, cabbage over a bed of rice. The cost? 45 yuan, like a buck and half. If you get it on the train they mark it up to 100, but if you're not stopping at Fu Long then you don't have much of a choice.

We dined at the Imei factory. They are very famous for their cookies and pastries. Many people buy their specially packaged cookie "tins" as presents for folks back home. They recently opened a restaurant and served fresh made dim sum. The above is a pastry that is stuffed with sweet roasted pork and paste made with dates and honey. Very tasty! Their sign at the front claims that they are about sustainable organic foods. I think there's a pretty big movement on this type of dining here in Taiwan. Most people eat out because they have limited kitchen space and the food is extremely inexpensive this makes it doubly more important that what they consume is chemical free. 

I've managed to catch a cold I'm not sure how much more posting I'll get in, we'll see. Nothing like being sick to make you miss home.