Last week my sister brought me a bunch of Taiwanese cookbooks I'd left in Los Angeles. This weekend, J and I tackled one of the most popular Taiwanese dishes of all time: oyster noodles (oh ah mee sua). Traditionally, you get the choice of having this dish with pigs' intestines and oysters, or just intestines. As (bad) luck would have it, we couldn't find any appropriate oysters at 99 Ranch this weekend and had to go for just intestines.
The result was not bad, but could use a lot of work. Next time we're going to do a few things differently to increase the depth of flavor and really pump up this dish. But in terms of basic texture and flavor, we did everything right. I'd even say we did better than most Taiwanese restaurants in the United States.
And what is a Taiwanese dinner without some kind of dessert in soup form? Today we did mung beans and glutinous rice balls in soup flavored with caramelized sugar (sugar cooked until it's amber). The best thing to use is Taiwanese "black" sugar, but alas we don't get that here in the States. But golden syrup is a lovely substitute and adds a bit more richness and flavor to desserts than plain white sugar.
The result was not bad, but could use a lot of work. Next time we're going to do a few things differently to increase the depth of flavor and really pump up this dish. But in terms of basic texture and flavor, we did everything right. I'd even say we did better than most Taiwanese restaurants in the United States.
And what is a Taiwanese dinner without some kind of dessert in soup form? Today we did mung beans and glutinous rice balls in soup flavored with caramelized sugar (sugar cooked until it's amber). The best thing to use is Taiwanese "black" sugar, but alas we don't get that here in the States. But golden syrup is a lovely substitute and adds a bit more richness and flavor to desserts than plain white sugar.
5 comments:
Yay for cookbooks! I got FIVE cookbooks in Taiwan this time. A lot of the ingredients are hard to find or I don't know what they are in English. Another problem is a lot of the pastries require lard. But one day, I shall make something weird and awesome.
Mmmm...pass along the books that look good. I have no problems cooking with lard. Weird and awesome, yay!
what did you use for the mee sua? i have a hard time finding the right noodles at ranch 99.
I found real mee sua! It's pretty good. I'll post a photo of the packaging and the name of the market when I get a chance to look it up.
I've also used really thin somen in the past, but it's not the same.
Hey Pei,
Can you please post the name of the mee sua and the name of the store to buy it? I was going to make sesame oil chicken mee sua but didn't want to ruin it by using somen.
VL
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