Rice in banana leaf

A xiaochi i tried for lunch. It’s rice filled with pork here, and the all is in a banana leaf. Lucky me, there were ants in mine. It’s quite heavy and oily and the meat was only fat. Not really good, but it can be good, i just need to find the right place to buy it.

Penghu small restaurant

A small restaurant we tried before going to see the firework. The fried pork rib was only for 75NTD, and not too oily (trust me, even if that’s only oil, there is a difference between oily and too oily), which was nice. The veggies were good with a different cabbage. Ok and cheap. Why ask for more.

On a right alley from the main street Zhongzheng in Magong on Penghu island.

Fried and Boiled dumplings

2 reciepes of dumplings, depending on how you prefer them (i personally prefer the boiling one: juicier and healthier).

Ingredients for 4 people:
– 300g of minced pork
– 1 green onion
– Taiwanese cabbage
– dumpling wrapper
– 2 table spoons of soy sauce
– half a tea spoon of sugar
– 5 tea spoons of salt
– 1 tea spoon of sesame oil
– water
– oil

Wash the cabbage, chop it into strips and mix it with salt for 20 minutes and then drain out the water.
In a bowl, mix minced pork, soy sauce, sugar, salt, sesame oil, then put the all with the cabbage and the green onion and mix again.
Put a few filling in the middle of the wrapper, put water on the sides of the wrapper, fold it in two and be sure that it’s well stick. Then start folding it, starting from the middle to one side. Turn down a piece of the dought and pinch it.

For fried dumplings:
Turn on the cooker, clean it with some water and a cloth. Wait for it to be heated. Add some oil. Wait for the sizzling then put your dumplings. Let them change color for about 4/5minutes and add water up to half the dumpling height. Wait until the power pop-up, and it’s ready.

For boiled dumplings:
Put a lot of water into the cooker, wait for it to boilt, and put your dumplings for 10mn.

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2 sortes de raviolis: les frits et les cuits à l’eau. Personnellement je préfère ceux à l’eau qui sont plus juteux et moins gras.

Ingrédients pour 4 personnes:
– 300g de porc haché
– 1 oignon vert
– choux Taiwanais
– pâte à ravioles chinoises
– 2 cuillères à soupe de sauce soja
– 1/2 cuillère à café de sucre
– 5 cuillères à soupe de sel
– 1 cuillère à café d’huile de sésame
– huile
– eau

Laver le chou et le couper en lamelles. Le mélanger au sel et attendre 20mn, puis le laver de nouveau pour enlever le sel en trop.
Dans un bol, mélanger la viande, la sauce soja, le sucre, le sel et l’huile de soja. Rajouter le chou et l’oignon vert et mélanger encore.
Mettre un peu de farce au milieu des galettes à ravioles, mouiller les rebords et les plier en deux et vérifiant que les extrémités soient bien collées. En partant du milieu et en allant vers chaque extrémités, plier en “pinçant” la pâte à intervalles réguliers pour donner une forme de ravioli.

Les raviolis frits:
Verser un verre d’eau dans le cooker et le nettooyer avec un chiffon. Attendre que le fond chauffe et rajouter de l’huile. Quand on commence à entendre le crépitement, verser les raviolis et attendre 4/5 minutes le temps qu’ils se colorent. Rajouter de l’eau jusqu’à la moitié de leur hauteur et attendre encore 5 minutes à couvert. 

Les raviolis bouillis:
Comme les pâtes italiennes: Verser une grande quantité d’eau, attendre qu’elle bouille et verser les raviolis. 10 minutes après, c’est prêt.

Din Tai Fung

One of my friends had a diner with a Taiwanese girl learning French, so i asked her if i could join them. It ended up that they were going to the restaurant I really wanted to go since I arrived, the famous Din Tai Fung. This restaurant is actually a chain, and they’re in a lot of different countries. You can even find 2 of them in the States and they’re supposed to make the best xiao long bao (dumplings). So imagine my happiness when I learned that we were going there!

We went to the Taipei 101 branch, and tried their pork xiao long bao (the most famous one), some with vegetables. To eat it, you have to pour 1 spoon of soy sauce for 3 spoons of vinegar, add ginger. First, you put your xiao long bao in your spoon, then you pierce it so that the juice flows in your spoon. You drink the juice, and then eat your xiao long bao with the sauce!

The pork ones were really good, but I already had better dumplings in China. It was really better than Kitchen Pucci because the dough is a lot thinner, and the dumpling juicier. So yeah, that were good dumplings. Besides that, we tried some Rou Bao: chicken bao, pork bao and vegetables bao. The pork one was the better. In fact, I don’t really enjoy their vegetable when it comes to filling. They are delicious when you eat them alone, but inside some dough, it’s not that good. The Bao were really good, with a lot of meat inside compared to the one I had for breakfast last time.
So far Din Tai Fung is my best dumpling restaurant in Taiwan. However, it’s also more expensive. For 3, you should count around 1000TWD.