Taiwanese
Yueliang Xiabing (Moon Shrimp Cake between Two Spring Roll Wrappers)
A Taiwanese xiaochi: shrimp pounded with pork fat and garlic, spread thin between two round spring-roll wrappers and shallow-fried until it is round and golden like a full moon, then cut into wedges for sweet chilli sauce. Menbosha puts a shrimp filling between bread and fries it twice; this spreads the filling a few millimetres thin and does it in one. The holes pricked in the top sheet come from the same arithmetic.
Wuyuzi (Seared Dried Mullet Roe with Garlic Leaves and Daikon)
Taiwan's salt-cured, dried mullet roe, seared on the outside with sorghum liquor, sliced thin and eaten in one bite with raw daikon and green garlic leaf. The salt and the wind have already done the cooking. The heat is there only to melt the fat at the surface and bring up its smell, and heated through it turns hard and bitter. A slice of daikon dilutes the salt one mouthful at a time.
Coffin Bread (Deep-Fried Toast Box with Creamy Chicken and Shrimp)
Tainan's street snack: a thick block of white bread deep-fried whole, its top cut open as a lid and the inside filled with a thick cream sauce of chicken and shrimp. A bread bowl drinks the soup it holds; this one is fried first, so its walls are sealed with oil before the filling arrives. The filling is thickened with a roux, and it is eaten straight away, before the unfried inside of the box goes soft.
A-gei (Fried Tofu Stuffed with Glass Noodles, Sealed with Fish Paste)
Tamsui's street snack: a thick fried-tofu pouch hollowed out, packed with glass noodles braised in soy, capped with raw fish paste, steamed and served under sweet chilli sauce. Fried tofu has nothing of its own to stick with, so it cannot be closed with a seam. Instead the opening gets a lid of raw paste, and the steamer sets that lid into fish cake. The name comes from the Japanese aburaage.
Pineapple Cake (Fenglisu)
Taiwan's signature gift confection — and the filling in a traditional one is mostly winter melon rather than pineapple. Cooked down on its own, pineapple stays fibrous and sharply sour and gives off juice in the oven that soaks the pastry under it; winter melon tastes of almost nothing but reduces to something soft and stiff enough to hold a cube. The pineapple goes in for aroma. All-pineapple filling is the more recent revival, and it has a name of its own.
Oyster Omelette (Sweet Potato Starch Pancake)
Taiwan's signature night market dish: a sweet potato starch batter poured over small oysters so it sets translucent, finished with egg and greens and flooded with a sweet-sour red sauce. The trick is not to make it crisp. The edges go crisp and the middle has to stay soft and glassy, and that half-set state is the whole identity of the thing.
Beef Noodle Soup (Red-Braised)
Taiwan's beef noodle soup: shin simmered over two hours with doubanjiang, whole spices and tomato, poured over thick wheat noodles. Parboiling the beef from cold water and skimming, then never letting the pot boil again, are what decide how clear the broth ends up.
Lu Rou Fan (Braised Pork Rice)
Taiwan's beloved rice bowl: finely diced pork belly braised low and slow with soy, five-spice, and shallots until deeply savory-sweet, then spooned over rice. Serve with a braised egg and greens for the perfect bowl.