Recipes

^Ingredients

1 teaspoon garlic (smashed)

1 teaspoon drinking water

3 tablespoons soy paste

Note: Please see the soy paste details here: http://kitchen.j321.com/soy-paste-key-to-taiwanese-cuisine

 

Instructions

1. Use a pestle and mortar to mix the water and garlic finely. (The purpose of the water is help to you grind the garlic finely).

2. Add the soy paste, and mix well.

3. Taste it. If you think the taste is too strong or too salty, add a little water to balance it. You can also adjust the amount of the garlic, if it is too much or little for you.

How to use the sweet garlic sauce?

This sauce is very often used on Taiwanese dishes such as, white chicken, steamed shrimps, squid, green vegetables, tofu, omelet, fried radish cakes, boiled dumplings, and so on. You can feel free to use it on anything which needs sauce to add flavour or to make it more pleasant to eat.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons shallot oil
1 tablespoon soy paste
1 litre of water
1 teaspoon salt
1 bunch of wheat noodles, for one serving, 100g fre

for one serving, 100g fresh thin (about 0.1 cm thickness) noodles

Taiwanese shallot oil

Ingredients
300g shallots (peeled)
250ml cooking oil or lard

Instructions
1. Thinly slice the shallots (about 2mm thick)
2. Heat up an empty saucepan to ensure it's dry, then put the shallots into the saucepan. Don't add the cooking oil yet.
3. As the shallots are beginning to dry out, you will smell very pleasant aroma from them Then you can add the cooking oil to the saucepan. 
4. Fry the shallots and oil in the saucepan at medium heat. After a while, you will see the oil is bubbling around the shallots (these bubbles are actually the shallot's internal moisture boiling away as steam). When the bubbling is almost finished, turn up the heat a little higher until the shallots are brown and crispy. The shallots are cooked.
5. Turn off the heat.  Keep this shallot oil in a jar, in the refrigerator.

Ingredients

3 cups of all purpose flour, 1 cup hot water, ½ cup cold water.

Procedure for making dumpling dough:

1. Put 3 cups of flour into a mixing bowl, and mix in 1 cup of just boiled water. Stir the mixture with a stick or a fork, until the flour become flaky. (see Note 1)
2. Pour a ½ cup of cold water into the dough, and keep mixing, until it become a ball shape.
3. Sprinkle some flour on a wide flat surface, such as a countertop, and place the dough on the surface.
4. The dough now should be sticky and warm, leave it alone for a couple of minutes, to allow it to cool down.
5. When you can feel the dough has become cooler, and dryer, you can start kneading the dough very gently. Do not try too hard, because the center of dough is still very warm. While kneading the dough, if you find the dough is still very sticky, sprinkle a little flour on your hands and working surface, but not directly on the dough.

Sesame oil is very often used in Taiwanese, Chinese, Japanese, or Korean cooking. But this recipe is based on a very common Italian dressing, just replacing the olive oil with white sesame oil.

Salad ingredients

2 or 3 medium size tomato, sliced
½ cup of zucchini or cucumber, sliced
½ cup of basil leaves
¼ lime, sliced
1 tablespoon sesame seeds

Sesame oil dressing ingredients

1 tablespoon white sesame oil
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
½ teaspoon salt

Instructions

1. Place all the salad ingredients in a bowl.
2. Make the sesame oil dressing with the white sesame oil, vinegar, salt.

1. Preparing dumpling dough

Ingredients

3 cups of all purpose flour, 1 cup hot water, ½ cup cold water.
Instructions
Pour the hot water into the flour and use the chopsticks to mix well. Then pour the cold water into the mixture. Knead the dough until it's elastic and smooth, it will take about 20 minutes, then cover the dough with a wet tea-towel. Leave for 20 minutes.

Roll the dough until it is 1.5cm (just under ½ inch) thick. Then cut it 1.5cm x 1cm pieces.

Roll each piece into a ball shape. Flatten the ball into a round shape which is 6-7cm (2½ inches) wide.

2. Preparing dumpling filling

Ingredients

Chives 600g, water chestnut 400g, fresh shiitake mushroom 600g, 2 bunches of dry glass noodles

1. Preparing dumpling dough

Ingredients

3 cups all purpose flour, 1 cup hot water, ½ cup cold water.
Instructions
Pour the hot water into the flour and use the chopsticks to mix well. Then pour the cold water into the mixture. Knead the dough until it's elastic and smooth, which will take about 20 minutes. Then cover the dough with a wet tea-towel. Leave for 20 minutes.

Roll the dough until it is 3cm (about 1 inch) thick, then cut it 3cm x 3cm pieces.

When a couple are getting married in Taiwan, the bride's family, neighbors, and friends traditionally get together to make small dumplings from sticky rice. During the engagement and wedding celebrations, the bride's family serve the sticky dumplings to everyone who visits them. The dumplings aren't flavored, but they're usually served with a sweet soup (or sweetened in some other way).

How to make sweet sticky dumpling balls

Preparing the sticky rice dough

Ingredients

3 cups of glutinous rice flour (sticky rice flour)
1¼  cup of water

Instructions

1. Mix all the sticky rice flour with the water to make dough
2. Put 10% of the dough into boiling water, and cook for about 2 minutes.
3. Put the the cooked dough back together with the remaining uncooked sticky rice dough.
4. Knead the dough until it's smooth and elastic.
5. Allow the dough to rest for about half an hour.

Taiwanese cuisine basic ingredients

1. Ginger 薑
2. Garlic 大蒜
3. Green onion 青蔥
4. Coriander 香菜
5. Fresh chili 辣椒
6. Salt 鹽
7. Sugar : refined sugar 白糖, rock sugar 冰糖, black sugar 黑糖
8. Soy sauce 醬油，Soy paste 醬油膏，black bean sauce 黑豆醬油
9. White vinegar 白醋, Black vinegar 黑醋
10. Rice wine 米酒
11. Cooking oil 油

Dressing Ingredients

4 tablespoons vinegar
4 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon freshly chopped garlic
1 tablespoon freshly chopped ginger
1 tablespoon freshly chopped coriander
1 teaspoon freshly chopped chili (optional)

Cooking Ingredients

3 long, slender purple eggplants

Instructions

1. Mix all the ingredients well. You can adjust the amounts slightly to taste, and find out the balance of ingredients you prefer.
2. Chop the eggplants into sections 4cm long, and then carefully slice each piece into two halves lengthwise. Soak the chopped eggplants in 1 tablespoon of salt and 2 cups of water for about 2 hours.
3. Drain away the salty water from the eggplant. Cook the eggplant in the toaster oven or oven with 220C, for about 15 minutes, or until they are cooked.