There is a fried noodle dish that I rarely make in Canton, perhaps five times in the last decade. It is because the dish is a pain to make. Getting the carrots into long slivered slices is difficult, and slicing the carrot length-wise is risky because the carrot often rolls. Then the cabbage in upstate New York is also hard to cut–it’s so dense, like the carrot. And finally, it takes time to cut a chunk of pork.
The carrots and cabbage in Taiwan are much easier to cut! The cabbage is shaped like a squashed basketball, and the carrot is short and stocky. Both are less dense making it easier to cut and feel secure with the knife. And to my amazement, the pork already comes cut in slivers I’d never be able to produce myself!
The other thing that makes cooking this dish easier is the controllable HIGH HEAT. The cabbage and carrots soften quickly because of the high heat and because they are less dense.
The Chinese dishes I know how to make in the US taste better here. My daughter asks for more helpings of the green beans! And my son likes my broccoli and beef because the beef comes in thin sheets, which he prefers.
There have been challenges navigating this new food environment, especially for the children. There are an array of vegetables and mushrooms and sauces that cannot be found in our local groceries and vice versa. In the first couple of weeks, we tried to find things that my children are used to eating–balsamic vinegar, parmesan cheese, sharp cheddar, tomato paste, raspberries, strawberries, etc. These are very hard to find. I also tried to replicate a pasta dish we often eat in the US that uses basil, parsley, tomato paste, and pine nuts. Even though I used Hunts tomato paste, the whole dish still tasted somehow Chinese.
The first restaurant I took the children to was an Indian restaurant as they love Indian Express in our hometown. Our surprise was that the entrees did not come with rice. No problem. We ordered the rice, but the restaurant had to cook it from scratch! We thus waited 20 minutes for the rice while the entrees cooled. My next choice will be Italian, but I know that the assumptions I have about Italian restaurants will not necessarily apply here.
And then, my daughter broke out in a terrible case of hives, the first time ever. The rash was angry and everywhere. It is under control now, but we have no idea what caused it.
In caring for my children by getting groceries, cooking, and helping them navigate the food environment, these past couple of weeks remind me of a Kenyan student describing his first couple of days at the St. Lawrence University dining hall. He was clearly traumatized (that is too strong a word but I can’t think of another one) by all the cheese and pasta and salad, so foreign and different from his beloved Kenyan diet. My children do not have to experience such a big transition, and over our time here, I hope to expose them to new Taiwan dishes outside of mom’s cooking. My daughter already likes the “apple pear” fruit (okay, I looked it up…it’s called the Asian pear…not that helpful…it’s like calling all the unidentifiable vegetables here “Chinese vegetables”).
