Yesterday (24/6), we had a graduation dinner with professor
and lab mates. It was a traditional Chinese food. By 1.5 year living in Taiwan,
made me feel bad about how little I know about its dishes name and how to
distinguish Chinese dish and other dishes.
Besides that, I have a personal motivation to know more
about culture I encountered with. Tomorrow is my birthday, and I feel like I
need to have motivation to make a list of revolutions; one of them is to
understand Taiwan.
So far, I am making good progress by involving in my lab
mates conversation and my lab mates way of thinking. Basically, I feel like
assimilated very quickly in some manners (working, food taste, behavior, and
also fashion).
So, in order to understand its culture better, I might want
to start at least from one point mentioned above.
Food!
Chinese foods are amazing. Even though, Chinese food
attracts outraged from all over the world through their behavior of eating
endangered and unethical animal, Chinese food has a distinct complexity in
every dish.
Yesterday I had a squash soup with many kind mushroom,
dates, olive, and little bit of spice. I should say that nothing beats
Indonesian food in terms of spice arts, but this Chinese food is a must have
try!
p.s.: anyways, the soup I ate yesterday was vegetarian. It
has neither meat nor chicken. I think I like vegan soup more, meat is tend to
make the water smells differently thus the greenish tastes are even blemished
by rawness of meat.
Black &Cold Chicken Soup
Yes, it is black and it served cold. I took it so weirdly at
first but I manage to like it. I heard that this soup is good for your kidney
and has something to do with medical. It has the same amount of tasty as
chicken soup yet less salty. By far, it is an experience to eat such an
oriental dish.
More recipes about black chicken soup: http://gladyskockhomeculinary.blogspot.tw/2009/10/chinese-herbal-black-chicken-soup.html
Steamed Fish with Ginger
Came
from a lifestyle where fried foods are common, I impressed by how Chinese foods
could commit the amount of tastiness with boil methods.
The
fish could be any kind of fish but mostly red snapper. I always think red
snapper is an equivalent of Southeast Asian Goramy. I like the soup (again) of
the steam fish, it has freshness aroma with ginger and olive, if you are lucky
you can find a small chop of tofu and I love it.
My Longtime Favorite of Chinese Taiwanese Shrimp Ball
Mayo & Pineapple
This is my favourite Chinese food so far! Well, I am not sure
of what they actually have in China but in Taiwan we have it. Taiwan’s food is
actually similar to our Southeast Asian food in terms of taste and blending.
This shrimp is served fried with mayo poured on top of it
and pineapple surrounding the dish. It is salty, sweet, and sour at the same
time.
More about Taiwanese food: http://www.footprintsrecruiting.com/teacher-community/blog/four-favourite-foods-formosa
Well, there are also other Chinese foods that amazingly
popular such as Kung-Pao Chicken, Stinky Tofu, and BaChai but in my Indonesian
eyes, the foods mentioned above left a big impression to me.
Another thing that grabbed my attention is Chinese eating
etiquette. Usually, we ate those dishes
in Chinese round-table restaurant for some events, mostly gathering. We eat
together so we share the dish. There is some value I learnt from the etiquette:
1. Not to be greedy when eating with everyone. Everyone take as least as they need and wait for turns.
2. No chopstick standing on the bowl of rice
3. Rice is in the bowl not on the plate
4. When you drink beer, drink together.
5. It is important to finish the beer in one sip when someone says “kan-bei”
6. Talking is important during the dinner, a normal Chinese dinner could take 3 hours for eating, drinking, talking, and interrogating.
7. When elderly has not finish his/her meal, there is no way you can leave the table.
1. Not to be greedy when eating with everyone. Everyone take as least as they need and wait for turns.
2. No chopstick standing on the bowl of rice
3. Rice is in the bowl not on the plate
4. When you drink beer, drink together.
5. It is important to finish the beer in one sip when someone says “kan-bei”
6. Talking is important during the dinner, a normal Chinese dinner could take 3 hours for eating, drinking, talking, and interrogating.
7. When elderly has not finish his/her meal, there is no way you can leave the table.
1
These are for short of my experience involved in several Chinese/Taiwanese
dinners. Everything I said in this blog is personal and subjective, so readers
may or may not find it useful/appropriate.
No comments:
Post a Comment