Taiwan - Home Cooking

On our trip to Taipei, we were lucky enough to experience some great home cooking. That's really a great way to experience what people really eat...and man are they lucky. We had two different home cooked meals and we were very grateful they opened up their homes to us.

Our first meal was at our friend Yingfeng's place. Chinese hot pot was on the menu. For those of you unfamiliar with hot pot, it basically consists of a communal broth that you cook meats and vegetables in. This version was a hot tasty broth that was very comforting and satisfying.

Our second home cooking experience was with my fiancee's aunt. This, no joke, was one of the best meals we had in Taipei. We actually stopped by to say hello to the fiancee's cousin, but were invited for a casual dinner. The meal was Jiang Su style (region in China) and it was incredibly delicious. The chicken and soybean dish was an amazing revelation of a new region (to me) in China. Slightly sweet, meat that falls off the bone, and the addition of the nuttiness in the soybean made this wonderful. A lot of the dishes had that subtle sweetness that I've never had before in a Chinese dish. The sweetness that I'm used to in Chinese food is the ungodly Orange color chicken...way too sweet. All dishes were amazing, but the other two that stood out was the eggplant and ground beef dish as well as the fried eggs and onions. Again both were subtly sweet with a meaty kick to it. Great stuff.