Taiwanese food, is a simple, rustic cuisine which makes the best use of the most naturally abundant ingredients. It has enjoyed somewhat of a revival in the past few years. Two basic influences have driven the development of Taiwanese cuisine: the unique geography of Taiwan, and international influences.
Natural resources have always been limited in Taiwan. The island's population density of 582 people per square kilometer is even more staggering considering that only 20% of the land is arable, with the rest being mountainous terrain. With such limited farmland, people rely on the sea to provide the essential proteins. The dominant role of fish and other seafood continues in contemporary Taiwanese bill of fare. To give you an idea of the importance of seafood, Taiwan's fisheries harvested 1.46 million metric tons of it in 1990.
The scarcity of natural resources has made for hard living on the island. Taiwanese people as young as 30 years old can often recall their childhoods in which there was not enough rice to go around--so sweet potatoes or taro roots had to be used as a supplement making a soupy rice in order to fill everyone's bowl. This "congee" with root vegetables is a classic Taiwanese dish. Many traditional dishes show similar innovation: A soup with pork bones, pineapple, and bitter melon, for example. As the Taiwanese had to make do with very little, they showed remarkable adaptiveness and creativity when it came to cuisine.
Taiwanese cuisine on the whole tends to be less spicy than Szechuan in the west but more spicy than food from northern China. Simple cooking methods predominate, where the ingredients are prepared once, then served--unlike the more elaborate Shanghai or Cantonese cuisines, which often require several preparatory steps, recombinations, and permutations before the final dish emerges. Most common are the congee variations with different root vegetables, which are eaten with a delectable selection of side dishes and rice.
Traditional side dishes include omelette with pickled radishes, stir-fried small fish with peanuts, various soybean curd dishes, and pickled vegetables. Traditional congee can be enjoyed in Taipei along Fuhsing South Road, just south of the Hsinyi Road intersection. Five or six eateries there open their doors at about noon and stay open until 6 a.m. At each, patrons are invited to select their side dishes from as many as 100 varieties. A pot of congee with sweet potatoes awaits patrons at the table, and the pot can be refilled as often as one wishes. This is an extremely economical way of eating, for one feels quite full after just a bowl or two of congee--and, it is healthy too.
For the main dishes, the Taiwanese show their usual inventiveness in the selection of spices. In addition to the ever-present soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil, Taiwanese cuisine relies on an abundant array of seasonings for flavor: Black beans, pickled radishes, peanuts, chili peppers, parsley, and a local variety of basil ("nine story tower"). The resulting dishes thus combine and layer interesting taste sensations which make Taiwanese cuisine simple in format yet complex in experience. After seafood, chicken is the second most popular meat. Beef, pork, and lamb are eaten but not with as much regularity nor in the same volume as either seafood or chicken. Seafood encompasses the wealth of variations in nature, from grouper to tuna, from sardines to tiny fish the length of a thumbnail. Cuttlefish and squid are very popular and prepared in any number of ways: Grilled, stir-fried, and as an ingredient of stews.
A popular traditional chicken dish is San Pei chicken, literally meaning "three cup chicken." The oral history of the dish recounts that one cup each of soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil were placed in an earthenware pot on low heat at dawn of a day of work in the fields. By dusk, the dish had simmered into a delightful stew flavored with "nine story tower" and eaten with either rice or congee. Frog and other meats can easily be substituted for chicken without detracting at all from the enjoyment of the dish.
