Father's Day feast

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It's rare that I'm in town on Father's Day in Taiwan (August 8th in Mandarin rhymes with "dad"), and I got to celebrate it with the extended family.  Two of mom's cousins are in town from Shanghai and it was good to see them again.  Naturally, we wanted to let them sample Taiwanese cuisine - so we went to Shin Yeh (欣葉)...the original location, not the outlet on top of Taipei 101.

We left the ordering to my uncle, and in typical fashion we found ourselves with a real feast. 

Buddha jumps over the wall (佛跳墻) - the classic soup of Hokkienese cuisine is full of ingredients, and uses lots of taro, tripe and (supposedly today) shark's fin.  I was never really a fan, and what we had today didn't seem to make the grade in uncle's book.

Poh piah (潤餅) - this un-fried spring roll (also found in places like Singapore, hence I'm using the familiar name) is made with strips of cooked radish, various veggies and peanut powder.  Not bad at all.

Fried peanuts and whitebait (小魚花生) - fried with dried scallops and chili.  This was absolutely wonderful and possibly the best dish of the evening.  In fact, we asked for another plate to go along with the sweet potato porridge (地瓜粥) at the end of the meal.  Lately, though, there seems to be a bit of brouhaha about boycotting the consumption of these babies...  I think I should study the issue a little more.

Deep-fried oysters (炸蚵) - Taiwanese love their little oysters, and deep-frying them together with basil is pretty classic.

Pan-fried pig's liver (煎豬肝) - definitely failed in the execution tonight, as it was way overdone and no longer tender.

Pan-fried milkfish belly (煎虱目魚肚) - another classic Taiwanese dish.  Milkfish is popular and is often eaten as a soup for breakfast. 

Deep-fried chicken roll (雞卷) - this is pretty much the ngo hiang in Southeast Asian cuisine... and actually not made of chicken but pork.  The original name, pronounced in Hokkien, means "leftovers", as it was supposed to be a way to wrap up leftovers in tofu skin, fry up the roll and make it look like a new dish. 

Steamed mud crab with glutinous rice (紅蟳米糕) - happily took down half of the shell containing the roe.  We have a tableful of Shanghainese so everyone clearly prefer the hairy crab (大閘蟹)...
Stir-fried loofah with garlic (蒜炒絲瓜) - they actually used pretty big ones tonight, which was a surprise.

Stir-fried sweet potato leaves with garlic (蒜蓉炒地瓜葉) - sweet potato leaves are common in Taiwanese cuisine, and purported to have health benefits.  Tonight there were some basil leaves mixed in... perhaps by accident?

Omelette with pickled radish (菜圃蛋) - another comfort food classic... the omelette is made with chopped bits of pickled radish and some basil leaves.

It's been a while since I was last here, and it was a pretty decent meal.  Glad to have had the opportunity to spend this day with family...