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Photos by MJ Klein - Hangover by Sang Som Royal Thai Rum

I had a fabulous weekend. I met lots of new friends and hung out with them and old friends too. I stuffed my face, drank a lot of booze, sang and played guitar. No, where else could that happen except at a grill party in Hukou at Shao-hui’s? Oh, yeah, we did that in Miaoli too! Seems like we’ve been partying a lot lately. Why not? We’re lucky enough to be living in Taiwan!


This bowl of meat is what all the fuss was about. Tons of ginger, garlic, lemongrass, a couple of bay leaves and some other stuff. Yeah, it doesn’t look like much now, but when you put it on the grill….

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Photos by MJ Klein

Last night we enjoyed a grill party at the infamous Shao-hui’s Thai Style cuisine restaurant in Hukou.  In attendance were a major portion of Taiwan’s English language blogging community.  In this article for Bushman’s Asian Food, I will show you what we ate.  Please bear in mind that I wasn’t concentrating so much on photographing the food as I was on eating it!  The NH Bushman in Taiwan will have a longer article on the party shortly after this one is posted.

This is what people came for - the marinaded grilled meat.  Notice the amount of ginger in the marinade.  Also present is lemon grass and other spices typically used in Thai cuisine.  Someday I’ll post the exact recipe!

I know that in these photos the meat looks burnt.  Trust me, it wasn’t.  The marinade turns dark when you grill the meat.

These dishes were photographed before they all disappeared.  On the left is a wonderful spicy green bean Thai salad, and on the top right is stir fried kale and deep fried crispy pork.  On the bottom are a couple of pieces of grilled pork that hadn’t been devoured yet.  Notice how moist and juicy the grilled meat is.

This is my wife Hui-chen tending the grill.  We have the small round one that I made in the back and a large one we bought from the store.

The next day we went back to Jubei for dumplings with our good friend David Reid.

Life is hard in Taiwan….

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My friend Sarah from New Hampshire sent me these photos taken last week, in the White Mountain area.  I wanted to share them with our readers.  New Hampshire is known for being one of the most beautiful places in the US, especially during the fall foliage season.  Enjoy!

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Photos by MJ Klein

Hui-chen and I sometimes like to eat at this place called “50 Pizza.” I have no idea why it’s so named but basically its a pseudo-Italian place with a menu that is a nice departure from the Taiwanese and Thai fare found in our neighborhood. It’s my opinion that pizza is not what you should order from 50 Pizza. I have yet to find an acceptable pizza in all of Taiwan and I am still trying. Taiwanese people are used to the mushy crust and tasteless toppings found on most pizza here, which may include, believe or not, unshelled whole shrimp.

Here is a scan of their menu. The prices are very reasonable.

Click for a larger view

There are a couple of 50 Pizza restaurants around Taiwan. I’ve eaten at them in Kaohsiung, Tainan and Hukou. The consistency among them is good.

The Hukou 50 Pizza is a 5 minute walk from the Hukou train station, right on ???.

The outside dining area of 50 Pizza. We originally sat where you see Hui-chen, but there was a bad odor coming from the street so we decided to move inside. Out of the dozens of times we’ve eaten there that was the only time we’ve had to move inside because of bad smells.

You can see into the kitchen from the road. If you can speak any Chinese at all you will astound the staff (that is, if you aren’t Taiwanese).

If there is one thing that I don’t really like about 50 Pizza it’s that no matter how good the food is, it retains its fast food persona by requiring that you go up to the register to order and pay in advance, like McDonald’s, etc.. 50 Pizza is more of a sit-down place and the food is cooked to order with very little prepared in advance. So if you order some kind of burger sandwich you won’t be getting one that’s been sitting under the heat lamp like you would at McDonald’s.

Hui-chen ordered the Black Pepper Beef Gratin Rice for NT$110. The browned cheese topping is even better than it looks.

This is a crappy photo of my NT$40 Ceylon Milk Tea, iced. It’s noteworthy because it’s made from bagged tea and they leave the bag in the glass. I like that because as the ice melts the tea just gets stronger and it doesn’t taste watered down after 10 minutes like most iced tea does.

I got a Kimchi Chicken Filet Burger for NT$130 which included French fries (not shown) and NT$35 credit towards any drink. In Taiwan, they call any kind of sandwich on a bun, a “burger.” Kimchee is a famous Korean pickled cabbage dish that is a national staple in Korea. It’s spicy with an incredible pickled flavor. This sandwich was quite good.

The last thing that I got out of sheer curiosity was a French Cheese Pork Chop, listed under the heading “Snack” on the menu. At NT$60, the price was a bit steep I think. It wasn’t bad - just wasn’t what I expected. I think this is supposed to be a Cordon Bleu pork chop, and hence the cryptic “French Cheese Pork Chop.

Overall we enjoyed our lunch. If you’ve seen 50 Pizza around, you might want to give them a try. Be sure and tell us what you think!

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Photos by MJ Klein and Hui-chen
We blogged on this place before, but I wanted to do a post exclusively for our Asian Food Blog readers.
Our friend Ben owns a property in the area of Ubon Ratchathani in eastern Thailand. His farm is so remote that he doesn’t have electricity there, but they cook some excellent meals in a primitive kitchen and there are plenty of things to do and enjoy there!

This is the view when you pull up to the property. The road leading here is not paved.

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Photos by MJ Klein & Hui-chen
WARNING! This post contains photographs of food! It is also the longest blog post I have ever created, with more photos than any other, ever! You have been warned!

Our good friend Andres invited Hui-chen and I to visit a cabin owned by his cousin Becky’s family. Well, they are all the same family but you know what I mean. We jumped at the chance to spend some time in the beautiful Taiwan countryside in Miaoli. Let’s start off with a video that I put together to set the mood.

Now for the details!
On the way we noticed that the bing lang girls wear skimpier outfits than they do in Hukou!
This is the view from the front porch of the cabin. Simply gorgeous! (more…)

I thought that I would show our readers what it’s like to purchase a packaged chicken in Taiwan, which is typical of most of Asia.

No big deal, right? Just a chicken in a package. Let’s take a closer look.

OK fine. Let’s unwrap this sucker and see what it looks like.

It has the head on it! In Asia, if the chicken didn’t have the head the buyer would feel cheated.

But wait a minute, where are the feet?

Yeah, you guessed it! You have to pull them out of there!

Yup, there they are.

Here is the whole thing, with head and feet as it was wrapped up in the package.

And this is what it looks like after I was finished with it.

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Photos by MJ Klein

One of the things that I really love about Taiwan is the fact that the country is literally an assault on one’s senses.  There are so many sights, sounds and smells that just walking down the street can be exciting.  There is always so much going on.  I joke with some other Taiwan photographers that all one has to do is point the camera in the general direction of something and the result will be a great photograph.

I bought a new lens recently.  I’ve been quietly testing it for the last week or so, including the shots of typhoon Krosa.  I’ll be doing a review in the next few weeks but in the meantime I thought I would spill some of the beans about this lens.  One reason that I bought it, is because the lens has optical stabilization which dramatically improves the sharpness of photographs in low light or slow shutter speeds: 

This system uses two sensors inside the lens to detect vertical and horizontal movement of the camera by moving an optical image stabilizing lens group, to effectively compensate for camera shake. It also automatically detects panning movement of the camera and compensate for camera shake when shooting moving subjects such as motor sports.

Sigma - Lenses

Enough of that!  Let’s get to the photographs!  I promise I won’t bore you with a lot of comments!

We ate at this restaurant.  Look for a story on Bushman’s Food Blog soon!

This last shot was taken at 1/8 of a second, in the car at a stoplight.  This would have been virtually impossible without the OS system.

technorati tags:Taiwan, Jubei, Sigma, lens, OS

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