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Photos by MJ Klein & Hui-chen Meals featured: Grilled homestyle hamburgers; teppanyaki.

UPDATE: November 2, 2007: Here is a photo of the bread type that I talk about in this article. Notice that there are seven slices:

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The other evening I told Hui-chen that I felt like eating hamburgers for dinner. Funny, but she rarely asks me if I want to eat hamburgers, which is strange considering that a full-blown Taiwanese stereotype about Americans is that we only eat hamburgers. I’ve been to places with new Taiwanese friends who in all honesty, apologized to me because there were no hamburgers available on the menu where we were eating! Other times I have had Taiwanese friends celebrate my return to Taiwan by going to McDonald’s and bringing back bags of their inedible garbage, thinking that I would be pleased with their selection of American food (I pretended to be). I didn’t eat that crap in the US, so why would I eat it here?

Forget about McDonald’s! On this occasion, I decided to show Hui-chen how we would make hamburgers at home when I lived in New Hampshire. Hui-chen went to the store and procured some ingredients (while I got the grill going) and then I combined them in a bowl as shown here:

1. 1/3 ground beef
2. 2/3 ground pork
3. Chopped garlic (a shitload)
4. 1/2 onion, diced
5. Black pepper to taste
6. Soy sauce

The only thing left to do now is to grill them.

While the grill was still heating up, Hui-chen grilled a few Chinese sausages because these really do come out better when the heat is low. They burn easily.

In the meantime I decided to try taking a few shots in near-total darkness using my Nikon SB-800 flash on the D80.

This is the monstrosity of a building that’s across the street from us. I was astonished at how well the SB-800 lit up the scene!

That gave me confidence to try something even more ambitious:

Wow, hard to believe but even this shot is usable! So now I really wanna see what this thing can do, so, I shot this scene:

Here is what happened: Directly over the word “here” at the beginning of this sentence is part of my house reflecting the full power of the flash back. Naturally, that part is totally washed out. Next is the house across the street on the left side. Then further out you can see that the light from the flash illuminated the windows on the buildings on the next block! Notice the car reflectors too. Even though the distant portion of the shot is not usable, I’m officially impressed!

So, I wonder if I could take any useful photos at night in near-total darkness from the 4th floor balcony? I did some street level zoomed shots using the Sigma lens:

This shot is pretty convincing evidence that I could successfully photograph something on the street at night using my flash. The exif data is available for all these photos by clicking on them and selecting the link from the flickr photo page.

So now that I’m done playing around, let’s get back to the burger business!

Notice any difference in these 2 hamburgers? I made the one on the left. Hui-chen made the one on the right.

One thing that I need to explain about Taiwan is about our weird sliced bread. Not only do you have to ask for “toast” and you will actually see “sliced toast” on the bread packaging (no one told Taiwanese that the bread must be toasted in order for it to be called “toast”) but the size is weird too. It’s like an A3 sized piece or something. Take a look and you’ll see what I mean: (more…)

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….

Blogged with Flock

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…)

Photos by MJ Klein

Hui-chen and I thought it would be a good idea to travel to the Hsinchu fish market and pick up some fish for grilling. It’s hard to beat the flavor of a nice fatty fish on the grill!

We have blogged on other fish markets before but not on this market, which is the closest one to our home in Hukou. On this day the available selections seemed a bit lighter than usual.

Before we went shopping for food, Hui-chen suggested that we eat at one of the restaurants. Yes, the hard-selling is still going on, and it’s still just as annoying! Here we see many of the wonderful greens that Taiwanese cuisine is famous for.

These are soft-shelled crabs. Each restaurant cooks a representative dish of their most popular offerings. I took some shots of the more interesting ones.

I am really not sure what the blue creatures are. When I find out I will update this post!

Naked frogs.

Hui-chen always gives me the same look when I snap a candid of her like this. We are waiting for the dishes to arrive.

This is our friend Michael Turton’s favorite: asparagus slathered in sweet mayo.

This is a sweet and sour deep fried fish (shot with flash to bring out the color of the sauce). The fish was the perfect size and the flavor was just great. I liked the sauce because it wasn’t overpowering like the sweet and sour sauces in the USA.

Standard fare: peel and eat shrimp.

After lunch we walked around the market and I spotted this carpet shark.

These are very large fish eyes just waiting for someone to buy them….

Now this is one of 2 things we came to get. I absolutely love salmon on the grill. The other thing we came to get were tuna steaks but there were not to be found. I did find a tuna subspecies tail section but I thought the price was too high.

Hui-chen carefully selected 2 beautiful salmon steaks for us.

These shots show just how nice the fish looked! Awesome!

Hui-chen wanted to get some clams for a dish she had in mind.

These are good prices for clams. 3 baskets for NT$200, or roughly US$6.

We put the fish in the freezer and took it out on Tuesday:

These are some of the blue shrimp that Shao-hui had the other day.

This is a lousy shot of the salmon grilling.

And this is the final shot of a piece of grilled salmon. I cannot tell you how good this was! The fat cooked up beautifully and created smoke that flavored the meat to perfection. I loved this meal!

technorati tags:Taiwan, Hsinchu, Hukou, grilled, fish, market

Blogged with Flock

Yesterday, in desperation, I posted a quick announcement about a grill party at Shao-hui’s that she decided to put on at the last moment. I sent out an email to several friends whom I know would be interested. Fortunately a few of them could make it!

I don’t know this Vietnamese gentleman’s name, but he sure is a nice guy. He works for Shao-hui and here is is using a torch to start the charcoal fire. We take it for granted but nearly all of the charcoal in Taiwan and most Asian countries is lump charcoal from real wood.

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Photos by MJ Klein & Hui-chen

When this old world starts a getting me down

And people are just too much for me to face
I’ll climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof, it’s peaceful as can be
And there the world below don’t bother me, no, no

The Drifters, 1968 (I personally knew Mr. Bill Pinkney who recently passed away).

We love our rooftop cabana. It’s a great place to escape the heat and catch some air and relax with a cool drink. We like to cook up there and invite friends over to relax and enjoy the sights from 5 stories up.

Today, Hui-chen and I spent several hours “up on the roof” and I took lots of photos this time. After all I wouldn’t want to be accused of making it all up!

The only drawback is the amount of stuff that I have to carry up there every time we want to hang out on the roof. The floor below is our “party room” with all of the stuff we use on the roof. The good part of it that I get exercise hauling the stuff upstairs.

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