What Dinner Looks Like

What dinner looks like if you don't make it yourself, pictures taken at my aunt's friend's house in Taipei. They live in one of the high-rises on the side of the mountain overlooking Taipei City, where the celebrities live. I wish my computer wasn't Linux, so I can mount my old external hard drive and get the nightscape pictures of Taipei 101 that I took from the giant window of their apartment. It's about the most amazing image in the world. Sorry kids.

Considering this picture was taken indoors, I am quite proud of the photo quality of these two wine glasses and the grain of the table surface.For starters, Dong Gua Tang (winter melon soup) with oysters. For hot summers, this is a light but tasty soup that won't weigh down the rest of your meal.
Foreground: calamari pasta with shrimp. Background: anchovy and bamboo shoots with spicy red peppers
Beef with bell peppers, something we make at our house as well. The picture isn't so good because I forgot to take a picture of it until it was plated on my plate.
Tofu in red sauce. I can't remember what the red sauce was made from, but it wasn't spicy at all.
For dessert, the trend of the moment, mille-crepe with mango stuffing.
Almond nai lao (milk pudding gelatin thingy) with blueberry.

Big Wheel Sushi

My first encounter with my mom's oldest sister (big aunt) after 11 years of not seeing her was getting a cultural tour on Taiwanese teens, in Shi Men Ding. Our first stop (after passing by countless stores peddling pink, lacy, and anime accessories to teens with disposable income) was the Giant Wheel revolving sushi bar. I'm not sure why it's called Giant (da) Wheel (treh luen); maybe it has something to do with the train that was pulling the sushi? Left: Giant asparagus spears with a sour plum sauce. Very strange feeling, eating asparagus with plum. If you disregard the internal instinct to gag when you think of plum sauce, it's actually not bad.
Right: noodles made out of a vegetable called mountain medicine (shan yao). It's more like shreds of some sort of root that comes out slimey but very subtle in taste.
Both are served cold.
Cone, I think this is salmon.
The REAL train pulling the sushi. Many revolving sushi restaurants have a conveyor belt that passes little covered dishes in front of diners. This restaurant put the effort into building a huge set of train tracks that went all the way around the dining room, from the front of the store to the back, taking great care to pass through the window display so that people outside can see too. They had to weigh down the train in certain areas because the food it was pulling was too heavy and would make the pulling engine tilt.
Giant shrimp tempura. I love tempura because the batter is so light and crispy. The key to having excellent tempura batter is to mix the powder with ice water right before dipping food in it. This makes the batter light, and non-chewy.