“I’m not a food influencer or a professional chef,” says Clarissa Way. “A lot of people are very good at coming up with great new recipes that no one has ever seen before. That’s not my forte. My forte is the act of preserving, interviewing, and reporting.”
This is clear from the beginning of Wei’s debut cookbook. Made in Taiwan: Recipes and stories from the island nation. One of his first recipes begins with the story of an 89-year-old former soldier. Originally from northeastern China, he was stationed in Taiwan when he was 16 and is pictured holding a handwritten recipe for green onion pancakes. A photo memo explains that this dark rural scene was recreated to evoke the appearance of a late 1940s breakfast in a wood-built military housing with low windows.
The recipe details set the tone for the rest of the cookbook, which will be released this month. Made in TaiwanLayers of detail include an oyster omelet photographed with dappled lighting to mimic the shade of a banyan tree at a popular Tainan food stall. Braised egg and tofu served on a mid-century platter borrowed from the Taiwanese Rice Bowl Museum. and a profile of a couple trying to preserve the country’s kueh (rice-based pastry) tradition. Like the island itself, this book has a sense of nostalgia. This book is not only a taste of Taiwan, but also a report on how Taiwan feels. This is one of the feats that Wei, who lives in Taipei, has assembled a team of locals, including recipe developers, historians, and food stylists who are just as detail-oriented as she is.
Made in Taiwan Last year, it joined the wave of Taiwanese cookbooks published by the diaspora. This cookbook is a collection of what Wei would have called “luxurious new recipes.” First Generation: Taiwanese American Home Recipesby Frankie Gow. baoby a London restaurateur serving Taiwanese-inspired cuisine. Win Son publishes Taiwanese-American cookbookCo-authored with Kathy Erway, by a New York restaurant and bakery chef. taiwanese food In 2015.
what to configure Made in Taiwan Another thing is its journalistic sensibility and its statement from the beginning that Taiwan is its own country, independent of China, with its own cuisine.That’s the statement that made this cookbook Political –“But it has to be done,” says Wei. “You can’t separate politics and food in Taiwan. It’s impossible.” But to focus on this aspect of the book is to miss its best and most beautiful parts. That is, preserving Taiwanese recipes (both familiar and vanished) as a bulwark against an uncertain future, a feeling that comes from a rarefied island. Seize sovereignty.
“It all started when I wanted to cover politics.” Wei describes the beginning of her journalism career: “But it was too heavy and too dark for me.” She eventually became drawn to food, starting with the Chinese and Taiwanese restaurants she knew well as the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants in Los Angeles, and then expanded to Asian cuisine in America. I started writing about In her 20s, she moved to Asia to “get to the root of everything.” She backpacked through China, spent time in Taiwan, and in 2018 she landed in Hong Kong, where she produced videos about food and culture from all over China for Gold Thread. South China Morning Post.
As China’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong became increasingly violent throughout 2020, Wei felt a sense of crisis and pitched a Taiwanese cookbook to an American publisher. “I realized how quickly a place’s identity can disappear overnight, especially under the shadow of an authoritarian government,” she says. “I really wanted to tell the story of Taiwan through the lens of food, and I was really frustrated with how Taiwanese food was always lumped into the big category of Chinese food.”
Wei didn’t originally intend to bring politics into the cookbook, but it’s “kind of the elephant in the room,” she says.China seek unity Taiwan is an autonomous democracy of 24 million people that has never been part of the People’s Republic of China, and when Wei was writing this book, Tensions between China and Taiwan It escalated to a new level. “China uses food for the following purposes. politicizeThey want to incorporate us into their country,” Wei says. “And it’s really unfortunate that we’re allowing them to create this story about our food.”
Taiwanese food has been shaped by many cultures and factors. China, including the island’s indigenous peoples, Japanese colonial influence, post-World War II American soft power, and his 17th-century Hokkien and Hakka people, as well as Kuomintang soldiers and refugees who began to arrive. waves of immigrants from These nuances make Taiwanese cuisine as difficult to define as American cuisine, especially modern American cuisine. “But one thing is for sure: our cuisine is unique,” says Wei. She points to Taiwanese seasonings as evidence. Taiwanese soy sauce has both Chinese and Japanese influences, and the black vinegar is more similar to Worcestershire sauce than its Chinese counterpart.
“In the grand context of all this history, the notion that Taiwanese cuisine is its own distinct genre is quite new,” Wei writes in the cookbook. “However, this idea is becoming accepted by many people living on the island today, especially in light of cross-Channel tensions and as they seek ways to distinguish themselves from invaders. It’s becoming an increasingly common idea. As China becomes more aggressive, we find ourselves becoming more and more Taiwanese.” Anne annual survey According to a National Chengchi University study, 63 percent of Taiwanese identify as Taiwanese, as opposed to Taiwanese-Chinese, or pure Chinese. According to research, that number has more than tripled over the past 30 years.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that a sense of urgency influenced the making of this film. Made in Taiwan. The book’s food stylist, Yen Wei, wrote to me, “I always feel indescribable anxiety about losing important parts.” “We just need to tell our story and establish our identity before it’s too late.”
Made in Taiwan It might have been It’s a project born out of preservation, but for some it’s a provocation. A look through Mr. Wei’s social media accounts shows some people’s anger at the book’s anti-China, pro-Taiwan independence stance.
While much coverage of Taiwanese culture avoids politics, Wei is “not afraid to dive into Taiwanese culture.” [it]” Lillian Lin, co-owner of Taiwanese grocery store Yunhai in Brooklyn, said in an email. “When you try to write about Taiwanese identity, you almost inevitably have to distinguish it from Chinese identity, which becomes political in itself. Rather than dodging the question, she really tries to explain the difference.” It gets a lot of criticism, but she’s not afraid to call it out and even fight it.”
Wei claims she is generally conflict-averse (“That’s very Taiwanese,” she says), but when people accuse her of not knowing history, she fights back. “Look, we, her and the research assistants and the historians we hired for this book, did a lot of research on this. I’m not pulling this out of my ass. I’m not pulling this out of my ass. I guess I’m a little hard-headed when I feel the need to protect.”
As the book’s publication date approaches, she admits that she is nervous about its impact. “The very act of saying that Taiwanese food is not Chinese food could be interpreted as a crime by some people that day,” she says. Therefore, she does not know when she will be able to return to China, and she laments the uncertainty. “But the urge to tell this story overwhelmed everything,” she says. “What are you going to do? Stop being Taiwanese or stop telling the stories of the people here?”
Taiwan’s relationship with China is unique, but the idea of losing its food culture is not. “In every country in the world, people are faced with the reality that many old recipes are being lost,” says Ivy, the book’s recipe developer and a cooking teacher in Taipei for more than 20 years. Chen says. She has identified some of the ingredients that make dishes taste like Taiwanese, such as the small dried flounder often added to soups and stews, but now favors convenient, corner-cut items such as packs of seaweed. It has been omitted. Made in Taiwan This includes preservation efforts that extend to recipes that attempt to recreate the “early ancient taste” that even Taiwan is losing.
Much of Way’s work documents what we are at risk of losing. The disappearing tradition of Tomb Sweeping Day In East Asia and Southeast Asia, The quest to save chili peppers In Taiwan. As a bilingual journalist, Way provides a framework and platform for many voices that are not often heard in the Western world. In this cookbook, like her reporting, her personal anecdotes are minimal. She gets little in the way and allows her collaborators and subjects to put their heart and soul into this book. Some of the people featured on its pages are people she met after spending almost a decade reporting in Taiwan. Among them is legendary home cook Chung Kuo Ming-chin, also known as Hakka Mama, who created recipes such as preserved vegetables and steamed pork that gave Taiwan a taste of Hakka. is provided. Indigenous chef Aeres Raubarate provides the background for dishes such as abay (millet, sticky rice, and minced pork steamed in leaves). And third-generation rapper and roadside stall owner Lin Taiyu (also known as Guloji) is famous for his braised pork belly rice, one of the most iconic dishes of Tainan, the southern city that is Taiwan’s food capital. I devised a recipe.
If Mr. Chen incorporates Taiwanese nuances into his recipes, Mr. Yen Wei; Made in TaiwanThe stylist is her visual counterpart. Most of the props and dishes in this book come from her own collection, starting with her grandmother’s.
Mr. Yen’s customers, who are primarily Taiwanese, often seek an “American-style,” “Danish-style,” or “Japanese-style” aesthetic, he said. She thinks they may find Taiwanese style “a little lame.” But she wanted to capture that style in her book to show that “even the little things in our daily lives are still worth respecting.” To that end, she made sure to include her rusty coins, used pink napkins, and cheap plastic tablecloths in her photos. In Taiwan, “people are always busy making a living, so they rarely feel graceful. We are naive, bold, mostly practical, and resilient, so we are good at adapting.” She added that Taiwan’s aesthetic is “vivid, energetic, and unpredictable,” but still has “some order in the chaos.”
In a sense, the idea that there is order in chaos may also apply to the current situation in Taiwan. The country currently exists in a gray zone, not only is it not recognized as an independent country by most countries in the world, but it is also not part of China.about 87 percent 80% of people in Taiwan want this status quo to remain, even though it may be unpleasant. Mr. Wei acknowledges this gray area, but Made in Taiwan In the introduction, she devotes the rest of the book to celebrating the vibrant, energetic, and unpredictable evolution of Taiwanese cuisine. In doing so, the dish becomes a broader celebration of Taiwan’s people, traditions, and culture.
“I wrote this with a broad American audience in mind, and all the while I was as well. [thinking] “It’s about Taiwanese people, people like me, people who have a connection to the island but have never really heard the story told in this way,” Wei said. “We really wanted this book to be a win for us.”
Ann Long Shu Photographer and director based in New York City and Taipei.
