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For three years running, chefs from the Grand Hyatt Taipei have visited Beijing to show off the island's cuisine, and this year they had to think harder to try to make the visit to the Chinese capital even more successful.
"What we try to present is a mixture of the traditional taste of Taiwan and a presentation of Western cuisine," says Smith Lu, sous chef of Grand Cafe, Grand Hyatt Taipei. Lu and his colleague Hsieh Cheng Chih, sous chef of Pearl Liang Restaurant, led the culinary team at Grand Cafe, Grand Hyatt Beijing to prepare more than 50 Taiwan dishes at a buffet.
The media tasting started with an appetizer platter of abalone, jellyfish and dried mullet roe. To make it just a little different, the salted mullet roe, a famous Taiwan delicacy, was skewered together with white radish slices and shallot sprouts to balance its rich sea smell.
The spicy sauce that went with the lightly poached abalone was patiently hand-stirred and made with red chili, tomato sauce, ginger and shallot.
The appetizer is followed by a warming pot of chicken soup with bitter melon and preserved pineapples. Like people in East China's Fujian province, Taiwan people like to drink soothing, healthy soups.
The saltiness comes from pineapple preserved with soybean paste, the secret why the soup tastes so natural, with a slight sweet aftertaste.
In China, Taiwan is known as "treasure island" for its rich agricultural products, while fruits and seafood are available around the year.
Chef Smith Lu says Taiwan cuisine is an age-old style, with Japanese and aboriginal influences. The jellyfish appetizer, for example, is prepared with cucumber and sea urchin, with a taste similar to Japanese sashimi.
"We've brought seasonings from Taiwan to ensure the authenticity of taste," says chef Hsieh Cheng Chih, adding that they brought rice wine and soybean sauce to the tasty "three cup chicken", a typical Taiwan dish. The three cups refer to wine, sugar and soybean sauce. The chefs adapted the ingredients and made it into a "three cup" frog.
Instead of serving braised pork rice and sesame oil chicken, as in previous years, the chefs opted to offer fried rice noodles with pork, mushroom and pumpkin.
It is a bright golden plate topped with tasty bits of pumpkin and pork slices, with the color concurring with the Chinese beliefs of good fortune and prosperity.
The secret, the chefs say, is to use mashed pumpkin color to give the noodles rich color.
"It is a banquet dish in Taiwan," says Lu. "Usually rice cake or rice noodle is served toward the end of the meal, so guests will not go back home still feeling hungry."
Another outstanding dish was deep-fried sea bass fillet, crisp and sweet from the use of sweet potato starch and served with a vinegar and garlic sauce that added contrast.
Finally, traditional almond cream soup is matched with deep-fried flour fritters, which works like magic when it is dipped into the sweet soup.
Taiwan restaurants in Beijing give the impression that Taiwan cuisine is mostly street food. The chefs say that it is definitely more than just oyster omelet or spring rolls and sausages.
Taiwan cuisine has three major characteristics, and there is plenty of high-end produce to play with, such as golden tail moray and blue fin tuna.
"The first is freshness and taste. The second is lightness of flavor. The third is quick frying, with the perfect timing," says chef Hsieh. And at the Grand Cafe, they certainly showed off the best examples.
yejun@chinadaily.com.cn
