A Very Local Taiwanese Food

Traveling with LL is really different. She is a lot more attached to us than KK ever been. I guess maybe this is the different between a boy and a girl. The first time I went to Taiwan with KK, he did not mind at all when I just left him with his Ama. As long as he has toys to play with he really doesn't care if I am not around. He still is now. But LL is a very girlish girl. She prefers a person to play with than just toys. So for the first week in Taipei we couldn't go anywhere without her. Because of that we can only go around my parents in law's home.

When we entered the third week finally LL can be comfortable enough to be left at home with her Ama for half a day and my father in law is kind enough to lend us his car. He even suggested to R to brought me to here and there so I will enjoy my stays there. He even babysit LL a bit too.

I happen to tell R that I want to taste a very traditional Taiwanese food. Not to much of Chinese food, because I have a hard time to differentiate between Chinese food with Taiwanese food. I still am actually.

So R drove me up and down the hills that surround Taipei. He knows that I love mountain view better than ocean view. But since Taipei is so close to the sea we still can see the ocean too.

It doesn't hurt also that we use GPS system in the car so we were not scared to get lost.

We even drove at a very small street. Exactly on both our sides are rice field, but the road is smooth concrete . I am not sure what should R do if there is another car coming from the opposite direction... backing up???

While we were on the top of the hill we saw a cluster of small restaurants on the side of the street. They are located exactly on the clift so the view is nice. Every single one of them show off their fresh ingredients that they get from the mountains/hills. Most of them are organic or wild vegetables. They even get the shrimps from the river near there. Pretty neat!

Because they are wild vegetables I couldn't find them at the local wet market near R's home in Taipei.

Like usual R ordered like a starving man. He also wants to show me these type of local food that is hard to get in the city. He ordered so many wild vegetables dishes that we ended up carried half of them home.

I guess the combination between fresh air, nice mountain view, organic and wild vegetables, and maybe the way they always quick stir fry with high heat the food to preserve their natural taste and color. All of those combine give us an excellent eating experience that we both want to repeat again.

For the recipe to cook the shrimps you can go to my Cooking Diary.