Chinese Breakfast

Posted in Breakfast, Chinese on March 20th, 2007 by mei| | .

I love love love traditional Chinese breastfast. In fact, few things in life can make me smile at 7am like having my favorite rice ball (oblong is a better description) delivered to my doorstep.

soymilk_shaobing.jpgRice oblongs aside, I do also really like the chinese flatbread stuffed with a half oil stick (燒餅油條半套）. Why half an oilstick? Easier to eat that’s why. I really don’t think anybody with the right mind - and mouth - could comfortably stuff a shaobing beignet combo down one’s gullet. Unless you’re Garfield. The real reason, however, is that I like to bring my b-fast home and add shredded pork floss （肉鬆/肉酥) to the sandwich.

Yes, that’s right. I adore pork floss. The sweet yet savory fluffy brown mass that the locals love to top their equally fluffy white breads with. It’s the bane of any Jew trying to keep kosher in Taipei since pork floss has not a smidgen of resemblance to pork. The quality of pork floss, however, is going down. It used to be de rigueur for traditioal chinese breakfast places to serve fantuan （飯糰）rice balls stuffed with premium grade pork floss but now most places don’t even carry the stuff. Sacrilege! So I have to buy my own. My favorite brand is Weichuan’s 味小寶純肉酥. It’s supposedly a hundred percent unadulterated porkfloss. As if I’d accept anything less.

When it comes to soy milk, I’m less picky. The thing is the locals do know how to make good soy milk. Even bad fresh soy milk is better than most stuff out of the tetra paks that I had to make do with in college. The only place that makes fresh soy milk that I despise is the 青島豆漿 in my neighborhood of Tunghua night market. I feel like the soy milk there has a “burnt” taste to it. Avoid at all costs! But they do make a nice egg pancake…

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