On adapting recipes for Americans
It feels like deja vu all over again
First, some housekeeping. I’m suspending paid subscriptions for the rest of this month. My little family and I are making our annual pilgrimage to Sweden for the rest of the summer, and I need to whittle down my workload in anticipation of the transition. With that said, I’ll soon embark on an 18-hour trip with an infant/wannabe toddler; send thoughts and prayers.
When I was developing the recipes for Made in Taiwan, I tried to keep the flavor profiles as true to the island as possible. Outside of the hyped-up banner dishes—the night market fare, the beer food, and one-off beef noodle soup— Taiwanese cuisine is actually quite subtle. We don’t have the zing and acid typical of Southeast Asian cuisine. Nor do we have any of the bold, tingly heat of Sichuanese cuisine.
In fact, to the frustration of many foreigners here in Taiwan, we barely use finishing salt on our dishes. Flavor is developed through layering. Sizzling lard in a wok, infused with briny dried shrimp and aromatics like ginger and garlic. Plain tofu and eggs braised with soy sauce and soy paste and sugar. We use sesame oil like Americans use Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt; a little bit too liberally and at the end of the cooking process.
When we recruited volunteer recipe testers for the cookbook, I was nervous about the feedback. Though I was born and raised in the States, my palate has always—and remains—rather Taiwanese.
All in all, the commentary was generally positive. Though there were a couple of consistent queries.
1) Portion sizes are too small?
In Mandarin, street food is xiao chi 小吃, which literally translates to small eats. Traditionally, dishes like braised pork belly over rice and peddler noodles are served in small 8-ounce bowls. You’re meant to eat these mains with a bunch of other side dishes, like fish ball soup, braised tofu, blanched leafy greens. I think folks expected, for example, our peddler noodles to be served in a large ramen bowl. I ended up managing expectations by specifying in the headnotes how these dishes are typically served in Taiwan. (Also, the thing about wok cooking is that you can’t effectively cook more than 1 pound of food in a 14-inch home wok)
2) Needs more salt?
So across the board, Taiwanese American food is far more saltier than Taiwanese food in Taiwan. So naturally, people who have only been exposed to the former felt that some of the dishes in the book needed more salt.
I spent a lot of time mulling this over and eventually settled on “salt, to taste” in most of the recipes. But some dishes — like the stir-fried vermicelli — had me tossing and turning at night. Did I want to go the crowd-pleaser route and do a saucier, punchier version with lots of garlic and braised pork? Or keep it true to what I see on a daily basis — a version that only has a kiss of soy sauce, a hit of black vinegar, and some sesame oil? We ended up with the latter. I’m not sure if I made the right decision, but I did have a couple people email me to say that our version in the book reminds them of home.
Now that I’m working on a postpartum cookbook, I’m running into many of the same issues. Postpartum food in Taiwan is very, very lightly seasoned. In fact, traditionalists consider salt to be taboo during the month of recovery.
The last thing I want is a cookbook full of bland recipes, so I’m trying to strike a balance. It’s a tough thing to do because taste is so subjective, so I’m relying on the good ol’ “salt, to taste” trick here once again. But I’m excited to hear what the recipe testers have to say (opening this up to volunteers in the spring; stay tuned).