Island's Table: A Quest for 36 Taiwanese Flavors (15th Anniversary First Taste, Fresh as New Edition)

陳淑華 [Island Cuisine: The First Movement]
15th Anniversary - Original Flavor, New Edition
◆36 Essays on Home Cooking: Using the family dining table as a field of study, this book meticulously explores local food culture through three dimensions: "Ordinary Flavors," "Seasonal Tastes," and "Scents of the Times."
◆25 Private Recipes: Documenting a mother's culinary skills, offering tips, and transmitting experience.
◆22 Dining Table Notes: Drawing extensively from historical materials, both ancient and modern, to explore the cultural origins of everyday foods.
◆This book was awarded the "Open Book Annual Good Book Award" for Beautiful Living.
 
A small dining table, an boundless field
A journey of discovery that stirs our life memories
 
　　What an incredible journey this truly is, time and time again. The dishes Mother cooked year after year, dishes we ate with ordinary indifference, each surprisingly had a story to tell. And the dishes I occasionally cooked myself, though naive and nameless, imperceptibly incorporated the flavors of my own growth, with the scents of one era after another intertwining and flowing through them.
 
　　Thus, starting with Mother's cooking, amidst memories of tastes on the tip of the tongue, and the exploration of field research documents, and resonating with all sorts of unexpected online connections, a dining table belonging to the flavors of Taiwan's land gradually emerged...
 
　　〈PART 1. Ordinary Flavors〉Fried rice, noodle soup, braised minced pork with fermented beans, dried bamboo shoots, water spinach soup... These dishes, appearing year after year, seem dispensable, yet have an irreplaceable taste. And braised cabbage, flatfish and pork-belly stew, pork chop rice... though they have become famous items at street food stalls, Mother's always had an extra flavor – sometimes it was the nostalgia of childhood, sometimes her wisdom... And even the philosophy and deliciousness of pork cracklings, which have traversed kitchens in the American South and Provence, France, have been savored...
 
　　〈PART 2. Seasonal Tastes〉What is it like to have a Tomb Sweeping Day without spring rolls, a Dragon Boat Festival without zongzi, or a Winter Solstice without tangyuan? Who still remembers eating bottle gourd noodles on Lidong (Start of Summer) or cooking sesame oil chicken and glutinous oil rice on Qixi (Double Seventh Festival)? A common Taiwanese family dining table, thanks to Mother, still preserves the seasonal tastes passed down by ancestors. Spring in Qingming, summer in Dragon Boat Festival, autumn in Qixi, winter in Winter Solstice – the four seasons revolve, and even if time is merciless, the dining table remains flavorful!
 
　　〈PART 3. Scents of the Times〉Pan-fried dumplings, sizzling and frying, yet evoking the scent of steamed buns from a Shandong neighbor's steamer in childhood. Wonton soup, lion's head meatballs, and beef noodles always carried the image of Mother working in Jiangzhe restaurants in their broth. Salsa settled on the tongue, conjuring the magical and distant imagination from the Mexican film "Like Water for Chocolate." Counting each dish, the 20th century passed, the closed martial law era became a thing of the past, and as the era of globalization swept in, a humble island dining table unconsciously recorded these scents of the times.
 
Recommended by renowned experts
 
　　Wang Xuanyi | Writer
　　Gu Biling | "Word Cultivator"
　　Xu Zhong | Food Culture Researcher
　　Chen Jingyi | Writer
　　Ye Yilan | Food and Lifestyle Writer ‧ Owner of "Yilan Food & Lifestyle Player" website
　　Lu Yian | Food Writer
　　Han Liangyi | Writer
　　—— (Alphabetical order by surname)
 
Heartwarming Reviews
 
　　Wang Xuanyi (Writer, author of "State Banquets and Family Feasts")
　　"This book, 'Dining Table on the Island,' not only records the daily meals on the author's family dining table but also recounts stories of typical family dining tables in Taiwan during the 1960s and 70s. In addition to simple recipes and small cooking tips, the author extends to articles that draw extensively from food anecdotes, allowing readers to more clearly understand the environment and origins of these ingredients or delicacies. I myself am very fond of Taiwanese cuisine, and more than half of the recommended restaurants and small eateries in magazines are Taiwanese restaurants or stalls. Therefore, when I held this manuscript and read it, I often became extremely hungry, wanting to immediately put down the manuscript and go to the kitchen to replicate Mother Chen's dishes. Of course, it would be even better if I had the opportunity to eat a bowl of savory porridge at her dining table, and I couldn't miss the dried bamboo shoots, chicken rolls, braised cabbage... If I could sprinkle some pork cracklings, it would definitely be even more fragrant!"
 
　　Chen Jingyi (Writer, author of "Oh! So That's Taiwanese Flavor")
　　"'Dining Table on the Island,' which traces the flavors of home, is the beginning of Chen Shuhua's food writing, gentle and unpretentious; the second book, 'Changhua Snack Journal,' focuses on exploring hometown snacks, then compares and investigates related snacks across Taiwan, meticulously detailed; the third book, 'Kitchen-side Cooking Tales,' ambitiously organizes and compares the culinary techniques of the Minnan and Hakka ethnic groups. I believe that to master Taiwanese-Hakka cuisine, one must learn the culinary terms of the Taiwanese-Hakka language, because each word represents different heat levels and cooking techniques; a slight deviation can lead to a huge difference, and one can also understand the subtleties of Taiwanese cuisine from it. This book is a textbook-level existence. Readers can embark on a journey of exploring and pursuing Taiwanese flavors through the author's island cuisine trilogy."

2025-05-28

遠流

224

9786264181990