The weather in Taiwan becomes frozen
suddenly during this week. People start
to take out their jackets, coats, and scarfs. When the temperature keeps
declining, people are easier to get hungry and tend to eat more food to keep
their bodies warm. However, what kind of food is the most popular one during
the winter? Ice cream will definitely be kicked out from the list, while the
hot pot will become people’s new favorite in Taiwan.
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| Hot pot is our good friend in winter |
Hot pots have many different kinds of savors,
for example, spicy hot pot, Cantonese hot pot, bouillon hot pot, and vegetable
stock hot pot, and so on. Among all of the savors, my favorite is sour cabbage
hot pot. In sour cabbage hot pot, people only put pork slice rather than other
kinds of meat. There is a sour cabbage hot pot restaurant in Fengshan, Kaohsiung,
which is called Yi-He (頤和). This restaurant doesn’t locate in a
noticeable place and the decorations inside is mediocre. Nonetheless, the soup
and ingredients of Yi-He are all excellent!
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| Yi-He sour cabbage hot pot restaurant |
In Yi-He, the cook will put some
ingredients in the pork stock in advance, including, sour cabbages, squid fish
balls, sausages, dried bean curd, and duck blood as the base of the hot pot. In
these ingredients, my family and I like the squid fish balls, sausages and duck
blood the most. The squid fish balls in Yi-He have a lots of squid chunks inside.
Due to these chunks, the squid fish balls will stay chewy after cooking in the
hot soup for a while. In addition, those squids are all from Penghu where is
popular with its fresh seafood. On the other hand, the cook in Yi-He use
chicken to make the sausage rather than pork. Hence, the taste of the chicken
sausages in Yi-He are quite different from the sausages we eat during our daily
lives. Last but not least, the duck blood is also an important ingredients of
the hot pot. Especially, when the duck blood is cooked with sour cabbage, the
duck blood will taste kind of sour rather than gamy.
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| Food in Yi-He |
Besides the ingredients I mentioned in last
paragraph, the pork slice also plays the main role in the sour cabbage hot pot.
First, Yi-He will cut the pork in very thin slices so that when customers put
the slices into the boiled soup, the slices will be cooked thoroughly in few
seconds. This process can prevent the pork slices from being over cooked. Second,
they also choose the pork with abundant grease to make the pork have better
texture after cooking. Moreover, Yi-He provides the sour sauce which is made by
leek sprouts under a thin layer of the soil to let the customers eat with the
pork slices.
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| The pork slices |
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| The sour sauce |
When eating the hot pot, we still need some
staples and vegetables in order to have a balance diet. In Yi-He, the staple
they provide is bean thread; and the vegetables will change according to the
season, as a result, they can make sure all the vegetables are fresh. After the
meal, even though Yi-He doesn’t provide any dessert, they will give each
customer a glass of juice which is made by dark plum fruits. The plum fruits
will urge our stomachs and bowels to digest the food we eat.
In conclusion, next time when you travel in
Kaohsiung, you can go to Yi-He to enjoy a delicious hot pot which contains
multiple ingredients, fresh pork slices and vegetables. However, the business
hours of Yi-He sometimes will change a little bit; hence, you have better to
make a phone call before heading for Yi-He. I’m sure the Yi –He sour cabbage
hot pot will be a nice choice for you in this frozen winter!
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| Yi-He sour cabbage hot pot |
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