Sul volcano

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A few days ago I was browsing through SoraNews24, my go-to source for interesting eats in Japan, when I saw that Domino's is offering a pizza named the Cheese Volcano (チーズボルケーノ) in Japan. This looked like a lot of fun, as one can dip slices of pizza into a "lava" made with cheese. It's exactly the kind of fun, gimmicky stuff that I love. Unfortunately, Domino's exited Hong Kong years ago, and I didn't have plans to visit Japan in the immediate future.

Well... as I was looking out from my taxi in Taipei yesterday, I happened to pass by a Domino's and see them advertise the same vulcano pizza. This is not something I could take down on my own, so I quickly rounded up the Prince of Napa to be my partner in crime, as he's pretty close by. I'm grateful he was a good sport.

Dry aged in Taipei

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It's Christmas day and once again, the Parental Units are at my place for dinner. While we pandered to mom's tastes last night, tonight we are firming aiming to make dad happy. And that is easily achieved with a piece of good steak. On the advice of Big Mac, we went to Taylor Butchery (泰勒肉鋪) and picked up a nice, big piece of dry-aged côte de bœuf. And Foursheets built a nice dinner around this hunk of meat.

A 4kg Christmas

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It's been four years since I last spent Christmas with the Parental Units, and this time we decided to cook dinner for them. More specifically, Foursheets will be doing the cooking so that mom doesn't have to. We decided early on that the main theme for Christmas Eve would be an Alaskan king crab, and we spent some time doing our homework in terms of sourcing our crustacean. In the end, we ended up picking up a live one from Addiction Aquatic Development (上引水產).

The crab I chose weighed in at over 4kg, and while it had been out of the water for 9 hours by the time Foursheets stabbed its heart with a knife, it was still alive enough to wiggle its legs while we posed for pictures with it.

Good beef, meh broth

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Foursheets always wants to have beef noodle soup whenever she's in Taiwan, and tonight she's decided that she wouldn't hit her favorite Lin Dong Fang Beef Noodles (林東芳牛肉麵). Instead, we decided to return to Noodle Cuisine (天下三絕麵食館) as we liked the beef there.

Cold eggplant (千張茄子)

Beef chuck rib noodle soup (牛肩胛小排麵) - I've always liked this place for the amount of good quality beef they serve, and this bowl was no exception. Three delicious ribs. Tender and flavorful. The broth, though, was pretty middle-of-the-road. It's neither really rich and intense like what you'd get at Beef Father Beef Noodles (牛爸爸牛肉麵), nor light and herbal like Lin Dong Fang. It's a very decent bowl, but nothing more.

I guess we could do some more exploring to find other options in the future.

Taiwanese fatty pork

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As I'm spending a few days back in Taiwan, Imma use this chance to eat some of my favorite local food. As it turned out, I was really missing some fatty pork!

I landed a few days ago and didn't have lunch on the plane, so I decided to check out a place near home that I hadn't had a chance to try for the last few years. Jin Da Braised Pork Rice (今大魯肉飯) is apparently pretty famous, and when I showed up at 2:30 p.m. on a Saturday, there was still a line waiting to place orders. Thankfully I didn't have to wait too long, since I don't have much patience to line up for food.

Braised pork rice with soy egg (魯肉飯加魯蛋) - pretty good. This is my kind of braised pork (滷肉), which is to say that it is made entirely of skin and the fat below the skin. No lean meat whatsover, so the texture is extremely soft and satisfying.

Diary of a Quarantined Boy, part 1, day 3

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It's our final day in home quarantine, and our first day of "work from quarantine". Thanks to mom's delivery yesterday, we were finally able to get started on the right foot at breakfast this morning.

With slices of white toast going into the Gudetama toaster, we were able to get the results originally intended. In addition to the "meh" face we are familiar with, the other toast actually shows somewhat of a smile on the lazy egg. This was really, really cute and ended up getting a lot of attention when I posted the picture on social media.

Sankala put the toast back into our toaster oven, adding a thin slice of processed Hokkaido cheese on top. I washed this down with the last capsule of Nespresso Rio de Janeiro Espresso. You can bet that I won't be drinking this crap coming tomorrow morning!

Diary of a Quarantined Boy, part 1, day 2

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Breakfast was as simple as yesterday's - two slices of toast that have gone through the Gudetama toaster, and the same crappy Nespresso coffee. Plus a banana. Life in quarantine.

Now that we've completed our quarantine project, we turned our attention back to cleaning our apartment. There is a ton of work to do, but thankfully we have a couple of weeks to get it done.

Diary of a Quarantined Boy, part 1, day 1

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Woke up late this morning after having gone to bed pretty late. Since we're in quarantine with nowhere to go and no one to see, and it's a Saturday, I guess it didn't really matter. We could be lazy just like Gudetama (ぐでたま).

Speaking of the lazy egg... I bought a Gudetama toaster last year and had it delivered while my relatives were staying in our apartment, but I have never had a chance to use it. Sankala and I were pretty excited about taking it out of the box and putting it to the test.

So I did ask mom to get us some bread or toast. Unfortunately she didn't really get us the right type of toast... this brown toast came with almonds, walnuts, and raisins. So Gudetama's face wasn't really clear. Oh well... I ended up spreading some Nutella on it since it was the only thing available in the apartment, and washed it down with some crappy Nespresso Rio de Janeiro Espresso. Again, there were only a few capsules in the apartment left by my relatives...

Diary of a Quarantined Boy, part 1, day 0

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My last trip home to Taipei ended when I flew back to Hong Kong on January 28, 2020 after spending a few days with the Parental Units during Lunar New Year. Wuhan had announced it was shutting itself off from the rest of China just a week earlier, and in the span of 2 or 3 days face masks disappeared off the shelves across the Greater China region. It was the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, and within a couple of weeks both Hong Kong and Taiwan announced quarantine measures for inbound travelers as they closed their borders. I haven't been able to see the Parental Units since.

In the ensuing 29 months I've missed 3 of mom's birthdays, 2 of dad's birthdays (including his 80th), 3 of their anniversaries, 3 of my birthdays (including my 50th), and the biggest event among these - my Covid wedding. The thought of having to quarantine for 2 weeks on each end of the trip - meaning any trip would require a minimum of 4 weeks stuck inside hotels without seeing anyone - just made any travel prohibitively painful.

Things improved over the last few months, and we now only need to be stuck in quarantine for a total of 10 days. So I made plans to fly home to Taiwan with Sankala. Mom badly needs a hug, and she hasn't had a chance to greet her daughter-in-law. We are grateful that since I have my own place in Taiwan, the two of us are allowed to quarantine in the comfort of our home. This would prove tremendously helpful.

Today is the day!  Due to the awkward timing of our flight and our decision not to take the inflight meal, we chose to arrive at Hong Kong International Airport a little early in order to eat before boarding. Check-in was quick since we arrived some 2 hours before our flight and no one else was at the counter. HKIA seemed like a ghost town today, and we counted just around 20 flights taking off in the 12 hours between noon and midnight.

Given the lack of traffic, it's understandable that many restaurants have chosen not to open for business. The staff at the check-in counter were helpful in directing us to the outlets which still operate. After all, they have to eat there everyday so they know the situation best.  I decided to veto Sankala's original choice because I wanted something I knew I wouldn't be getting while in Taiwan.

So Tai Hing (太興) it is... and I chose to get stir fried rice noodles with beef (干炒牛河). Not bad, actually. I took a cup of hot watercress and honey (菜蜜) - something else I won't be having in Taiwan.

Cooking for mom

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I'm back home in Taipei for a short trip, spending time with the Parental Units and celebrating mom's birthday.  Normally I would just book a table at STAY, and having just had lunch with Chef Pierrick Maire in Bangkok last week, that would have been the easy solution.

But Hello Kitty suggested that we cook for mom instead, and deep down I knew that would make her much happier... and so we did.  Well, when I say "we", I meant Hello Kitty.  My culinary repertoire is pretty limited, but fortunately I brought along my pinch hitter...

After dropping off our luggage at my place, we made a mad dash for CitySuper so Hello Kitty could quickly take stock of the available ingredients and decide what she was gonna cook.  We didn't have a whole lot of time, and it's always tough to find the ingredients we want in Taipei, but oh well...

We saw a package of beef shank from Rangers Valley, and we were reminded of the Black Market beef we had earlier this year.  We figured that this would work well in a stew, and picked up some veggies and other ingredients to go along.

Hello Kitty wanted to pick up a bottle of supermarket wine to dump into the beef stew, but I had other ideas.  I have a few bottles of 1997 Beringer Merlot Private Reserve Howell Mountain lying around, and I didn't think it was going to get much better with age, so I popped open a bottle and asked Hello Kitty to use it for her beef.  She was pretty shocked at first, but as the beef was cooking she quickly realized that it does matter what wine you use - and she could smell it.  Hey, we're cooking for my mom, and nothing's too good when it comes to the Parental Units.

We started with a simple salad, which mom seemed to like a lot.

Droning Boy: first flights in Taipei

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I'm back in Taiwan for the Lunar New Year holidays so I could spend some quality time with the Parental Units, after having been banished for the last 6 months or so.  Since I took delivery of my new drone just 10 days before my trip, this would be a great opportunity for me to get some good flying experience with the new toy.

Traveling with a drone requires some homework to be done in advance of the trip.  First, I had to check with the airline about their rules regarding bringing drones onboard.  In this case, Cathay Pacific informed me that as long as I took the propellers off the drone and made sure the rechargeable batteries were in my carry-on bags, I was more than welcome to bring my drone with me.  That was easy.