Yesterday was President's Day

In honor of President Trump's taking a phone call from the Taiwanese president at the start of his presidency, I made Taiwanese food all day.

Is that a tenuous connection?  Trying too hard?

Nah, the actual reason was that I had a nice free day, so I decided that I wanted to try some Taiwanese recipes.  In my mind, I had this romantic notion that I'd just constantly cook and constantly eat all day, but my meals ended up following more conventional meal times.

I started in the morning with sheng jian bao, which are pan fried ground pork filled buns.  They were like a cross between bao, siu mai, and Japanese gyoza.  Bao because of the milk flour outer wrapper, siu mai because of the ground pork filling, and gyoza because of the fry/steam preparation.  These came out really good - the tops and filling were cooked nicely, and the bottoms had a nice brown seared caramelization.

 Next I made Taiwanese popcorn fried chicken with deep fried basil.  These tasted a little like Japanese chicken karaage with five spice.  They were yummy with the fried basil.

I also made a bouncy pork ball in soup.  This was good too!!  The meatballs were very bouncy and springy, and I'm sure if you threw one on the floor, it would bounce.

I made Ching He Huang's Three Cup Chicken, and served with baby bok choy, pickled mustard cabbage, corn and rice.  This was really simple, but tasty.

Finally, I made Taiwanese shaved ice, with lychee jellys, mango, pineapple, peach preserves, condensed milk, tapioca pearls, and shaved ice.  It was actually very light and refreshing!