TaiwanFest explores farm-to-table cooking

During the festival, chefs will tell stories of Taiwanese producers and demonstrate creative dishes that showcase the island’s bounty

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      The farm-to-table concept is well established in Vancouver, and this year’s Telus TaiwanFest is set to showcase how Taiwan is also embracing the idea. “We want to show how diverse Taiwan is, and how adoptive it is to new ideas. It’s a testimony to Taiwan as an island nation. It’s always exposed to new concepts. That’s what Taiwan has been for the last 400 years,” Charlie Wu, the festival’s managing director, explains proudly during a chat in a local café.

      TaiwanFest runs Saturday to Monday (August 31 to September 2) behind the Vancouver Art Gallery (at West Georgia and Howe streets) and in the 500 to 800 blocks of Granville Street. Wu is especially excited about the appearance of two Toronto chefs who will be telling their Taiwanese farm-to-table story and giving cooking demonstrations.

      Canadians Christine Liu and Stephen Aspinall recently launched an intimate restaurant in Daxi, a township in Taiwan’s Taoyuan county. The restaurant’s Mandarin name roughly translates as “farm to table”, and they source from local producers. The menu is inspired by French techniques and includes a bamboo consommé and a meringue with local mango and passion fruit.

      Liu and Aspinall previously worked together at Toronto’s Scaramouche restaurant, and she asked him to help spread the farm-to-table gospel in Taiwan.

      “It’s been great,” Aspinall tells the Georgia Straight by phone from Taiwan. “In Taiwan, farm-to-table is just starting to happen. There are some people that really believe in it.”

      When Aspinall arrived, one of the first places Liu took him to was a rice and duck farm in Miaoli county. Liu loved the farm’s decision not to use pesticides. Instead, quite charmingly, the farm raises ducks to eat the pesky snails that munch on the rice in the fields. Liu and Aspinall are pleased that the farm has been willing to sell them some of its limited crop. At the fest, the dynamic duo will demonstrate the making of steamed rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, featuring a trio of the farm’s rices (sticky, whole grain, and purple).

      Taiwan being an island, its food is also about ocean-to-table. The theme of this year’s TaiwanFest is Children of the Ocean, which is reflected in a big way in the food program. “Seafood is such an important element in Taiwanese cuisine, so we tried to get chefs here known for their seafood dishes,” Wu says.

      The “brave chef”, Ching-Yung Chen, specializes in seafood banquets at the King 101 restaurant in Kaohsiung and is also known for his jaw-dropping genius at veggie- and ice-sculpting. At the festival’s street-food banquet, visitors will be able to purchase his oyster roll, made with fresh oysters, fish paste, and ground pork belly wrapped in handmade tofu skin and deep-fried. They’ll also be able to purchase his stir-fried rice noodles with pumpkin, clams, and squid and marvel at his talent during cooking demonstrations.

      Also appearing on-stage will be the “hot and spicy chef”, Cheng-Chung Chen, who excels at Szechuan cooking and is an associate professor of Chinese culinary arts at the National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism. His ocean-to-table contributions to the street banquet will be steamed salmon with nori sauce, cellophane noodles with lemon prawns, and hot-and-spicy mussels with winter squash, baby cucumber, and red chili peppers. Needless to say, you should bring your appetite.

      Those who get all revved up and want to incorporate some Taiwanese farm-to-table cooking into their own kitchens can learn from the Tzu Chi Foundation’s Cooking for Longevity presentation. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practitioners will be at Telus TaiwanFest to show visitors how to use these herbs to make tea that’s suited to their particular medical condition.

      For example, Michael Chung will talk about how goji berries are a wonder food that can be grown in Vancouver. If you suffer from insomnia, you can learn how to make an Eight Treasure porridge that includes goji berries, poria root (fu shen), pinto beans, azuki beans, dried longan pulp, and lotus seeds. You’ll feel even better if the goji berries come from your own back yard, in keeping with the farm-to-table philosophy. 

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