Taiwanfest chefs take the stage for a rice versus noodles battle

This weekend’s festival highlights two much-loved culinary staples, rice and noodles, in a mock battle for supremacy

    1 of 2 2 of 2

      Quick—which do you prefer: rice or noodles? This year’s Taiwanfest is inviting you to witness the ultimate carb showdown.

      “They are two of the most important staple foods in most Asian culinary traditions,” explains Charlie Wu, the festival’s managing director, during a phone interview. “Taiwan definitely has its own variety of rice and noodles. We also thought this would be a good way to connect with other culinary cultures. We’re challenging our participating chefs to come up with new ideas.”

      For the playful mock battle, Taiwanese and local chefs will be giving demos and samples of their unique rice and noodle dishes over the course of the festival (Saturday to Monday [August 30 to September 1] at the Vancouver Art Gallery plaza and along the 600 to 800 blocks of Granville Street). Tom Lee, chef de partie at the Rosewood Hotel Georgia, will host the demos. Lee has an impressive culinary background; he graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, and worked alongside Gordon Ramsay at his eponymous restaurant in London.

      Yet he insists his culinary roots are humble. “Taiwanese food is about lots of flavour, but it’s simply done. That’s how my food philosophy started, and it still is my food philosophy,” he explains over the phone.

      Born in Taipei and raised in Vancouver, Lee grew up loving home-style Taiwanese dishes. “Ever since I was a kid, I was always interested in cooking. It actually started with my grandmother. She would always make a lot of Taiwanese dishes. It was really traditional home cooking. I was always sitting across from her, asking her questions,” he recalls. Both his granny and, later, his mother taught him how to make rustic dishes such as sticky rice with ground pork, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, dried shrimp, and green onions, and stir-fried thick noodles with seafood and chicken.

      As well as emceeing the demos, Lee will be demonstrating both a rice and a noodle dish. While the rice dish is still top-secret, the noodle dish is his reinvented Taiwanese beef noodle soup, which was inspired by gnocchi made by chef David Chang of Momofuku fame. Believe it or not, Lee’s intriguing creation features pan-fried gnocchi made of mashed-up instant ramen noodles, as well as braised beef short ribs, cubes of spicy beef-consommé jelly, and vegetables like bok choy, green onions, and radishes. “When you eat the dish, the jelly will melt in your mouth and become broth,” he explains.

      Although he’s supposed to be impartial in the rice-noodle debate, Lee admits that rice is hands down his personal preference: “Noodles are messier, and often in broth in Taiwan. I’m not a huge broth fan. And rice fills me up more, too. And that’s why I enjoy rice more.”

      But he’ll remain neutral as the emcee for two visiting Taiwanese culinary stars, rice chef Ching-Tien Huang and noodle chef Chi-Wen Chen. Each will present five rice or noodle concoctions. (Cue dramatic drum roll.) Although there is no formal judging, attendees can sample the dishes and decide for themselves which they prefer.

      Besides creating dishes like ginger and onion rice with satay lamb, and sticky rice in a lotus-leaf wrap, Chef Huang hopes to dazzle with an entry that reworks traditional Taiwanese braised pork hock with rice, by deep-frying pieces of the meat. It’s bound to be an extremely rich but lip-smacking dish.

      Chef Chen’s contributions will include a fried-noodle sandwich and crispy seafood noodles. He’s also making chilled chocolate noodles that will appeal to chocoholics.

      “It’s a sweet and salty dish. The noodles themselves are made from real chocolate,” he explains. “It’s got a sesame garlic sauce, so you don’t want to go on a date after you eat it, but it’s really tasty. It’s sprinkled with a bit of vegetables, like carrots.”

      These Taiwanese cooking greats better be at the top of their game, because Kaitlin Liu, winner of Fairchild TV’s Chef Corner Jr., a kids’ cooking-competition TV show, will also be taking to the stage as part of the rice-versus-noodles demonstrations. Thirteen-year-old Liu bested five other finalists with her Farmyard Chicken Fricassee that featured a chicken-coop fence made out of crispy potatoes. She’ll be representing Vancouver in the upcoming Chef Corner Jr. in Hong Kong.

      Interviewed at the Fairchild TV studios, Liu is sweet, articulate, and passionate about food. (She started mincing garlic at age six.) She’s very excited about the participation of chefs Huang and Chen: “It’s an honour for me to meet cool chefs from other parts of the world.” She adds that cooking demos are a lot less nerve-racking than piano recitals.

      Liu states that she’s a big noodle fan: “I cook noodles more than rice. The best thing about noodles is that you can explore more, since a lot of countries have noodles.” To celebrate this diversity, she’ll be doing a demo with pasta shells stuffed with Italian sausage, shrimp, sun-dried tomatoes, Parmesan, and fresh parsley and basil. She’ll top the shells with mozzarella and then torch them to melt and brown the cheese. Voilà!

      Liu has visited Taiwan with her parents, and she goes to Taiwanfest every year to try dishes from the sumptuous street banquet. This year, vendors will be offering Taiwanese one-bite sausages, barbecued fish cakes, and fermented-bean-curd-flavoured chicken wings, as well as desserts like shaved ice with sweet red beans and ice cream. If you’re still sitting on the rice-versus-noodles fence, Wu suggests trying the braised pork rice, as well as the stir-fried rice noodles that hail from Hsinchu City and are known for their firm texture and translucent nature. Head to the bubble-tea lounge when you get thirsty.

      From now until Monday, Diva at the Met in the Metropolitan Hotel (645 Howe Street), the festival’s partner hotel, will be offering its own menu on a rice-versus-noodles theme. Lunch will feature a risotto with smoked burrata cheese, lemon zest, and prawns, as well as a veg and chicken pad Thai. Dinner offerings will include a three-layer braised-lamb-shoulder lasagna, and a prawn-and-chicken fried rice, inspired by the hot-and-sour flavours of tom yum soup.

      For a schedule of Taiwanfest’s culinary events, see the Taiwan Fest website.

      Comments