Relax - What's that smell?!

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Okay, so it has Taiwanese pop stars, the world's tallest building and a museum stuffed with 8,000-year-old treasures, but Taipei's star attractions would have to wait: I was hungry. Shi Lin night market with its fantastic array of food stalls is the perfect place to start. If only the Taiwanese guide would cut us some slack.

"It's easy to get lost - this place is huge and crowded," she clucks for what feels like the 10th time. "Our meeting point is Jiantan MRT station over there. Call my mobile number if you need directions."

With that, the mother hen reluctantly turns us loose to peck at the feast.

Taipei seems humdrum during the daytime but when evening falls the city's energy levels spike. Night markets dot the town and Shi Lin is considered the biggest and busiest, a buzzing bazaar stuffed with local delicacies and every product imaginable. Even after filling my stomach, the colourful candied fruit on sticks, niu she bing (ox tongue-shaped cakes) and aroma of steamed buns are making my mouth water.

I inhale deeply to savour the scrumptious delicacies, but instead get an awful stink up my nostrils.

Smelly beancurd, sold during a Taiwan
Food Street promotion in Singapore.

"A sewage main has probably cracked," comments one of my friends, but my nose tells me the smell could only be coming from Taiwan's famously pungent tofu

The tofu is deep-fried till it turns golden, light and airy, then served up with a spicy sauce and pickled cabbage. The stronger the smell, the better the taste, say local connoisseurs.

Love it or loathe it, this malodorous curd has stood the test of time, with origins that go back to Emperor Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty. The story goes that a tofu-seller named Wang Zhihe was left with a surplus one summer's day, so he placed the cubes in a jar of salt and spices to preserve them. Opening the jar several months later, he took a pungent uppercut, but held his nose and picked out a piece with a pair of chopsticks. The greenish stuff was rich in flavour and smoother than ordinary tofu and word of his new product quickly spread. Eventually the Empress Dowager Cixi got whiff of it. Delighted by the taste, she named it Qing Fang, or "green square". These days it's known simply as Stinky tofu.

Two of my friends make a beeline for the strong scented delicacy, supposedly Mao Zedong's favourite food, but I throw in the towel for this round. Reeling from the stink, I stagger to a refreshment stall as far from the tofu shop as possible.

Seeing a man in need of a drink, the owner winds up his sales pitch - "Ai Yu Bing is refreshing and thirst quenching". In my rusty Mandarin, I order the ice and lemon from the menu of flavours then poke at the jelly with my straw.

"You don't know Ai Yu jelly?" asks the vendor. "It was discovered when a guy from Chiayi drank from a river and accidentally swallowed a clear yellowish jelly in the water."

"Mmm," I murmur through a sceptical sip.

"Suddenly feeling refreshed, he realised the sticky seeds growing on the riverbank were the source of the jelly. He took some home and mixed them with honey and lemon juice to create a delicious thirst-quencher. It got its name from his 15yearold daughter, Ai Yu, who made the drink famous by selling it on her stall. You hardly find it outside Taiwan because the Ai Yu plant grows in so few other places."

"Sounds plausible," I concede, feeling my appetite starting to revive.

I stroll away, psyching myself up for another encounter with Taiwan's fearsomely funky tofu. This time I would follow Zhihe's example and hold my breath before plunging a ripe, green cube into my mouth. Who knows, I might love it?

Just in case, I order ahead for another glass of Ai Yu Bing.

-The Nation/Asia News Network

See also:
- 10 of the world's most unusual foods

What's that smell?!

By Chusri Ngamprasert, The Nation/ANN | Wed, Sep 30 2009

A visitor gets more than he bargained for in Taipei's biggest night market, where the tofu is knockout stuff.

Keywords

toufu