Generally in Asia the food is quite cheap. If you do not go to luxurious restaurants or if you do not choose international cuisines you often spend less eating out than cooking your meal at home, especially if you are alone. What is even more convenient if you opt for the tasty and always present street food. In addition to saving money, eating at the stall makes life easier by avoiding shopping, cooking and then cleaning and washing everything. It also avoids wasting food advancing.
I even remember some apartments in Bangkok without the kitchen, just a fridge and a sink. At most an electric cooker or a microwave oven, because you eat almost always out!
However, sometimes happens to want to cook something, especially for local friends who are often interested in other countries cuisines, one in all the Italian!
In Asia they take food seriously! People are willing to drive lots of kilometers just to try some delicacies they find delicious, often creating lines of people in front of restaurants or at street food stalls that can get really long. Asians are food lovers, always ready and interested in trying new tastes that can arouse their taste buds and that can light up their face with a smile of appreciation … or a grimace of disgust.
I decide to make Li Ling try a pasta with zucchini, whipping cream and tuna. Simple, but usually everybody like it!
Cooking non-local food can sometimes be not an easy task. The problem is not so much related to how the kitchens are equipped in homes or hostels, usually there are all the necessary tools and appliances except the oven: so forget lasagna, pizza (if not in the pan), cakes …
The real problem is finding the ingredients, or if you find them they are really expensive as they are imported. Hard to find in the stores or markets here are cured meats and cheeses. However, in the cities there are usually some specialized shops or international supermarkets that sell them, at a rather high price.
Canned tuna is present everywhere, the whipping cream (three times more expensive than in Italy) has also been easily purchased, zucchini … we are on the third try and still nothing! We end up in different Keelong supermarkets but there is no trace of the vegetable for my recipe. They sell enough of everything: carrots, potatoes, ginger, mushrooms, sweet potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, watermelons, cabbage … but not my zucchini!
Another ingredient sometimes difficult to find are the aromatic plants that we often use in Italian cuisine, especially if fresh. You can find something in powder or dry. But often it’s not what I’m looking for. So I must try to replace the flavor using some local ingredients. Making some experiments, trying to use the sense of smell.
Let’s ride the Li Ling scooter again. It starts to rain, the weather is not nice for a few days here in the North of Taiwan, even though it’s winter the temperature is still good. The scooters are very used here on the island, I think it is the country with the highest number of motor vehicles on two wheels after Vietnam. Everyone stops to put on the raincoat and then leave again trying to avoid to get wet.
We end up in a couple of local markets with fruits and vegetables piled up neatly, but even here the smiles of the people and the shaking heads make it clear that there is no hope of finding zucchini!
The tomato sauce, one of the most popular ingredient in Italian cuisine, is often confused with ketchup, I have sometimes been directed by the grocer to buy it in place of the other red sauce. The tomato sauce is not a very used ingredient in Asian recipes, it is not always easily found and often there is little choice of product. However, if you are not in some remote village, in one way or another you can find it.
The lady from one of the fruit and vegetable stalls we visited gave us a tip about where we can find the zucchini!
We get back on the motorbike and pass through the busy city center. The signboards of all the commercial activities whizzes as we proceed zigzagging between the cars and the scooters. Restaurants, markets, stores sellings clothing, electronics or cell phones, lottery ticket sales, food, food and more food and lots of 7-Eleven or Minimart convenience stores in every corner. The students with their uniforms are leaving the schools and go to catch the bus to go home or go to one of the private after-school facilities. The city is super active even in the rain.
We park the scooter and go to the place indicated to us. Unfortunately, here too we find the usual selection of vegetables, except what we need. I start thinking about a “aglio e olio” pasta! This at least is easy to find. Even if they do not use a lot of olive oil, usually the pots are sprinkled with sesame oil, peanut or soybeans ones.
Thinking about giving up, after trying at least a dozen shops and now ready to cook a tuna and whipping cream pasta, we pass through a local market, returning to the scooter. They sell everything in this indoor place crowded with people who buy and move frantically: from fish to clothing, from household products to meat. There are a couple of stalls with fruits and vegetables, a quick but hopeful look.
In one corner a lady is starting to close her place by covering the merchandise with some cartons. On the central axis that forms together with the other two pieces of wood the shop and also the source of income of the woman, between a pile of potatoes and some bags of dried mushrooms, illuminated by a beam of heavenly neon light, there is a plastic container with two green vegetables with a tubular and long shape: the only two zucchini of all Keelong, dinner is safe!
