Delicacy? You decide

10May09

When I worked in Taipei, I often walked home at night with the excuse that I wanted the exercise. I doubt that anyone believed me though.  They all knew there was a night market between my office and my apartment. Taiwanese night markets are everything the guidebooks say and more. Even at 1 in the morning, you can still go buy fresh sliced guava, t-shirts with nonsensical English phrases, barbequed squid on a stick, or any number of other unrelated goodies. Of course, the real attraction here is the food, which will normally be handed to you in a small plastic bag. You use a pointed wooden stick to stab your snack, and this way you can eat as you walk.

Night markets show you a side of the city that you can’t get from being in a classroom all day, or by watching the half-asleep businessmen on the subway.  Here there is always something going on, with people bargaining for better prices on sunglasses, kids fighting about arcade games, cooks shouting to the potential customers to come in and have a taste, and high school girls flirting with college boys. But the smells are what really draw you in. The smell of crispy fried vegetables floats by from one stand, while another offers the savory scent from its do-it-yourself stew. (You choose the ingredients, they cook it up for you.) The grills give off that smoky, spicy barbeque smell and of course the desserts will make you renounce your diet once and for all. But then you get a whiff of something—oh man, what is that? The garbage dumpsters? Are there port-a-potties at this night market? It takes you a moment to realize that, no, it’s just the famous Taiwanese delicacy; stinky tofu.

Just for the record, I didn’t come up with the name just because I associate the smell with the men’s locker room at the Y. ”Stinky tofu” is the literal, and very accurate translation from the Chinese name （chou dofu 臭豆腐).  Taiwanese people love this stuff, and it’s a staple at every night market. Here it’s usually eaten fried, with hot sauce and a sort of pickled salad, but it can also be steamed or cooked in a brown, foreboding-looking broth. And as much as I pride myself on my ability to eat almost anything no matter how crazy or unconventional, especially when I’m trying to learn about a particular culture, this one stumps me.

Stinky tofu: Looks innocent enough, but luckily you can't smell the photo.

Oh I’ve eaten it of course. When I hear someone say “westerners don’t like this. Maybe you should just get french fries,” then obviously I’m going to eat it. Maybe I’ll even get two. But this stinky tofu is one of the things I just can’t get used to. My boss, against his better judgment, told me what he had heard regarding its origins. (It involved using bits of leftover pan scrapings to make a sauce, and then fermenting the tofu in it.) “I’m pretty sure it’s not made with rotten pan scrapings anymore,” he assured me, to much avail indeed.  Most people say that the stronger the smell is, the better it tastes.  They also say that the taste is really quite mild compared to the odor, although I personally can’t manage to separate the two.  “It’s a delicacy!”  They tell me.

This has really made me think about the whole concept of delicacies.  I’ve realized that the word is most often used in a sentence like this: “Did you know that [insert item that people in your country don't consider a food] is a delicacy in [insert appropriate foreign country]?”  Just consider France’s snails and pate’.  Italy has a special Roman dish made from ox tails, and China has silkworm- or grasshopper-kebabs, just to name a few.  So I’ve come to see that one person’s “delicacy” is another person’s idea of something that is more appropriate for the trash than the dinner table.

One evening, our English school organized a wine and cheese tasting event.  Most of it went over well, except for one thing–the students were absolutely horrified by the gorgonzola we’d brought.  “It’s disgusting,” they reported almost unanimously.  “And what’s that green stuff in it?”

We explained that it’s supposed to be like that; it’s a soft, strong-smelling cheese, and the green streaks come as part of the fermentation process.  Why, you might even say it’s a delicacy.  “So it’s basically your version of skinky tofu,” they concluded.  I was about to tell them, no, they’re not the same because cheese is normal, while garbage-flavored tofu is not. But then I realized they’re right. There is absolutely nothing that makes fermented, moldy cow’s milk any more natural than fermented, smelly soy beans.  But to convince squeamish foreigners that we’re not crazy, or too poor to buy real food, or whatever the reason is, we all use that same misleading label.

Knowing this, any time I find myself at a foreign table or with a plastic bag and pointed stick in hand (maybe moreso for the latter), and am told about the delicacy I’m about to try, I have a feeling of deep distrust.  This may be nothing however, compared to the bad feelings I might develop from the meal itself.  Broiled bull testicles you say?  Congealed pig’s blood with scallions?  But in the end, it always works out the same– I’m going to eat it.  In fact, I’ll take two.  And a side of the marinated chicken feet while we’re at it.

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Tags: delicacy, night market, taipei, taiwan, tofu