(relaxed music) - I've traveled Taiwan from top to bottom and back again, and in every corner of the island, I've asked the same questions.

What is Taiwanese food?

And what does it mean to the Taiwanese people?

On the small island with its jostling, overlapping communities and its long history of colonization and uncertainty, I keep finding the same answer.

By keeping everyone in touch with their unique origins, food is crucial to creating the Taiwanese identity.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (relaxed music) - In Taitung County, in southeast Taiwan, food is at the center of Tuhi Martukaw's work with tribal youth.

A journalist and indigenous rights activist who belongs to the cassava Kasavakan tribal community, Tuhi has represented Taiwan for 10 years at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Todoay she is taking me to a local bian dang, or lunchbox canteen, run by indigenous youths.

But first Tuhi takes me on a stroll around her hometown, on her way to forge ingredients for our lunch.

- The weather is not so good today, but when the weather is really good, you can see all the sparking of the pamavick just right there.

- Wow.

- And then we have the mountain there.

- And you were born here?

- I was born in the community, but when I was three, I moved to Taipei.

So, I spent most of my time in Taipei.

(relaxed music continues) You can see from the community we have all these carvings, and also like this mini industry we're trying to do is also to incorporate our culture with the modern style.

So it's a living culture.

It's not something just to preserve somewhere that we go like a museum, no, it's in us.

So you can see there, that's the shell ginger.

- That's shell ginger?

- That's shell ginger.

- It looks like an orchid, it's so beautiful.

- It is, it's very beautiful.

- It's gorgeous, and you can eat all of it?

- Yeah.

- That's a beautiful one.

- Yeah.

- unblemished.

Oops.

- And these two too.

- They're all great.

- Yeah, they're all good.

- It actually, I can smell something similar to ginger, and like, if you look at this, you can see it's from, like.

the same rhizome family.

- Ah.

(relaxed music) - This is the floor of the sticky rice, so we're going to mix it with the water.

This is pork with dried mushroom.

We call it “ljavilu” So this is eatable after we cook it, and it's very good for our stomach, it's good for our digestion.

- So is this a recipe that everybody's taught when you're young?

- Yeah, like we just, well, people like our elders or our, like grandmothers, mothers, they don't really like taught us how to what to do, it's just they ask us to do it.

- How would you describe, like the living tradition today?

- I would say we are, of course, the resilience, you can see that even though we are deeply influenced by a lot of different culture, of course, by all this colonization, but also by this pop music, pop culture, like from Korea, from different countries, from the states as well.

In a way we find a balance that we keep what we have, but we take what is also strong from other culture to make our own culture even stronger.

- Just tied it.

It's like a little package, a present, it's so pretty.

And how did you get involved with advocating for indigenous rights?

- That was when I was in university, I studied international affairs.

And so I had a chance to go to United Nation at that time.

That was the very first time I really got into international indigenous affairs, because in United Nation they have this Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous rights.

So I went there, and that's really like a eye-opening event for me because during that two weeks in New York, first, it's New York, second, it's United Nations, and then we have like more than two or three thousands of indigenous peoples from around the world just gathered in New York.

- Incredible.

- It's crazy, it's mind blowing.

But that was a really huge shock for me.

(peaceful music) So in our language we called it puzabu.

So when the men there are going to the mountain, we will prepare like food, like with like this and also some vegetable and some, like, snacks, and wrap it with a cloth, and they can just carry it to the mountain.

- Can I dig in?

I'm hungry.

- Of course.

- Oh, let's try what we made here.

- Yeah.

- So do I eat the whole leaf?

- Yeah, you eat the whole leaf.

- Mm.

(Tuhi laughing) - Good?

You like it?

- Yes, I love it.

It's really savory and fragrant.

- Mm, yeah.

- And chewy and fun to eat.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I would say that's why we're trying so hard to really strengthen our identity as indigenous.

And also as the person from (speaks Taiwanese) from our own community, because with this strong identity, then we will know we are different from China or from the Taiwanese mainstream.

But that doesn't like, being different, doesn't mean that we should be excluded from all these things.

It's just we keep what is unique for us and what is important for us.

- So what do you wanna share with the international community about the indigenous population or culture in Taiwan?

- We are here.

'Cause a lot of people tend to forget or they think we are in the past.

But we are here, we are in everyone's daily life and we live in our own culture in different ways.

So I will say it's very important for people to really recognize that.

(upbeat music) - Ruby Teng Wei and Pei Yi have a mission to preserve the taste of their Taiwanese childhood.

For them that means keeping alive their grandmother's cooking, and particularly her method for making kueh from scratch.

In a traditional Taiwanese family house that they rescued on the outskirts of Taipei, they've opened a cooking school, Siang Khau Lu Cultural Kitchen, and I've come here to learn their family recipe for the sticky rice cakes that the Taiwanese often share during festivities.

From the moment I step in, I feel immersed in nostalgia for a distant era, as steam drifts out of the open windows and into the courtyard.

Look at these beautiful kueh molds.

You can also use these to make moon cakes.

- Yeah, that one is for moon cake, yeah.

- This is double happiness.

- Today we use the round sticky rice, the round one here.

- Globally, all grandmothers cook just by senses, you know, like a pinch of this, a little toss of that.

Like, I'll ask my grandmother for recipes and she's like, "No recipes."

- The young generation of Taiwanese, we make breads or cakes from, you know, Japan or western countries.

So, like, young people, they don't make kueh anymore, or even eat.

So that's another reason why we want to have this place so we can pass on the recipe and let them know the culture of rice cakes.

- This dish really encapsulates the essential Taiwanese pantry ingredients, or just ingredients, period.

White pepper, dried radish, dried shiitake mushrooms, dried shrimp, rice wine and pork.

- Yeah, we just finished the filling and we're gonna make the skin.

We woke up at 5:00 AM to squash and soak the rice.

- Thank you!

- For like four hours so the rice become soft enough to kueh it.

So you can try, you can crack it by now.

So it's dry now, and just try not to, you know, mess around like on the floor or something.

Grandmother would just come out and... (both laughing) - And then we add all this.

- This is what's called handmade.

(Pei laughing) (relaxed music) - So you're just steaming it on the shell ginger leaf, you're not actually wrapping it.

(relaxed music continues) This is amazing, so beautiful.

What are the different types of kuey you have here?

- Okay, so this is what we made.

This is our kuey.

and with cut weed, cut weed.

- So interesting.

So every kuey has that element of worship and different gods, or spirits, or ancestors that you're serving to.

- Yes, right.

- Ah.

- So like this, angu kuey, great birthday, like gods or family members, like one old month baby, or four month baby.

- So it's for auspicious celebrations, birthdays, baby's first month.

- Yeah.

- Mm.

- So we use the perilla.

- Perilla.

- Yeah, perilla, cut weed, and fish meat, and mugwort.

- This takes a lot of skill, it's not like just baking a cake.

That's the best kuey I've ever had.

- Mm hm.

- Yes.

- Okay, so later on you will say that this is the best.

- Mm.

(all laughing) - Tell me again what is the red coloring?

Because there's definitely a grassy taste to this.

- This red is the powder.

- Oh, okay.

- Honchufun.

- Honchufun.

- Okay, that's the best.

(all laughing) - So that's why we like to, you know, to make this and to tell people all these stories.

- I think it's just so heartwarming that you created this space as an ode to grandmothers.

- Yeah.

- Grandma's place.

- Yeah.

(relaxed music continues) (relaxed music) - Artists often see beauty in things that the rest of the world doesn't value.

Tiffany Lay and Zo Lin find beauty in weeds.

And they turn these hearty plants that others ignore into a creative medium.

Intrigued, I meet up with the couple in an overgrown garden in Taipei to forage for plants that they will ferment into tea at Grasslands, their open studio and tea house.

It's a community space that lets Taiwanese explore the rich biodiversity of their small island.

It's also an urban sanctuary for those seeking respite from the city, or feeling neglected, like a weed.

I would never think about oregano being grown in Taiwan.

- It actually grows pretty well.

It likes more wet areas.

- These are actually weeds?

- Yes.

- And also it's invasive plant in Taiwan.

- Really?

is this a chrysanthemum, or what is it?

- It's a kind of chrysanthemum.

It's called a Bidens pilosa in Latin as the main ingredients for herbal tea.

- Can I try it?

- Yes.

- It's sour actually.

- Oh, yes.

Hmm.

- Oh, yeah.

- That's very refreshing.

- This is peppermint?

- Lemony.

- Oh yeah, it's like a lemon balm, yeah.

This is actually really great for mosquito bites.

- Yeah, I'm just putting on my mosquito bite as you say that.

- Just forge all the flowers.

- Yeah, today because we'll do the fermentation.

So we'll just use the flowers, and we usually don't want to over forage, so we just forage what we need.

This is also another weed that we commonly use.

- Nagogun.

- Nagogun.

- It's recently very popular in Korea for cosmetics.

This is a, there's another mulberry tree that we can go to later.

This one is a smaller leaf one, and the berries a smaller but sweeter.

- What is that beautiful red flower?

- Oh, it's poisonous.

- It's poisonous?

(laughing) - So looks are deceiving, you cannot just go and eat your way around.

- Wild hogs eat it, but we're not a hog.

You have to smell this, this smells like Colgate.

- Like Colgate?

- No, you have to, right?

It smells like the toothpaste.

- It does smell like a toothpaste.

It's a type of mint?

- Yeah, a type of, but I think it smells exactly like toothpaste.

(relaxed music) - The concept of like a weed is because you don't know it, because you haven't found the value of it.

So we just want to introduce these plants so that people don't just see them as weeds anymore.

So we thought maybe we wanted to create a sanctuary in the middle of the city for people to try to just rest and to kind of get back to themselves.

- What made you decide to open a sanctuary or kind of tea shop here?

- We started as an artist collective and we had moved around a lot.

And we had done residencies where we would have an open studio, open space where people could visit us.

And we thought that that's, we really liked the idea and we thought that maybe we could open our own space and really work on a community.

Because for residencies, you would have to leave at a certain point.

- I love the conceit behind what you're doing.

You know, salvaging and foraging for what's naturally here that you find in the terroir of Taiwan.

It's uniquely Taiwan.

- Yeah.

- And Taiwanese.

And then making it into this delectable tea.

How did you get this idea to really promote weed culture in Taiwan?

- When I foraging in the mountain, I saw herbicide on the roadside.

- Herbicide?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- And I realized many plants around us, a very, very common wild grass, they almost can make it into the tea.

- Hmm.

- So just want to show everybody the value of the weeds.

- So what is that?

It's just weeds?

- This is just the flower and sugar actually.

This has, like, nothing else.

- How did you start fermenting the leaves?

- I've always been interested in fermentation and we have this, like, I have this, like, fermentation group of friends where we just hang out and ferment.

And then, so we just kind of started to try.

Weeds really add a kind of unique flavor because it's the, usually weeds are stronger taste than vegetables.

- Mmm.

- Yeah, because they have to survive, you know, such hard environments, they have this strong, like this strength in them that a lot of the vegetables don't.

- This is delicious, I like the flower a lot.

It tastes like shumai, which is kind of like a preserved plum flavor that I grew up eating here.

It's great for, you know, indigestion, or nausea, or just as a tea.

- Yeah, exactly.

(upbeat music) We think that if everybody kind of takes the chance or the opportunity to get to know the plants around them and kind of spread this love, then the world could also be like a warmer place.

(relaxed music) - Even though it's one of Taiwan's most familiar sights, and smells, I was never a big fan of stinky tofu.

Because, well, it stinks.

But that was before I visit Chef Sean Chen, a master fermentor, to see, and sniff, the painstaking handcrafted method he uses to make stinky tofu.

For Sean, stinky tofu ranks high on the list of tastes that he lovingly preserves as an homage his Taiwanese origins.

Amid his jars of homemade koji and pickled vegetables, and his buckets of fermented tofu, Sean broke down the essentials of making stinky tofu, starting with its amaranth brine.

(upbeat music) - This jar, the curing one, and water.

- Can I just use my hands or do you use the knife?

- Yes.

- In the jar?

- Yeah, in the jar.

- Okay.

So, you know, usually people eat the tender parts, stir fry it, right?

- Yeah, tender part.

- So you wanna keep the roots and the stem.

- After that, we can put this in this inside of the jar.

- Put all of the anchovies and the dry shrimp.

- Dry shrimp.

So we don't peel the skin.

- Black tea, and then this is rice?

- Yes, we can put in salt.

- So I need to pour the water in now, we cover it.

- Yes.

- And let it sit?

- Every day I, in the morning when we wake up, you have to like shake the jar.

- I'm just putting fresh tofu.

- Yeah, fresh tofu.

- Fresh firm tofu inside of this brine.

So we'll put this in a hot place so that it can ferment.

- Yes.

- You're giving me such a small piece.

Yeah, the texture is very firm.

- Yes.

- But it's smooth also at the same time.

It smells stinky.

- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it smells stinky, but it tastes- - But it doesn't taste stinky.

- Yes.

- Sean, how did you decide to become a fine dining chef?

- The reason why I become a chef is like, I remember I 16, 17 years ago, and, you know, I go to night market, I saw the other chef cooking the dish for a guest.

And when I see the guest, like the face, I feel like happy, happiness.

I told myself, I wanna be a chef.

- You wanna make people happy.

- Yeah, I wanna make people happy, yes.

(relaxed music) - So if you know how to make a stinky tofu, actually you also can make non-stinky tofu.

- Non-stinky tofu, how do you do that?

- So I use a salty egg yolk with some crab brine.

Ferment for one month, and after I put a tofu inside.

After it dry, I will put in the salt, rock salt, to age.

- [Danielle] Wow, it's hard as a rock.

- [Sean] Yeah, it's hard.

For me, it's like cheese.

You can try, you can eat.

- It's very salty.

- Yeah, it's very salty, but after the salty you can taste like umami and very sour.

- Mm hmm.

- After will come sweet.

- Mm hmm.

- Yeah.

(Sean speaking Taiwanese) So I will go into the rice, cooking the rice.

(relaxed music) - You've completely deconstructed a traditional street food dish, stinky tofu, and made it your own.

And made it fine dining.

(relaxed music continues) The tofu from the fermentation process has become porous.

And when Sean fried it up, it really loses all of its stink.

This is beautiful, all of these are fermented pickles.

- Yes, so I made a different kind of pickle.

- Wow, now I understand what you mean by how you're taking a traditional Taiwanese dish, but giving it a new spin.

You're personalizing it and you're also making it fine dining.

- Yes.

- This is amazing.

It looks beautiful and it smells amazing.

(relaxed music continues) It smells so fragrant.

You have the rice with the fried stinky tofu and also the shaved stinky tofu that you fermented in the sauerkraut with the egg yolk, correct?

- Yes.

- I have never seen stinky tofu presented like this.

(laughs) - Oh, okay.

- I don't think anyone has.

I love the different textures here.

- You can feel.

- Mm hmm.

- I can feel your happiness.

But for me, Taiwanese cuisine is, like, simple.

But now I want to present, like more like modern Taiwanese cuisine.

I mean, modern Taiwanese cuisine is, like, the future.

(relaxed music) - The name of Kai Ho's sleek award-winning Taipei restaurant is a nod to Taiwan's unique terroir, the singular flavors that have been incorporated into iconic Taiwanese dishes.

After working internationally, Kai decided it was time to come home to Taiwan, where he works on deconstructing mainstays of Taiwanese cuisine by blending his French culinary skills with Taiwanese ingredients.

- I go to the high school, and I study like restaurant and beverage management in college.

I'm not going to typical career, I'm going to hospitality management.

But I focus on the cooking side.

And after that I went to US for two years.

And after US, I'm go to China also for two years.

And after China, I'm going to Singapore for three years.

Today if I cook you French food, very good, very authentic, very classic.

But I am still Asian, I am still Taiwanese.

So what I want, so what I can present myself and where I'm from is very important.

(relaxed music continues) - [Danielle] We're making a really famous Taiwanese dish, it's called lu rou fan, which is minced meat over rice.

- So we cook with slow rice.

We are gonna use the steam rice to cook the, my version, nobody.

- Oh, so you're using raw rice, so it's almost like a risotto method.

- It'll be like a more paella.

And this one will be the pork skin, eh, deep fried, and then we topping on the rice, on the top.

So crunchy, crunchy, crispy, crispy.

It's not only about a beautiful or something, you have to put your emotion, your love to the dish.

We're not selling you a story, no, it's it's not my style.

I just want to tell you that can have many, many different angle, many, many different combination to open your mind.

We want to focus on the very good-quality produce and the ingredient, and the we cook in way that's very simple.

(relaxed music) - So you've really deconstructed this classic dish.

- Yes, yes.

- I see the rice, I see the chicharrone, which is the fried pork.

And then the sauce has all the elements you were talking about, the soy sauce- - the soy sauce, the sugar, white pepper, rice wine.

(relaxed music continues) - It's such a elevated version of it.

It has the same characteristics that people love of lu rou fan, you know, the texture, but it's, you added the crunch in it.

- Yes.

- But it also has that queque chewy mouth feel.

- Yes, yes, yes, yes.

- That you get from the pork belly.

And if I were eating this with my eyes closed, it brings back the familiar flavors of this comforting dish.

- And memories.

- But it looks completely different.

I mean even the chicharrones look like rice puffs.

- Rice puffs.

- It's really tricking your eye.

It's a work of art.

- Many customer guests, they are thinking we are the magician.

We are not a magician, we are cooks, we are chef.

- I'm so glad that you're here.

You're really showing me a different side of Taipei dining that I've never experienced, so.

- Thank you, thank you.

- Congratulations.

- Thank you, thank you for coming.

(upbeat music)