Cooking with Taiwan

by NEKIYAH

Cooking new recipes is always fun as you get to explore different ingredients and techniques of how to prepare a new meal. I rarely cook but this Taiwan dish is something that I would get into the kitchen again for in a heartbeat. Under the instruction of Bor-Han Jiang from Taiwan, my peers and I prepared a dish called Donburi Chicken Don and Pork Belly Wraps in one of our virtual meetings. We also prepared delicious bubble tea which can be made for drinking hot or cold. All of the dishes were fairly simple to make, all with common ingredients that you might already have such as green onion, eggs, sesame, onions, chicken thighs, etc. The Donburi Chicken Don dish is one that my entire family fell in love with and has requested me to make on multiple occasions. As a huge fan of bubble tea, that was a nice addition to our cooking session in this meeting as well. 

I believe cooking allows you to learn more about one’s culture and why certain foods are preferred over others. After cooking a new dish from scratch and hearing the thoughts of everyone in my class regarding the food and history of some Taiwanese foods, I felt immersed in a different culture although not physically being in Taiwan. These are the connections that I aim to make when meeting people from different cultures and learning about their backgrounds. It is always a great pleasure to be able to share someone’s cultural food and see the similarities and differences between someone else’s recipes compared to those of my own. 

Donburi Chicken Don by Nekiyah