Ethnic food you’ve never tried before.
Paiwan / Rukai food.
Paiwan is an Aboriginal tribe in Taiwan. Rukai also. I show them here together because the two groups are closely related and share much of the same types of food.
Most people in Taiwan have no experience with Aboriginal cuisine. Perhaps the foreigners and some Han, Minnan are curious and go looking for that food. But it’s not so easy to find.
Tonight (Aug 2006), my friend Andy and I went to Sandimen. I asked Mr. and Mrs. Lu to help me order from a local restaurant there. Mr. Vuruku Lu, is a Rukai and he is a very keen cultural embassador. He and his wife feel a little like family since I have spent much time at their place on the weekends.
We ate together all types of foods like ‘abai’ — this word means any food enveloped by rice flour, taro, etc. We had red bean abai, fish and potato abai, and pork abai. The meat or sweets are surrounded by millet flour, pumpkin flour, or taro and then covered and cooked in banana leaves bound by rattan.
Also we had taro cake, fish, fried egg and green onion, chicken soup, and a kind of pork tamale.
Soon one of the Lu family’s three daughters will marry. Her name is Erlun. She and her fiance were also there eating with us. His name is Jose. Everyone there laughs when they here this name because they know he is just telling me his "church" name and not his Paiwan name which he uses.
We had a really good time together. I suggest that you seek out Aboriginal culture because you are certain not to regret it.
