We only had a few hours until our train departed for Hualien so we decided to take another stroll through the streets of Ximending. It was highly unlikely but I was hoping that we would run into some furries coming home from a wild Saturday night.
Since nothing is actually weird anymore (the fucking internet ruined everything!) I searched for more street food. In addition to a second round of duck tongues and duck hearts I sampled the following:
Pig tendons – Gelatinous, chewy and tasty. Of suspect nutritional value.
Rice sausage – just like the name says, a sausage casing filled with rice. A little on the sweet side, but everything here seems to be. Could use some salt, but you can’t find any here.
Duck’s blood rice cakes – Cooked rice with duck’s blood as a binding agent. Like a dark grey, almost black, rice crispy square without the rice crispies or the marshmallows. Correction – nothing like a rice crispy square. I prefer eastern European blood sausage.
Traditional Chinese sausage – looks similar to Italian sausage, only fattier. There’s that ever-present sweetness again. Reminded me of North American breakfast sausage.
Tea eggs – Chicken eggs boiled in tea. The tea gives them a brown colour on the shell that leaks through to the egg inside. Hint of tea when eating the egg. I’m surprised that they don’t prefer white eggs given the country’s obsession with white’s representation of purity.
Interesting fact: pregnant women (the superstitious ones) here drink lots of milk not just because it’s healthy for the baby, but also in hopes that it will give the baby whiter skin.
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| Mmmm...duck hearts! |
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