Moving house
A friend of ours just bought himself a new house, out in the suburbs of the Taipei suburbs. Being a bit of a show off, he had to arrange a full-blown moving-in banquet instead of a simple housewarming get-together, and we had to give him a red envelope padded with our hard-earned money. But that's fine, he is a good friend, and no doubt it would be a blast of a banquet, with lots of good friends, good food and buckets of drink. He invited seven or eight tables, which is the way banquet attendance is counted on this fair island. A table seats 10 people.
We sat down at a table with a couple of friends we hadn't seen since we left for Houston and then Bangkok four years ago, and a couple of other friends we hadn't seen for a long time. That's a good way to begin an evening. We were only 15 minutes late, but they had already opened up the first Johnny Walker, which seems to have replaced XO as the preferred banquet drink lately, so they were all in a good mood. A second and a third were to be opened before we left. Taiwanese men drink like fish - never tell anyone you can hold your liquor, you're certain to be put to the test.
I didn't check the date in the lunar calendar, but it must have been an auspicous day, to say the least. After a while, lady d's old boss showed up — he had already been to two other banquets for one thing or the other, so he was fired up. That may or may not have been a good thing, since he was on duty at the local voluntary fire brigade and had to spend the night at the station. A night with the local fire brigade, now there's another story... Suffice it to say I was glad to have a good, solid excuse for not joining him today. It took me two days to return to normal after the last visit.
As expected, it turned out to be a great evening. In the end, we even got to pay a visit to the fabled house, and as Teacher (a term of respect for artists) Zhang was gathering proof of his attendance that he had to show someone (the remainder of the third bottle of whisky, some left-over food and the menu, I think it was, in that order), he told us that he will hold an individual exhibition of his paintings in September. We're already looking forward to that, he's an acclaimed painter of traditional Chinese paintings.
So here's what we were treated to:
- Cold lobster drenched in mayonnaise on a bed of shredded cabbage
- Buddha Jumps Over the Wall Soup
- Deepfried prawn in sweet batter with pineapple chunks, and deepfried eel in batter and cut in strips
- Honeyed ham slices wrapped in thin soft bread
- Crab meat with vegetables
- Chicken
- Abalone slices with vegetables
- Scallops with season vegetables
- Cakes with vegetarian stuffing
- Some kind of jelly pastry
- Fresh fruit
Good, solid, typical banquet fare here in Taiwan. I was stuffed by the seventh dish.
Cold lobster drenched in mayonnaise may sound strange, but is actually quite good. As a cultural comparison, I watched our favorite irreverent TV-cook Floyd on Knowledge Channel the other night, and he says that in Spain, lobster is served with chocolate sauce. Have to try that some time.