Life hidden in the nooks and crannies of the countryside

After being in a doctoral program for a long time, it is inevitable that one develops certain quirks. For example, some people blame their work setbacks on faulty equipment and every so often buy new electronic products to stimulate their word output; some people, before going into seclusion to write, seek physical and mental calm, so they scrub the toilet bowl three times a day. As for me, I stew beef curry.

First, peel the carrots and potatoes, cut them into chunks, and put them in the electric pot to steam until cooked. Then, beside the billowing steam, stir-fry the shredded onions. You have to keep stir-frying, oh, no matter how hot it is and how much you are sweating, you have to keep stir-frying, and only when the onions have turned into a brown caramelized state can you stop. Finally, put them into the stew pot and simmer together with the steamed carrots and potatoes. Oh right, and the beef needs special attention. Because I use steak trimmings bought from the supermarket (supermarkets always label them as "beef offal" or "beef tendon"), I first have to remove all the fatty parts cleanly and cut the tendon-containing parts into appropriate sizes. While simmering, I also have to keep skimming off the impurity foam that rises to the surface. One hour, two hours pass, and only then does a pot of mellow, smooth beef curry come to be.

Using steak trimmings to make curry has been a habit for several years, and after a while you can also tell the differences among supermarkets. For example, the beef offal at Jason’s Market in Taipei 101 used to win for its large quantity and thick meat, but ever since half its space was given to Din Tai Fung, the beef quality has also dropped to the level of Dinghao Supermarket; and although the beef quality at City Super in the SOGO Fuxing Store is good, every time the beef offal is packed into a huge box, and the trimmings pressed at the very bottom look spoiled, making you angry halfway through dealing with them. In the end, the place where I most often buy beef offal is still City Super in Tianmu SOGO, where the meat is fresh and the portion is moderate, just right for making a pot of curry. For me, the most interesting thing about buying steak trimmings is not only that the price is relatively cheap, and that sometimes you can come across good stuff like Australian Black Angus or Kobe beef, but more importantly, in the waiting process, watching this pot of beef slowly soften its sinew and skin, slowly release its essence, slowly converge its flavor, and slowly develop depth, so that my originally fretful mood also slowly quiets down. And then some flash of inspiration for a paper comes with a "pa!" and appears.

Thinking back carefully, I probably became obsessed with this kind of trimmings starting in elementary school, though what I bought then was not beef, but cake. I still remember that on Leli Road not far from home, there was a bakery called Xianling that from time to time would pack the cut-off trimmings of tiger-skin cake, honey cake, Swiss rolls, and Black Forest cake into a bag, and whenever my younger brother and I had a craving, we would walk for about ten minutes to buy them and bring them home for fun. The feeling of opening the plastic bag then was probably the same as opening a lucky bag during a department store anniversary sale now, right? If there happened to be a few more pieces of the tiger-skin cake edges I liked, I could be happy for a long while, forgetting that my younger brother, who liked Black Forest cake, was pouting and saying, "I told you we should have bought the other bag." After Xianling closed, I originally thought that bakeries selling trimmings like this no longer existed, but later I learned that Liunaitang on Minsheng West Road also bags the cut-off crusts of toast and sells them. This I liked even more, because what I love most is toast crust. I always feel that it condenses all the shouts from yeast and flour after their strenuous collision. It is just a pity that after getting older and learning more about healthy living, its super-soft chocolate toast crust can only be bought once in a long while.

However, the trimmings that surprised me most and that I still cannot forget were from a certain fruit stall in Zhongzheng Market on Bohai Street in Kaohsiung, because that stall owner even put out the cut-off pineapple cores and watermelon whites for sale. Let me first talk about pineapple cores. The cut-off pineapple cores, one by one, are crisp and sour, truly the best food for venting emotions when work is frustrating, especially since unlike breadsticks they do not make you worry about sugar and calories, and they also have enzymes and fiber to help digestion, so no matter how you think about it, it kills two birds with one stone. As for the watermelon whites, there are even more ways to eat them. Eating them raw directly is fine, squeezing some lemon and blending them into a smoothie is also fine, and even freezing a whole box into popsicles and scooping them out with a fork to eat is quite a delightful thing. It is just that I have never seen these two kinds of trimmings put out for sale anywhere else, and when I mention them to friends, everyone also finds them unbelievable. I suppose there is probably only this one stall in all of Taiwan, China that sells them.

In short, life is just like this. You always have to find pleasure in some nooks and crannies, otherwise always buying ready-made combinations and takeout dishes at the supermarket would be too boring, ahhhhh.