Taiwan, China's sweet potatoes are a great contributor to the success of Taiwanese snacks

After the start of summer, it suddenly turned hot, and a light breeze was blowing through the air, very pleasant. I had just eaten a bowl of pearl tapioca douhua by the roadside, and could not help thinking: this great Taiwanese sweet potato can even transform into chewy, slippery pearl tapioca in the height of summer.
Sweet potato, oh sweet potato, how can you be so versatile and considerate?

Strolling through Taiwan's night markets, oyster omelet is an essential item. Sticky and thick, some call it chewy, some call it gluey, paired with the savor of fresh oysters and accompanied by a sweet, mildly spicy sauce. Eating water spinach stir-fried on a sizzling iron griddle, the oily aroma lingers around. Without sweet potato starch, there would be no oyster omelet with just the right texture.
After eating oyster omelet, pair it with a bowl of good thick soup. Pork thick soup is good, squid thick soup is fragrant, the Spanish mackerel thick soup of the south, or the floating fish thick soup of the north, the old-school luxurious assorted braised noodles, Yilan's shredded braised noodles, that thick, smooth soup is the masterpiece of sweet potato starch. In the old days before potato starch appeared, it was sweet potato starch that let everyone enjoy such luxurious thick soup dishes, eaten together with noodles, in an era when wheat noodles rarely appeared on the table.

Ba-wan, the Taiwanese meatball, is an ultimate snack that satisfies the Taiwanese craving for meat. Soaking it in oil at a controlled temperature keeps the ba-wan made from sweet potato starch soft and chewy, never dry or hard, and never mushy either. Full of bite, it satisfies the craving for meat, and together with the meat filling inside, the overall meat experience reaches its peak. You do not need to eat a large piece of meat, yet you can still satisfy the bite, and ba-wan is in fact a truly wonderful invention of sweet potato starch cuisine.
If the weather is unbearably hot, ba-wan's alter ego, the cold ba-wan, can also make a plain, refreshing substitute appearance, and the vegetarian cold ba-wan is also a choice for non-meat eaters to satisfy the bite.

In this era, there are more vegetable lovers than meat cravers, so if you do not want to be with meat, then paired with the yellow starch water, it can also make a charming, lovely appearance, holding the wobbly, trembling fen guo as it enters the mouth, drizzled with thick dark syrup, rolled all over in sweet fragrance, the beauty of fen guo lies in just this one slurp of delight. Fen guo changes color to become liang gao, some white, some pink, dusted with white powder, much more delicate, one small piece at a time, not greedy for more, not seeking speed, liang gao is a refined little fen guo. Without saying more, how would you know they are all daughters of the sweet potato family?

Back to the sweet potato itself, look at the plum-powder sweet potato fries on the stall, so vivid and golden yellow, the plum powder abandoned its guava husband and seduced the sweet potato into being together. Compared to the thin McDonald's French fries, plum-powder sweet potato fries are thick enough, crispy enough, sweet enough, and no matter how you put it, they are satisfying and bold and filling. Roasted sweet potato has endured for a long time, one iron drum, a few wire racks, and if you swap in a glossy, bright signboard, the flavor is no longer authentic enough. If an old woman is the one running the stall, it is sure to be sweet and fluffy all the way through, and just smelling the drifting charcoal smoke makes you swallow your saliva.
Never mind not eating sweet potato, but the pork chop in the railway bento is beckoning, and how many train bentos are left in the cardboard box on the stainless steel pushcart! Missing out on eating it makes you sad, and eating it does not add years to your life either. The thoroughly braised pork chops, relying on sweet potato starch to hold the sauce, become more tender and more flavorful in every way. Pork chops coated in sweet potato starch and deep-fried beat coating in breadcrumbs or potato starch no matter how you compare, and in this world of Taiwan, pork chops coated in sweet potato starch are the true king's way. Otherwise, go ask that bone-in crispy pork, how it becomes crispy, fragrant and finger-licking memorable.

After touring the night market and eating the pork chop bento, in the end you have to finish with some icy sweet soup. Shaved ice with pearl tapioca added, or douhua, or pearl milk tea drunk while walking. The old-style pearl tapioca is a combination of sweet potato starch and dark brown sugar, like playing with sand, mixing in a bit of water and rubbing out little balls one by one, then sifting them through a rice sieve to sort the sizes, then continuing to knead them evenly and keep binding in sweet potato starch, forming firm round balls one by one. The transparency and toothsome texture of sweet potato starch make pearl tapioca an interesting little ball of a food texture, and the joy of eating pearl tapioca in the mouth is a fun, subtle pleasure no other food can replace. After being mixed with milk tea, pearl milk tea's special texture conquered even more people's mouths, that chewy little ball you suck and bite at the same time, playfully darting between tongue and teeth, slippery and slippery, disobedient. Sweet potato, oh sweet potato, after being shredded and soaked in water, the white juice and starch settle to the bottom of the basin, and once you lift out the shredded sweet potato and let the basin of water sit still, gradually the water becomes clear and bright, and what settles at the bottom is sweet potato starch. After drying it can be harvested, used to make that tasty ba-wan, or to team up with oysters for the century-enduring oyster omelet, and casually mixed in it is enough to prop up the deliciousness of fen guo, not to mention the rising status of pearl tapioca turned into pearls.
Sweet potato, oh sweet potato, in an era of war and grain shortage, sweet potato strips propped up the multiplication of later generations of sweet potato descendants. Sweet potato, oh sweet potato, now that everyone is full of food and drink, we still scroll our phones while strolling the night market, continuing to eat the bounce between mouth and lips and teeth. This great sweet potato is the quiet force propping up the solid backdrop of Taiwanese snacks.