très bao: You saved our lives... we are eternally grateful

The last time I did the whole night market thing was probably 10years ago. I simply can't eat at places if I can't see where they wash their hands.... yeah that's basically every single booth in any typical night market. Well early today, I watched a TV show and they recommended a cold noodle place in Shilin night market. It looked yummy and reasonably clean, so I dragged my poor cousin (who JUST flew in from LA) to Shilin. As soon as I stepped out of the cab, I knew going there was a huge mistake. Because it was dinner time on a Sunday, there were probably a few thousand people there. It took us a good 5 minutes to walk 10 feet. Since I didn't get a chance to jot down the exact location or phone number of the cold noodle place, we basically walked around aimlessly, eating stuff we thought looked good and buying random stuff because everything was dirt cheap. (I bought a Chien-Ming Wang jersey for my puppy for less than 10bucks!)

i thought this was super cute. I wanted to save them all but what the hell am i suppose to do with 1000 bunnies...

Anyways, after an hour or two of eating random stuff about almost giving up on locating my cold noodle store, we found it. It was pretty good. I will write about it next time because I didn't get to take pictures. I think the best part of our little trip is the accidental discovery of a pretty good "peppered bun" 胡椒餅 stand.

This stand was awesome because it is supposedly the "real" peppered bun store that came from China and has been in business for 15 years. Unlike the other peppered bun places we see all over Taipei, this place uses the traditional Chinese brick oven where the buns are cooked by sticking them to the inner wall of the oven. If the temperature of the over is too low, the buns won't stick; whereas, if the oven is too warm, the buns will burn. Keeping the oven at the right temperature is the key.

The ingredients are pretty easy (i think). It's basically dough, scallions, marinated pork (lean with some fat) and pepper. But the thing that differentiates a good peppered bun and a bad one is the crispiness of the bun, the pepper and the scallions.

Traditionally, peppered buns were made with mostly fatty pork because it is way more flavorful and juicy.... but nowadays, it's made with mostly lean pork. I'm not sure where this particular store imports their pepper but the scallion they used was so fresh I swear I tasted spring.

it's very important that they separate the scallions and the pork mixture because if not, the marinate for the pork will drench the fresh scallion and overpower the freshness. on a side note, i wish they wore gloves... but this is Taiwan, you can't expect that much. At least the dentists here wear gloves now.....