Ximending, Taipei, Taiwan

Ximending is a shopping/dining/entertainment district in Taipei. It’s a popular hangout for Taipei’s young and fashionable teenagers. The district is directly off the subway line, and I really enjoy emerging from the subway and being in the middle of all the busyness – the lights, the teenagers with their funky punk rock hair, the shoe shops with the multi colored Doc Martens…

Recently, we watched some live music here. The venue was on the basement level of a mall. We had rock star status and got in for free (the bass player’s a friend).

The Taiwanese version of the corn dog is a hot dog dipped in a sweet flour batter and deep fried.

Project Eggroll Wrappers, Taiwan

For Chinese New Years in Taipei, the entire city pretty much shuts down for the week, which was the third week of February this year. It was really cold and rained the entire time, so Eric and I were housebound the whole week. It was great – we worked on personal projects and caught up on movies.

Of course, for me, all my energies were directed towards food. So, I spent a good three days trying to make lumpia (Filipino eggrolls). For some reason, the eggroll wrappers have been hard to find. You would think that living in the land of dumplings and spring rolls this wouldn’t be the case, but it is.

I went to the computer and tried some recipes, but each recipe yielded a slightly different wrapper that was good for other things, but not for lumpia. I learned how to make wonton wrappers and crepes though.

Wonton Wrappers

After more internet research and consulting with my mom over skype, I finally arrived at the desired outcome- thin eggroll wrappers.

Here’s the recipe that I found works:
1 cup flour
1 cup water
- Mix the flour and water together
- Pour about ¼ cup of the batter into the pan
- QUICKLY use a paint brush to distribute a thin layer of batter of the pan
- When the sides of the wrapper curl up, it’s done


They were fragile and not uniformly shaped, but definitely less dry than store-bought ones.