Jan DSaMy trip to Taiwan introduced me to the concept of ecological farms, one in Nantou County and the other in Yi-Lan County. By the time we reached our hotel, Tai-Yi Red Maple Resort, it was already quite late (and very cold!). I so wanted to go strawberry picking but that was not to be. It was at Tai-Yi Red Maple Resort that I first encountered hot springs in the bathrooms.
After the chilly weather, it was nice to come ‘home’ to some delicious food (I found that travelling and cold weather made me hungry most of the time). In a series of firsts, this is where I ate flowers, as you can see in the photos below. The first photo shows the flowers wrapped in a seaweed wrap (similar to what we see in the sushi shops, except that this was stuffed with edible flowers, sprouts and for some reason it was frozen. After unwrapping the plastic from the cone, the idea was to quickly gulp it down otherwise the cream would start to melt.
A quick note. This restaurant served Halal food. The fruits and vegetables were freshly picked from the Tai-Yi Ecological Leisure Farm.
Eating flowers at a hotel restaurant situated very close to an ecological farm is a novel experience.
In between sips of hot tea, a sumptuous seafood cuisine awaited. The hotpots kept me warm. I couldn’t imagine food getting healthier than this.
The dish in the foreground was filled with fishcakes, crabs and vegetables, boiling away toward the perfect ‘bite.’
The very first time I tasted eel was in Hong Kong. So I was very excited to try eel fried rice in Taiwan. The result? Just yum.
Taiwan cuisine tends to use a lot of fried garlic bits. The squid dish in the foreground sits on a bed of grapefruit and cucumber freshly picked from the neighbouring Tai Yi Ecological Farm
This hot dish features prawns laid randomly on a bed of rock salt. The heat and the salt turns the grey prawns to a pink edible state as you will see in the next photo.
Ta-Daaa! The prawns are ready to be consumed.
Asparagus and flowers (the red coloured ones) mixed with tomatoes and oil make a delightful light dish
The colourful pieces of ‘cake’ are called fish cakes. They have a fish flavour, and are a bit rubbery, but they go well with the cooked crab meat and mushrooms
My last seafood portion before they bring in the dessert. As always, the host ensures that my glass is up to the brim with tea.
I’m quite proud that I captured the contrast of colours in this photo. Passionfruit on the right. And orange-mandarins freshly picked from the Tai Yi Ecological Farm
The Next day!
The guide, Chris, took us around the farm. I couldn’t believe the diversity of flowers and trees present on the farm. He showed us which flowers were the poisonous ones and which ones were decorative. This deserves a blog post in itself. But I couldn’t resist an explanation to the photo taken of me below.
Bending down to pluck and eat the flower I thought was edible. Photo by Jimmy Chen
The flowers I am viewing in the photo looked like the ones I had eaten the previous day. When I asked out loud, someone in the group said, ‘yes.’ Maybe it was a joke, maybe it wasn’t. That’s when I bent to pluck the flower and eat, a microsecond before Chris, the tour guide on the far right advised not to! Aaaah well!
And here questions of type such if honestly strike me not much as I wrote everything higher. It is visible you simply you don’t want to read all this. As my parrot does.
I’m living in Taipei right now and always looking for day trips out of the city – do you know if there were any non-seafood options at the restaurant? I absolutely loathe squid and octopus, although I do like fish, shellfish, and shrimp.
[…] a post on halal cuisine at Maple Tree Resort, Nantou County, I highlighted my experience of eating edible flowers for the first time in my life. Mind you, […]