Zhuen Zhang Hakka restaurant, Taipei

So the first one is stir fry palm seed flower (檳榔花). Interesting dish. The taste is pretty good. Then the next one is Hakka stir fried. It's with some squid slices, dry tofu, scallion..etc. Then the 3rd one was ordered on my request, as I often want to see how this signature Hakka dish pork stewed with pickled vegetable (梅干扣肉) is made by different chefs. From what I know, the half fat-half lean pork should be first rinsed with hot tea or let it soak in tea for a while. Then deep fry it or pan fry it to make it brown and get the oil out until the outer part of the pork is browned. Then with a big deep bowl, put the pickled vegetable on the bottom of the bowl. Then put the half done pork on it and make the pickled vegetable squeezed around the pork (the best is to get the pork size almost with a half inch distance to the bowl side; so you can have the pickled just good enough to squeezed together around the pork with less space. Prepare a sauce of dark soy sauce and soy sauce, shao hsing wine, rock sugar and put the sauce into the bowl. Then put it the wok and steam it for 1 hour something (abour 1.2 hours) Then take out the pork and cut it in slices and put it back and steam for another 15 minutes. So for this one, they skipped some steps and just shimmered the pork with the pickled in a wok. It's a bit disappointing to me. It doesn't have the step of 扣 (knocking up the flavour of pickled and the pork together as it needs to be squeezed in a deep bowl). By the way, you can try this one in a simple and healthy way at home, with the upper part of chicken thigh in flat. But you needn't steam for that long. Maybe 15 minutes is ok. However, you may wish to shimmer the pickled vegetable for some time (maybe 20 minutes with some ginger slices) before putting it in the deep bowl so that the pickled can be softer. As for the sauce, it just depends on the bowl size you have and how salty of the pickled vegetable. BTW, you need to soak the pickled in clear water first and rinse enough. However, the final dish - egg omelette (菜甫蛋) is really good. So this shop is half and half but it's still worth a try.