The Food of a Proud Island Nation with Clarissa Wei

Photo credit: Ryan Chen

Welcome back to the Lecker Book Club. Every month I’ll pick a newly released food related book and talk to the author about the process of writing it. I’ll also be writing about it on Substack and Patreon. Join me there as well!

In Made in Taiwan, Taipei based journalist Clarissa Wei beautifully captures the food and spirit of this proud island nation, and brings it to life on the page. The book is stunning - you’ll hear more about the thought and consideration that Clarissa and her team put into how it looks as well as what it says later in this interview -and it examines the current state of Taiwanese food in incredible breadth and depth. For me, someone completely new to the food of the country, it’s a beautiful and rich education.

It was such a pleasure to meet Clarissa via video chat and talk about this book, which involved an astonishing amount of research and recipe development on the ground. I’m a big fan of her work as a journalist - the podcast series she made with Whetstone Radio Collective, Climate Cuisine, is one of my all time favourite listens - and it was so interesting to hear how she approached this book, the subject of which is something hugely personal to her but one which she wanted to approach journalistically, and write as an act of documentation. We talked about how missing home through food sometimes takes unexpected, shifting forms, her culinary collaborator on the book Ivy Chen, and why it was crucial that Made In Taiwan moved away from its original proposal as a “cosy” cookbook and became something deeply political.


Made In Taiwan is out now, published by Simon and Schuster. Find all of the Lecker Book Club reads on my Bookshop.org list.

Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.

Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

Transcript after the embed.

[00:00:00] Lucy Dearlove: Before we start, I just wanted to let you know that you can become a paid subscriber of Lecker on Substack, Patreon, or Apple Podcasts. And you'll get access to exclusive content to hear and read. Subscriptions really help support Clarissa. So if you're in a position to do that and you'd like to, head to leckerpodcast.com/support to find out more.

Welcome to the Lecker Book Club. This month, Made in Taiwan. by Clarissa Wei. In Made in Taiwan, Taipei based journalist Clarissa Wei beautifully captures the food and spirit of this proud island nation and truly brings it to life on the page. The book is stunning. You'll hear more about the thought and consideration that Clarissa and her team put into how it looks as well as what it says later in this interview, and it examines the current state of Taiwanese food.

In incredible breadth and depth for me, someone completely new to the food of the country. It's a beautiful and rich education.

[00:01:07] Clarissa Wei: I wanted to give credit as much as possible to the people who gave me these recipes because, you know, even though I do talk about myself a little bit in there, I really hope it's not centered around myself.

I really wanted this to be a work of journalism.

[00:01:21] Lucy Dearlove: It was such a pleasure to meet Clarissa via video chat. and talk about this book which involved an astonishing amount of research and recipe development. I'm a big fan of Clarissa's work as a journalist. The podcast series she made with Whetstone Radio Collective, Climate Cuisine, is one of my all time favourite lessons and it was so interesting to hear how she approached this book.

The subject of which is something hugely personal to her, but one which she wanted to approach journalistically, and write as an act of documentation. We talked about how missing home through food sometimes takes unexpected, shifting forms. Her culinary collaborator on the book, Ivy Chen, and why it was crucial that Made in Taiwan moved away from its original proposal as a quote unquote cozy cookbook and became something deeply political.

I began by asking Clarissa about how she first learned to cook.

[00:02:17] Clarissa Wei: I think the first time I had to really cook for myself was when I was in college and I was in New York City and I had grown up in Los Angeles in a very Asian part of Southern California where I was really used to Asian food and you know being in the middle of New York City yeah there's You know, Chinese takeout, but I sort of miss, like, the flavors of home and home cooking, so I started off really simple, just getting noodles from the Asian market, maybe adding an egg, chicken broth, and would build from that, and then really And it was just adulthood moving out on my own and starting to try different recipes and now that I've been abroad for so long away from the states, I really miss, you know, American food.

So at home we make a lot of chili or we make a lot of tacos or just things that we miss from home. But I know whenever I'm away from Asia, then I start missing, you know, noodles or braces. pork belly over rice. So, um, I'm not a trained professional cook, but it just comes really from

[00:03:26] Lucy Dearlove: necessity. Yeah, I really liked the bit in the book where you talked about your Costco pilgrimage.

Yeah. I like the idea of like going somewhere to stock up because I think like, I don't know, I feel like that. That conversation is maybe not always had like we often talk about like people who live in, I guess, the West, like cooking things that remind them of home, but I like the idea of like flipping that on its head.

And you go to Costco for bagels. That was a really

[00:03:51] Clarissa Wei: nice story. Yeah, it's really interesting. And if you told me that I would be doing this, I would have laughed. But you really do miss It's the flavours that you can't get. Um, like I just miss having cheese so much but I never ate it when I was living in California.

[00:04:07] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, that's so funny. Was it your immediate family that you were going to for recipes or were there any sort of like other cookbooks or people that you were turning to when

[00:04:21] Clarissa Wei: you were first started cooking. It was also when I started my career as a food writer. So I got to meet a lot of chefs or a lot of home cooks and kind of see how they did it as well. I didn't necessarily turn to recipes. Um, at home I eat very, very simply. It's only for work when I will start measuring things and follow recipes and like.

Try all the techniques and stuff, but again, at home, we use the instant pot a lot. We do a lot of bulk meal planning. There's really nothing super extravagant or technical about the way I cook on a day to day basis.

[00:04:58] Lucy Dearlove: And so is that why you collaborated with, um, with Ivy on this book? A hundred

[00:05:03] Clarissa Wei: percent. Um, again, I'm not a professionally trained cook, but I know how to develop a recipe.

And it was just really important for me to work with someone who has that experience, especially in the context of Taiwanese food. I'm sure I could have figured out a lot of these recipes myself. by, you know, Googling and Chinese, um, sort of reverse engineering things. But there's a million ways to make one dish and I wanted it to be done right.

And I wanted it to reflect how the people in Taiwan cook today. And Ivy was like, kind of, you know, how a lot of cookbook authors, they have like a mom or a grandma. I don't have that. My mom is not an amazing cook. So Ivy was like, My cooking mom, you know when we were doing the Photoshoot we all joked like she's like mama's son or she's like the mother And I learned so much from her and this is what she does for work And I'm so glad I made that investment and you know signed her on Because this book would not have been what it was without

[00:06:13] Lucy Dearlove: her It's really great that that kind of collaboration is so explicit as well because I feel like that's something that a lot of cookbook authors do but it's maybe just not acknowledged quite so kind of openly like there is somebody behind the scenes doing the technical work because it's like a really specific skill set right like yeah as a as a journalist or a food writer you might not have so yeah it's It's, it's clear like her influence on it and it's

[00:06:35] Clarissa Wei: amazing.

Yeah, when I was in my early 20s, I was a little bit more hot headed and I would be very upset when I saw cookbooks of, you know, writers who would go to a place and spend a week there and then all of a sudden. They're an expert and I knew it's a whole book and that's great, but I really knew that if I ever got the opportunity to do something like that, even though I'm Taiwanese, even though I live in Taiwan, I wanted to give credit as much as possible to the people.

Who gave me these recipes because this isn't you know, even though I do talk about myself a little bit in there I really hope it's not centered around myself. I really wanted this to be a work of journalism and for people to get to know the people of taiwan and With that I wanted to give people credit because it's so easy not to give people credit because it's a completely different language And people here wouldn't have complained, but I did not want to be that person

[00:07:33] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, no, I think that absolutely comes across like it is very much a work of journalism.

I think the thing that struck me when I was reading it is just like the depth and breadth of the book. I mean, it's like an amazing, for someone like myself who doesn't necessarily know a lot about Taiwanese food, has never been to Taiwan, like it's an amazing kind of insight. all in one go of the dishes and the history and I don't think you are centered in it but it's also you're a way in for the reader I guess to you know access these stories and like learn about your dad's like staying up all night to watch baseball with his friends and then have his mom make breakfast in the morning you know like those stories are kind of what brings it to life like I felt like you really brought the country to life.

of the page, which is like, not a very easy thing to do. Yeah,

[00:08:19] Clarissa Wei: I, I appreciate that. And I also made an attempt to put people's like Chinese names with the Chinese characters there. So many times, like I'm in a foreign country or especially in a with a language that I don't know, and then you just Google that person's name and they don't, they obviously don't show up on Google, right?

But if you Google their names in Chinese, then their information will come up and then, you know, if you're here in Taiwan and you really want to track some of these people down, you can do that yourself and like, I'm surprised why that isn't the standard, um, already. Is it laziness or, um, so I kind of wanted to sneak that in.

That

[00:08:56] Lucy Dearlove: does seem like such a simple thing, but I guess like people, I think there can be a real conservativeness around kind of cookbook writing and like, I think there's, cause there's a real, um, there's kind of been a small conversation in the UK recently about the idea of like italicizing words that aren't in English and so I guess it's kind of like, that's the same sort of thing, right?

It's like, you don't need to make something look foreign, like it's, it can just be part of the context as well. Right.

[00:09:23] Clarissa Wei: Yeah. In a globalized society, anyone can, like, travel to Taiwan immediately too, so we're no longer so removed, um, so I think we should be pushing other food writers and food journalists to include as much information and, like, credit in the actual language as possible.

[00:09:40] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah. Was it a tricky thing to navigate? Because you talk about Taiwan being a multilingual nation. Was that something that was hard to navigate when you were kind of interviewing people and then, um, I guess undertaking the process of translating their recipes? Was that kind of challenging?

[00:09:56] Clarissa Wei: Um, it's multilingual in the sense that the language that people use at home might be.

different, but Mandarin is very much the, the dominant language. So knowing Mandarin, that was easy enough. If anything, it was like the Taiwanese dialect. Some older generations only speak Taiwanese. I understand Taiwanese, but I can't speak it. But again, because I had such a wonderful team who, and they were all born and raised here.

I had help. I was not alone, would not have been able to do that, um, without them.

[00:10:28] Lucy Dearlove: So you grew up in LA, went to college in New York. When did you move to Taiwan?

[00:10:33] Clarissa Wei: Um, I kind of was going back and forth between the states and Asia, um, since 2015. And then I got a full time job in Hong Kong in 2018, and that was when I really started.

settled in Asia and my now husband boyfriend at that time was in Taiwan. So we were doing long distance and then we settled here full time in 2020. But when most people here, 2020, and they're like, that's not a lot of time. You've only been there for three years, but not really. Like I really. Spent a lot of time here since 2015.

And before that, my parents would take me here every single year, um, for winter vacation. So I've always had a strong connection to the Island and, you know, in 2020 decided, Hey, I'm actually going to settle down here, start a family and, um, be here in Taiwan as a citizen and resident. Hmm,

[00:11:24] Lucy Dearlove: yeah, okay, that makes sense.

I kind of, I wanted to ask you, but I don't want to dwell on this too much because I do really want to kind of talk about what's in the book as well, but um, I think there can be a little bit of a, like, a kind of impression that cookbooks can be quite cos there's like almost a cosiness or like an apoliticalness around cookbooks and like, From the outset, this is like, this is clear that it's very much not the case with your, with your book.

And even before it's been published, there's been quite a lot of very strong reactions to things that you've been posting online about it, um, which I'm assuming are from people who haven't read the book. No.

[00:11:58] Clarissa Wei: Which is, I

[00:12:02] Lucy Dearlove: guess, a whole other thing. It's not whether you were braced for that sort of reaction to the book, or whether it was a surprise.

[00:12:08] Clarissa Wei: Oh, I mean. I pitched it as much. Um, I actually, the first round of pitching, it was more from that cozy angle that you were talking about. Um, and that was in 2020, right? When COVID was starting and no one really got the urgency.

I think some of the feedback was, Oh, I already have an author on my list who is of Taiwanese heritage. They weren't writing a book about Taiwan, but they were of Taiwanese heritage, conflict of interest. Um, and then by 2021, a series of things had happened a, like the world started to know more about the pro democracy protests in Hong Kong be, there was a huge stop Asian hate movement in the United States, and then just this aware of coronavirus more talk about Taiwan, China and Hong Kong.

And then I had revised my proposal to really embrace the urgency of the Taiwanese. Story as well, being like, Hey, if we don't talk about this, it might actually be too late in a couple of years time and I immediately got placed a match with a publisher who understood that vision and that urgency. And I'm really glad that I got to tell this story, or that I was pushed to tell this story through this angle because, you know, while a cozy Taiwanese cookbook that you can curl up with by the fireplace would have been nice, um, we do live In a weird place, we are in a weird place here in Taiwan and are constantly dealing with existential threats, even though most people might not talk about it on a day to day basis and food and politics is, it's undeniably intertwined here, even though a lot of people and a lot of my critics say, why do you have to push them together, but you can't divorce them.

So it was just a series of fortunate events and good timing, um, that led to this book being sold and

[00:14:03] Lucy Dearlove: published. Yeah. Yeah. I think in this case, I don't want to sound like I mean, like, I mean, cozy is like a negative thing, but I do also think the book is such like. There's so much beautiful storytelling in it, as well as that kind of like, it is all part of the story.

So I think you could absolutely curl up with it. Um, even though obviously some of the content is like very serious and like you say, very urgent, how would you describe this book to somebody that

[00:14:30] Clarissa Wei: hasn't read it? This book is a reflection of modern Taiwanese food as it is in Taiwan today. It includes a lot of history and context that you would.

Not get anywhere else. And what makes this book different from any other cookbook about Taiwanese food is it's the first time where there is a clear distinction of Taiwanese food as its own entity and not under the umbrella of Chinese cuisine. So I hope for it to be a comprehensive overview of Taiwanese food.

food for people, but also a disclaimer that food is very personal and that it will differ by family and where you are in the world. But we try to be as comprehensive as we, we could have been in the time and space constraints that we were given. Is

[00:15:16] Lucy Dearlove: that something that you're also excited about?

expecting people to react to that, um, they think that you've done, you've written down recipes in a way that isn't, you know, kind of relevant to their family's account of it. Yeah,

[00:15:28] Clarissa Wei: especially with, there's gatekeeping and what authenticity is or why didn't you include this recipe or that recipe and sure that you can go on and on.

Um, but again, that's why I tried to. Divide things by periods, you know different historical periods and list down like I really sort of proved my work So I anticipated all the critiques because I've been writing about food and Asian food for you know Over a decade is so a lot of these critiques I've gotten before And I just sort of anticipated them and built them in the book.

So before people can say anything, it's there already. But as you've seen, this is such a heated topic. It triggers a lot of people and I know no matter what, I'm gonna get hate for it, but that's fine. That's just a function of being Taiwanese these days.

[00:16:20] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, I mean that's kind of, it's kind of sad that that's just like the accepted position that you have, but I guess there's an inevitability about

[00:16:26] Clarissa Wei: that.

Yeah. I mean, if anything it. It's more motivating to, and it just goes to show how important these stories are if it creates so much hate and controversy. Could you

[00:16:39] Lucy Dearlove: tell me about some of the kind of people who are, who feature in the book? Could you tell me about some of their stories and how you came to meet them and include their recipes in the book?

Yeah.

[00:16:49] Clarissa Wei: So I, going into this, I wanted a very diverse group of people, not just. You know, people whose families came here after 1949, which is kind of the dominant perspective in Taiwanese food and English media. And so with that, I sort of Tapped into my reporting, you know, while I was writing this cookbook, this was when a lot of things were happening in the political space in Taiwan, and I was shooting documentaries about cross street tensions and like warplanes coming over, and so through these assignments, I got to know a lot of people, and while I was there, I was like, hey, Give me your recipe or tell me about your family's recipe.

And then I had a Rolodex of people I could cycle through, but also through my past reporting. Um, so it was a me tapping into, you know, the people I was interviewing who were aware of tensions, but also past reporting. And also being very conscious of, I don't just want one perspective, I want people from all walks of life.

So we have young people, and older people, and from whose families came from different immigration patterns. I was really lucky to have a researcher, I brought on a researcher who helped me. You know, get organized and talk to all of these people. And even if people did not give me their recipe per se, I wanted their perspective in it.

And there are a couple of recipes like that. So like example, the ice cream burrito and the dessert section, that's not their recipe, but I. did interview them and sort of got some context and with space constraints, I wasn't able to do that for every single dish, but as much as possible, I wanted to talk to a vendor or a chef on the ground and just get a little soundbite in of their voice and what this dish means to them and what makes

[00:18:38] Lucy Dearlove: it special.

I love the the,

the indigenous Taiwanese person that you. that you said you lived with for a month. Could you just tell me a little bit about them and the, like, kind of what it was like learning about that. Yeah. I guess aspects

[00:18:53] Clarissa Wei: of Taiwanese history. So I think a lot of people have heard of the WIFF program, um, the Worldwide Organization of, I don't even know what the acronym is.

It's a program where you can sign up and then. Live on a farm and work with someone so a list had put a listing up and she doesn't necessarily have a farm The jungle is her farm She has a restaurant and this was in a period of my time where I was just kind of single and restless And did not know what to do.

And I thought hey going to live with this woman for a month sounds really fun And what we did is every morning we would go out in the jungle in the back of her you know with her pickup truck and just pick some vegetables. She never called it foraging. It was just like, let's just get some ingredients for the restaurant.

And then we would work at her restaurant and then we would go home and she would tell me stories of her upbringing. Her mom was the last shaman of the tribe. Her dad, um, remembers You know, he actually just passed away at like the age of a hundred or something crazy but he remembers like running in between tribes with like a torch like barefoot to deliver messages which is so surreal.

It's like from a different time and I kind of just it's Became this recorder when I was there and just try to document everything and remember everything. So I knew when I got this book, I wanted to dedicate a subchapter, um, to her stories. But she's so inspirational and there's so many people in Taiwan like her.

[00:20:22] Lucy Dearlove: And did you say the recipes that you included in that kind of, that subchapter, were they ones that you remember making with her in the restaurant? Yeah, those

[00:20:30] Clarissa Wei: are recipes that she made. So, um, like the sausage, It's with beetle nut leaf, which is an ingredient that she keeps on pushing. And so that's the thing with the indigenous people here.

They're not necessarily pushing ingredients that are indigenous to Taiwan because there's no market for that. But it's also ingredients that are, that just grow really well here or introduced before. So like the beetle nut leaf, that's really prominent in like Vietnamese cuisine or Thai cuisine. But here in Taiwan, people don't eat it.

There's like a stigma around it because it's wrapped around the beetle nut. And that's kind of a psychoactive ingredient that gets people high. But it's really nutritious and it grows wild, but people don't eat it. And so Alys has been on this campaign to promote it. So she like puts it in her sausage.

Same with the pigeon pea. I have a recipe for pigeon pea stew that was actually introduced in the Japanese colonial era. And it's such a great ingredient when you're growing it on the farm because it helps enrich the soil. The most majority of Taiwanese people don't cook with it. It's used a lot in India and other parts of Asia.

So I think just including that.

Um, yeah. So

[00:21:49] Lucy Dearlove: I wanted to say to you that I absolutely loved the series that you made with Whetstone, Climate Cuisine. It's like one of my favorite ever podcasts. Oh, that's really sweet. It was so great. Like it gave me such like a, a new perspective on, yeah, cause you know, in the UK, like we're very much for a long time, like for a long period of our history, we have imported like such a high percentage of what we.

Like it's, we're, we're a nation of imports, like for various reasons. So it's kind of really interesting to think about, I think from that perspective as well, like, cause we have sort of a very weird understanding of like what our native foods even is at this point, because we've taken so many aspects from different people and different, different types of cooking, et cetera, et cetera.

But I, I guess I wanted to ask you whether there was any sort of tension with writing. a recipe book where you're like, you know, specific ingredients are quite important because you want the, you want the recipes to be true to kind of the stories of Taiwan. But then, you know, this work that you've done, I guess, around like climate and.

The, you know, the kind of bad aspects of the global food system. Was there any kind of tension there for you?

[00:22:57] Clarissa Wei: Yeah, I mean, I see this more as a, a work where you, where I am documenting what people eat here. Sure. And so I didn't really, and there's like not a lot of vegetarian recipes at all. There's, it's very meat heavy.

So the diet here is not sustainable, if you will. Okay. But. You know, I did think about like supply chain because a lot of these like specialty ingredients are imported in but it was important. The goal of this book was to capture a snapshot of what Taiwanese food is now because that might change later and you even see it in how people are cooking.

People aren't using these like ingredients. that are very expensive or hard to get. They're taking shortcuts, um, which is probably more sustainable and better. There's this, um, ingredient called an olive flounder. It's a dried, um, flat fish. And that forms the basis of a lot of the broth, but people don't really use it anymore.

They'll just use like instant bullion cubes or like fish cubes or kelp. But again, I approached this project very much. Just, I want to document this before. It goes away. And how people choose to interpret that and tweak that into their own cooking, that's completely up to them. Um, my goal was again, to just, here's a snapshot.

[00:24:17] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense actually. And I think, yeah, I don't always view recipe books that way. And I think it makes a lot of sense to see it like that way. It's not just a kind of instruction manual. It is. Um, yeah, a documentation, so yeah, that's really interesting. Are there any recipes in the book that are particularly meaningful to you?

I'm aware that, you know, it's a huge book, there's so many recipes, but are there any that kind of really stand out for you? Um, the

[00:24:44] Clarissa Wei: one that I always tell people and that I'm actually making right now in my instant pot is the braised pork belly over rice. Just because it's so simple, but with the Taiwanese diaspora, there's a tendency to overcomplicate it.

I think a lot of people put in like a million spices and then they braise it to death and they'll add like all of these things. And when I was interviewing the vendor who makes it, he only puts four ingredients. Water, sugar, soy sauce, and shallots. I added a little bit more. Because his secret is using like the leftover braising liquid that they've been using for three generations.

So I added a little like rice, wine, and garlic for complexity. So what really stood out is like how. Simple. A lot of these flavor profiles are and not to overcomplicate things. And with Taiwanese food, what I realize is chefs exercise a lot of restraint in terms of seasoning. And that was something I really struggled with because I'm American and we tend to over salt things.

And when I brought on a bunch of recipe testers as volunteers, a lot of the feedback was. Uh, everything could use a couple grains of salt, but then Ivy's like, but we don't eat like that here in Taiwan. Like everything is very not salty. And I kind of had to be the middle ground where I was like, okay, let's maybe add a little bit of salt, but not too much.

Um, basically that was a huge lesson for me that Taiwanese food is very minimal. focus on just the original flavor of the ingredients. So if you source like a really beautiful pork belly, you won't need that extra soy sauce or salt or all those spices. And it was a really enlightening lesson for me.

[00:26:27] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah.

Yeah, totally. I like, so that's interesting that you say that things, yeah, things are kind of like seasoned sparingly, but you also talk about kind of the, um, complicated relationship Taiwan has with sugar. Oh yeah. People.

[00:26:42] Clarissa Wei: So like things are seasoned sparingly, but with a lot of sugar, which again is like for someone who grew up in the West, it's.

It's very confusing at times, um, and the things have just gotten sweeter and sweeter. But again, like that was kind of an internal conflict I had as someone writing a cookbook. You know, it's like, how true do I want to be to like the flavors here? And again, I just went back to. You know, people can read this recipe.

Taste, like, I really encourage people to just use their taste buds. If it's too sweet, don't, like, don't put that much sugar. If it's not salty enough, add more salt. But these flavors were guided by Ivy's flavor profile, who has been here for so long and wanted to keep it like that.

[00:27:28] Lucy Dearlove: Why do you think there is such like a leading towards?

Sweetness, I guess. I think that's, that's probably a hard question to answer, but I just, yeah, I find it really interesting.

[00:27:34] Clarissa Wei: I mean, most of it is historical. When we were colonized by the Japanese, Taiwan was the only place where they could have sugarcane plantations. So it just became a really huge part of our economy.

I think it was like two thirds of the population. They were sugarcane farmers. So it just became associated with wealth and progress. Yeah, like, you can buy all of these different types of sugar in the, the store, but there's Yeah, I can't find coarse sea salt anywhere. I just find like fine sea salt. It's really fascinating what people prioritize here.

[00:28:10] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, because there's a few sort of, I guess, similar examples where, um, a colonial power or a, I guess, a global power has been... Brought an ingredient or popularized ingredients that the story of kind of all American wheat was super interesting as well. So the U S bringing over, they exported wheat, but then it was a whole promotional campaign.

I'm sort of

[00:28:34] Clarissa Wei: forgetting. Yeah. So, so with the wheat, the, it's the U S. Had this program and it wasn't just with Taiwan. It was in the Cold War. They wanted to win over the favor of a lot of countries and bring them away from communism. So Taiwan just got a billions of dollars of aid, but we also just got a surplus of wheat because the U.

S. had produced. And it was a way to get Taiwan to be pro US versus being more sympathetic towards say communist causes. And even to today, most of our wheat is American. And that was something I was really confused about when I was recipe developing, because when I first started, I was like, this recipe is not working with my American brand of flour.

And why isn't it working? And then when you Google it online, actually most. Sources say it's because Chinese wheat has a lower protein content. And something about that did not sit right with me because I was like, we don't have Chinese wheat. Like we don't communicate with China like that. Where is this coming from?

So I like messaged so many food bloggers and bakers and eventually got ahold of this guy who has a Chinese blog called like Brian cuisine. And he teaches Taiwanese people how to make. Western sourdough breads and like baguettes and stuff. Yeah. And he was like, Oh yeah. I mean, you're completely right. The protein level of wheat in Taiwan and in America is exactly the same.

The difference is how they mill it and the additives that they use. And so the, the water ratio will differ a little bit, but yeah, there was a point where like Ivy and I had packets of like American flour and Taiwanese flour and we're looking at the protein content and it was the exact same and I like could not figure it out.

So there's a lot of misinformation about like where our ingredients come from or the origins of it. And this was. Yeah. This project really helped me debunk a lot of these myths.

[00:30:36] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, and that's something that's so hard to unpick, right? Because unless you can find someone who knows, like, you can't go into a mill and, like, know exactly what they're doing.

And yeah, it's so complicated. Again, I guess it's that, like, global supply chain thing. But yeah, it's all very

[00:30:49] Clarissa Wei: opaque. And even to this day, if you tell me, like, how to change the water ratio, I'm like, I'm not really sure. I just... Our solution was my parents just brought home, brought bags of American wheat for me and then Ivy and I just tested it from scratch.

It's not like there's a, I have a conversion formula in my brain. Right,

[00:31:08] Lucy Dearlove: right. Yeah, that's so funny. I loved how you talked about Taiwanese kitchens and you said they were either charming or janky depending on your perspective. Can you tell me about the main things that characterize Taiwanese kitchens for

[00:31:23] Clarissa Wei: you?

Yeah, I mean, I currently, I'm moving now because it's actually a little bit inconvenient when you're a cookbook author. But, like, I live on a 6 4 walk up and I have a gas tank that I have to, like, I have to call someone and they bring over a gas tank, a propane tank to replace, to connect to my stove every time we run out of gas.

There's no hot water in the kitchen. We don't have a dishwasher. Um, most kitchens, all kitchens don't come with ovens, so we use a toaster oven. It's really, really hot in there. There's no air conditioning, um, . It is very, very minimalistic, , and we just. May do. But again, the beauty of Taiwanese food is you don't have all of these fancy gadgets.

All you need is a stove and a wok. And what was really kind of difficult for me to first adjust to is the fire here when you turn on the stove is like a rocket fuel engine. And that like really affected the recipes too. Cause something that would take, you know, Two minutes, like ten minutes in the States would take two minutes here.

I would burn things easily here and just sort of figuring out the nuances between the Western kitchen and the Taiwanese kitchen. It was very difficult for me, but I am moving soon and hopefully we'll have a better setup. But if anything, it just taught me that you don't need a lot to cook a great meal.

[00:32:51] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, totally. I really enjoyed the like little anecdote about going to like a store and talking to someone about maybe replacing your Taiwanese stove with an American and kind of being met with shock horror. He was. Because I

[00:33:04] Clarissa Wei: guess like, yeah, he was just like, do you want food with no flavor? Like the high flame is what gives our food flavor and, and fair enough, but it's really difficult to time things.

And that's a cultural thing too. In the West, when we get recipes, we really want precision timing, exact measurements and like here in Taiwan, like people do not. think like that, you know, it's very intuitive. And

[00:33:30] Lucy Dearlove: that must be a real, that's like a process of translation when you're writing a cookbook, right?

Because people kind of have this expectation of, especially if it's something they haven't cooked before or even eaten before maybe, they just need to know what to look for, I

[00:33:42] Clarissa Wei: guess. Yeah, and then even with Ivy, like, she didn't understand why I wanted everything to the teaspoon or to the gram. And eventually she adjusted and like, We would like poke fun of each other because of it.

But, you know, she's a fast learner. And eventually we got the hang of things. But it is I do think it is important to measure things and time things, especially when you are writing a cookbook, because this is the only way you can transmit recipes across cultures and across borders. And I think people sort of make fun of.

maybe me or us for being so finicky with our little spoons. Um, but it is an act again of preservation and how better else to do it than to approach it more scientifically and get the measurements and the timing down to a T. Yeah,

[00:34:34] Lucy Dearlove: totally. You know, you talked about, um, You know, you eat quite simply at home, you cook quite simply.

Has the process of developing these recipes in the book, has it changed how you cook at home? Are there things now that maybe you didn't cook before but you would now?

[00:34:49] Clarissa Wei: Uh, no, if anything, I just don't really want to eat Taiwanese food all that much anymore. Because there's just so much. Over saturation of Taiwanese food, and it's made me appreciate Western food even more.

And then if, like, if you go through the recipes, a lot of them are technically quite difficult, which is something that is quite, that I learned through this process. You know, some of these street food dishes, you look at it, and it's like, oh, that should be easy. But there's a lot of prep involves and a lot of finicky things and a lot of technique that we don't use in the West.

Um, and so for every recipe, it wasn't like I could prep it beforehand. A lot of it, I had to do the day of and it was exhausting. And that's kind of made me value like the, the art of bulk meal planning and cooking in bulk and simple, quick 15 minute recipes, which this book is not, this book does not. I mean, there's like a, the beer food section, right?

Or a family style where you can quickly stir fry things. But most things are very intensive and take a lot of time. And it just made me appreciate the other side.

[00:36:00] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah. Yeah. That's so true. I think that's. It's hard, isn't it? Because obviously you want people to be able to try things, maybe if they don't have the opportunity to go to the country themselves, but then even something like the fried dough sticks, the kind of breakfast, um, uh, dough sticks, I can't remember the name in the book, but that is, you know, there's such like an elaborate process to kind of like shaping them, and if you're doing that, like somebody who's done that their whole life, I can probably do it in a second, but it's

[00:36:29] Clarissa Wei: really hard to translate that.

And if anything, I hope people can read this book and come away feeling... That there should be more value assigned to Asian food than it is currently in the West, you know, there's this stereotype that Asian food is cheap, take out, unhealthy, but it is very step, like ingredient time intensive, um, and it really makes me, yeah, it's It's so complex and it really makes me appreciate the vendors and learning how complex these things were made me want to write it down even more because this stuff does not exist in English.

Something that's fun for a lot of people is I included just photography notes. throughout the book. Um, my food stylists were really good at putting in Easter eggs throughout. Um, we worked with museums who donated or lent us their pieces. And so if you flip through the book and you look at the photography notes, you'll notice little tidbits.

And I'll say, you know, this plate came from this era and why they use this utensil. And I hope it's not just informative in the text, but the, the photos. can tell you a little bit more about Taiwan as well. So that's the fun thing that we baked into the book that most people won't be aware of until they get their physical copy.

Yeah, that's so

[00:37:48] Lucy Dearlove: cool. And there was, there was kind of personal aspects to that as well. Like they kind of acknowledged when the stylist had brought a table from their family or something. And it was really cool. Again, that's something I think. You don't see very much like the, the pictures are often just sort of a set for the food.

So it's really nice to get that, that extra bit of context. And that's amazing that you had museum pieces.

[00:38:08] Clarissa Wei: That's, yeah, my stylist and photographer, they approach every dish like a scene and every chapter, like a small little movie film, if you will. So if you actually look through each chapter, every chapter has a different light.

setting. So the night market one is like very warm. So you'll see all the pictures are very warm. The family style is more bright pastel colors. And so that was, they had their foundation and then they had their props that they would put in. And so. I think, I would say like 90 percent of these dishes, these props aren't just like random things they found, it's like they use this pot because this is how the plate that we would eat with at home or this is what you would see at the night market.

It's very purposeful, it's very scenic, and I did not ask them to do that, they just did that by themselves. You just had a great team. Yeah, I just had an amazing team and it's incredible that they did that and I learned so much. so much from the process.

[00:39:05] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, that's so cool. I'm going to go right back through the book

[00:39:07] Clarissa Wei: now.

And like, yeah, just look at the lighting. The lighting is so, and then every corner too. I think each photograph would take like up to two hours. And cause she was looking at like the corner. of each picture to make sure it was perfect so just the framing was very purposeful.

[00:39:26] Lucy Dearlove: I think that's why it feels like such a, I use the word comprehensive and I think you never want to claim something is definitive but I think comprehensive is a very accurate term to describe this book and it's not only comprehensive but it is beautiful, like it's such a beautiful book and having that level of detail in it, I think is what gives it that like amazing texture as well as like your writing.

So yeah, it's honestly like it's a fantastic book. So

[00:39:51] Clarissa Wei: congratulations. Thank you. I appreciate it. And thank you for reading it and flipping through it too. I appreciate that.

[00:40:01] Lucy Dearlove: Lecker is hosted and produced by me, Lucy Dearlove. Thanks to my guest on the Lekker Book Club this month, Clarissa Wei. Made in Taiwan is out now, published by Simon Schuster. As part of the monthly Lecker book club I will be writing on the book over on the Lecker sub stack and Patreon. Have you been cooking from it?

Have you been reading it? Have you noticed the light settings? Come and chat about that or your favourite recipes in the comments or tag me on Instagram when you read it or post dishes. I'd love to see them. Music is by Blue Dot Sessions. Before I go, one more reminder that you can also sign up as a paid subscriber to support Lecker on Apple Podcasts, Patreon, and also now on Substack.

Links are in the show notes. And to any paid subscribers who are listening here, thank you so much for your continued support. The new subscriber only series begins this week. It's been slightly delayed as I was finishing Good Bread, so thanks to all subscribers for their patience. This new one is going to be a bit of a meandering look.

at something that occupies a large space in my brain at all times, and that is food packaging. The series is called Out of the Box, and here's a little clip of what you can expect from some of these episodes. Here is Sohini Banerjee, a. k. a. Smoke and Lime, who is going to be talking about the condiments she makes and the cooking she does and how it's packaged and approached.

Thanks for listening.

[00:41:32] Sohini Banerjee: For me, actually, it goes back to, um, And I'd love to mention this, there's a concept of, um, this, it's like a corner shop in Kolkata where I come from, it is, um, They're called mudhi dhokan. Um, so dhokan means shop and mudhi means a person who provides like necessities So these shops, they're in every single neighborhood Minimum like 15 steps from your house or something There's so many of them and they stop all your necessities but they kind of give it to you in your containers or plates or bowls or whatever so you can go and ask for lentils or rice and There's a person who sits at the front of the shop everything's behind them and you ask them for what you need and it is a basic shop so you can't get fancy things but you can get you know like your eggs your rice your lentils your beans maybe butter oils and like some snacks and that's about it but they don't have any packaging there's no branding on anything and they're the old school shops in Kolkata where I come from actually a lot of India as well and they're kind of dying out at the moment because of supermarkets.