清明平安 A Recipe for Qing Ming Jie
Run Bing 潤餅 Recipe, Soy Sauce Mini-Doc, a Sneak Peek at a Forthcoming Project, and a Regenerative Asian Vegetable Farm
Welcome to Yun Hai Taiwan Stories, a monthly newsletter about Taiwanese food culture by Lisa Cheng Smith, founder of Yun Hai Taiwanese Pantry.
Don’t miss the advance screening of Time, Terroir, Taiwan: Soy Sauce Brewing in Xi Luo, a soy sauce mini-doc we produced with Chen Office. Scroll down for more info or skip ahead to the event page. April 10th, 8pm, Online. Free to attend.
清明節 Qing Ming Jie
Today is Qing Ming Jie (請明節), or Tomb Sweeping Day. For the last week or so, families in Taiwan have been gathering to bring offerings to the memorials of their ancestors. On this holiday, it’s folkloric tradition to avoid hot food. Run Bing (潤餅), or Taiwanese Spring Roll, is a customary dish. Families gather around a table and wrap fresh and lightly cooked ingredients in spring roll skins. The chosen fillings differ from family to family and region to region, but usually include sweet peanut powder, cilantro, cabbage, dried tofu, cucumber, and carrots.
At the beginning of the year, I added all the Taiwanese holidays to my calendar, and made a (Gregorian) New Year’s resolution to celebrate them with my kids. It feels especially somber and important to observe Qing Ming Jie this year, with a rise in anti-Asian sentiment and violent attacks on Asian women and elders. And the horrific rail accident this week in Taiwan that killed and injured so many on their way to visit their ancestors. My thoughts and heart are with all who are suffering.
清明 translates to “pure and bright”—there’s some comfort in that. I will sweep clean and offer the world my best. The holiday is named after the 清明 solar term; skies are clear.
I asked my friend Jonathan Wang, a chef and Taiwanese food expert, to develop a Run Bing recipe for Yun Hai. I was testing the wrappers in my home kitchen and made a video of the process. I didn’t have all the ingredients on hand, so I improvised. It’s not exactly what you’d get in Taiwan, but I felt like an active participant in the custom nonetheless.
It’s charmingly simple - a slurry of wheat and water will take you very far.
This kind of Spring Roll skin is the key ingredient in Taiwanese Dan Bing 蛋餅 and that amazing dessert where three flavors of ice cream get wrapped up with cilantro and shaved peanut brittle (IYKYK). I highly recommend frying, you can do this in a shallow layer of oil and flip.
Time, Terroir, Taiwan: Soy Sauce Brewing in Xi Luo
Private Screening and Q&A
Join us on April 10th at 8 pm for the advance screening of Time, Terroir, Taiwan: Soy Sauce Brewing in Xi Luo, a mini-documentary featuring Yu Ding Xing, a third generation soy sauce brewer in Taiwan and the producer of the soy sauces we carry in the Yun Hai shop. The film was directed by Chen Office and produced by Yun Hai.
The 15-minute film documents the traditional process of making Taiwanese soy sauce by hand, using black soybeans, terracotta vats, the sun, and wood fire. It also offers a portrait of the brewers, with a look back to the early days of the brewery and forward to the next generation.
An online screening of the mini-doc will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker and soy sauce brewer about contemporary agriculture and food culture in Taiwan, moderated by Yun Hai.
Special Guests :
Yi-Cheng Hsieh, Yu Ding Xing Soy Sauce Brewer
Steve Chen, Filmmaker and Director, Chen Office
Lisa Cheng Smith, Yun Hai Taiwanese Pantry (Moderator)
Lillian Lin, Yun Hai Taiwanese Pantry (Moderator)
Sneak Peek: Something Sweet is Coming Soon
We’ve been hard at work to source our next product straight from orchards and farmer’s coops in Taiwan. We’re announcing it in a few days, and need your help to make this dream come true. Stay tuned!
Taiwanese American Business of the Month
Each month, we’ll feature a Taiwanese American business that we love.
Radical Family Farms is a small, regenerative farm in Sonoma County growing Asian heritage vegetables, flowers and herbs. In their own words, they are “reclaiming Asian-American identities on the land—one that centers LGBTQIA + Mixed-Asian American heritage and culinary culture through the vegetables, herbs, meals and events produced on our farm.”
If you are in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Mountain View, San Rafael or Sonoma County, you can sign up for their weekly farm box CSA, starting in May 2021.
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