Taiwan in the spotlight
WTF is a mango pineapple? Plus three Taiwanese cookbooks and delicious recipes to try from them.
Happy Friday, vivacious cook!
Just arrived last night in New Orleans, so I’ll attempt to be brief, and next week I’ll send you a food-filled postcard from NOLA.
Taiwanese cooking is very hot in the U.S. right now — and American interest in it comes at an interesting time (as in a “may you live in interesting times” kind of interesting time). Of course we want to better understand the culture of the island nation on which China has set its military sights, in large part because so many Taiwanese immigrants and their families call the U.S. home.
Taiwanese food culture is fabulously rich, and now three exciting cookbooks offer a more direct way in for people who want to explore it. The outstanding blogger Frankie Gaw (Little Fat Boy) published First Generation in late 2022. Last year, the popular Brooklyn restaurant and bakery Win Son published Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook, and accomplished Taiwanese American food journalist Clarissa Wei published Made in Taiwan.
In process of writing a collective review, I’ve been cooking from all three books for the last few months. The review will be up on the big site very soon; you’ll find three recipes linked at the end of this post to hold you till then.
Perplexing fruit at center of geopolitical kerfuffle
On our way to Houston on Wednesday (yep — this is a road trip!) I heard a fascinating story on NPR: “A pineapple symbolizes the tense relationship between China and Taiwan.” It’s about a dispute over the intellectual property associated with the mango pineapple, a hybrid for which Taiwan reportedly holds the intellectual property rights.
It’s an intriguing story for many reasons, but the one I quickly focused on is WTF is a mango pineapple?! The headline characterizes it as a pineapple, and that would make sense syntactically (mango serving as an adjective for this particular pineapple). The story doesn’t dive into that, but I did — and weirdly, there’s little about the mango pineapple on the internet. (I’ve dive more later, when I don’t have New Orleans to explore!)
It seems much more likely, though, that a mango pineapple is a mango: I found a site that sells tropical plants; through it, you can buy a mango pineapple tree, or Mangifera indica. The site first describes this as a hybrid between a mango and a pineapple, but then clarifies:
“An interesting fact about Mango Pineapple trees is that they are not actually a true hybrid of mango and pineapple, but rather a variety of mango that has a distinct pineapple-like flavor. The fruit has a golden-yellow flesh and a unique aroma that combines the sweet, juicy flavor of mango with the tangy, tropical taste of pineapple. Despite its name, the Mango Pineapple is not a cross between a mango and a pineapple, but rather a mango variety that has developed this unique flavor profile over time. Mango Pineapple trees are also relatively rare and difficult to find, making them a special and sought-after addition to any tropical fruit collection.” — From the Tropical Plantae website
This led me to wonder, how many varieties of mango are there out there? Five, six? Ten? Twenty? Try 136! At least that’s now many cultivars Wikipedia lists. One is called Pineapple Pleasure, but no information is given.
I hope to turn up more soon — I was really hoping for a pineapple that tastes like a mango. (Got any leads? Let us know in a comment!)
Three Taiwanese recipes
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