A New Generation of Chefs Reframes Taiwanese Cuisine in America 新一代主廚 擦亮美國台菜招牌
文/Julia Moskin
譯/李京倫
新一代主廚 擦亮美國台菜招牌
When Richard Ho opened Ho Foods, a tiny storefront in New York’s East Village last year, his goal was to serve the best possible version of a single Taiwanese dish: beef noodle soup.
His goal was not to become the host of what his employees describe as Manhattan’s first Taiwanese food community center.
雖然在他的員工口中,何家麵館是曼哈坦第一個台灣料理交流中心,但這其實不是何瑞運當初開店的目標。
But because the dish is so beloved, everyone from Chinatown aunties to fellow Taiwanese-American chefs to curious tourists showed up to see if his soup was up to their particular standards.
“Every Taiwanese mom who comes in tells me a different ‘secret’ to the broth,” Ho said. “Apples, cilantro stems, star anise.”
何瑞運說:「每個進來店裡的台灣媽媽,都向我傳授不同的湯頭『秘方』,從蘋果、香菜梗到八角都有。」
Beef noodle soup is widely considered the national dish of modern Taiwan, assembled from the island’s tumultuous history, celebrated with an annual festival in Taipei and fought over in a cooking competition with multiple winning categories. But it is only one of countless dishes that make Taiwan’s cooking remarkable and rewarding.
Much of its cuisine can be traced to somewhere else, but — like the United States — Taiwan has experienced so many transformations of demography and culture, technology and taste, that the food now has its own identity.
Because the modern history of the island includes centuries of immigration and colonization, 50 years of Japanese occupation (from 1895 through World War II), and an influx of 2 million refugees from mainland China when the Communist Party took power in 1949, modern Taiwanese food is a particularly kaleidoscopic mix. (Today, the island exists in political limbo between independence from and absorption into greater China.)
“Taiwan itself is a melting pot,” said chef Vivian Ku, of the restaurant Pine & Crane in Los Angeles.
In the United States, Taiwanese dishes have often been swept under the vast umbrella of “Chinese food.” Until recently, only people who know their food geography could spot a restaurant with a particular specialty — beef noodle soup; box lunches of rice, pork and cabbage; braised beef rolled in scallion pancakes — and identify it as Taiwanese.
Now, Taiwanese food is announcing itself. It is not new to the United States, but it is being newly celebrated, and transformed, by young Taiwanese-American chefs and restaurateurs like Ho, Vivian Ku, Eric Sze of 886 in Manhattan and Joshua Ku of Win Son in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Having plenty of gas is hardly a burden, and it offers a cleaner-burning alternative to Israel’s longtime power sources. But it presents challenges for a country that wants to extract geopolitical and economic benefits from a rare energy windfall, including building better relations with its neighbors and Europe.
Part of the problem is timing. Just as Israel prepares to produce and export large amounts of gas, the United States, Australia, Qatar and Russia are flooding the market with cheap gas. The other is math: Israel’s 8.5 million people use in a year less than 1% of the gas that has been found in the country’s waters.
“We have a surplus of gas,” Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said in an interview. “Israeli waters are swimming in gas, and what we have discovered is only the beginning.”
Noble Energy, a Houston-based company that made its first discovery of gas in Israel in 1999, has found more than 30 trillion cubic feet of gas off the country’s coast over the past decade. Some experts say new discoveries could double that.
As a result, Israel is phasing out diesel and coal-fired electricity, replacing it mostly with gas-fired generation and some solar power. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet is considering banning the import of gasoline and diesel cars starting in 2030 and gradually switching to vehicles fueled by compressed natural gas or electricity.
Israel is also stepping up exports to neighbors like Jordan and Egypt. There are even plans to supply gas to a power plant in the West Bank for Palestinian customers.
Yet these efforts will make only a dent in the country’s reserves.
不過,這些舉動對解決以色列天然氣儲量豐富的問題只略有幫助。
“We want to export,” said Jacob Nagel, former head of Israel’s National Security Council. “The question is: How much will it cost? Is it possible? How much time will it take?”
For decades, Israel depended on Russia and other sources for fuel, while its industries and homes relied on coal and oil power plants that blanketed its cities with smog.
數十年來,以色列靠俄國等國家取得能源,工業和民生用電則仰賴燃煤和燃油,使城市煙霧彌漫。
The switch to gas has helped clear the air in cities like Tel Aviv and Haifa that have converted diesel-fueled plants.Israel’s biggest coal plant — in Hadera, a coastal city — will be converted over the next three years, cutting national coal consumption by 30%. Officials say they expect to eliminate coal use in 11 years.
本文為了表達以色列天然氣儲量豐富,用了plenty of、large amounts of、a surplus of等短語。Swim in是比喻說法,在這裡引申為「充滿著」,類似例子如:He is swimming in money.swim還有相關的慣用語:in the swim是指「活躍於社會上」,例如:Despite her age, she is still in the swim.。Swim against the stream是反抗主流意見。
Dent原意是凹痕,引申為「削弱」,例如:The loss put a dent in the team’s confidence.另一個引申義是「取得有意義的進展」,例如:I have not made a dent in this pile of work.此外,make a dent還可以引申為「讓某人留意」,尤其是指某個忠告或警告,如:The doctor told him to stop smoking, but it did not make a dent.