Taipei Mystery Street Sweet

One thing we love about Taipei is that it's so obviously comfortable in its own skin.

Confident enough of its 21st century-ness that it's not driven to clear the streets of food sellers to prove its standing as a 'modern' city, Taipei is a metropolis in which skyscrapers and upscale eateries happily coexist with itinerant vendors, often on the same block.

In Wanhua District we bumped into a vendor peddling, from a hand-pushed two-wheeled cart, a mysterious sweet that we'd encountered nowhere else on the island -- chewy bite-sized squares chilled underneath blocks of ice,

 

and tossed in ground sesame seeds before bagging.

 

It was a warm day and the chilled marshmallow-ish pillows, lightly toasty and not too sweet, hit the spot.

The gent was decidedly nonplussed by Dave's camera and resisted my attempts to conduct an informal interview. He did, however, tell us how long he's been plying his trade on the streets of Wanhua: 50 years, give or take a few.

Update 12/11/09: Mystery solved -- this is a traditional Taiwanese treat made of sweet potato (sometimes green bean) and rolled in plain flour, toasted. Apparently the vendor, known to folks in the 'hood as Ah Bee, is a bit of a local celebrity. If you can read Chinese, further info awaits here.

Thanks much to K, a font of info on all things Taiwanese (especially food)!

Chewy sweets vendor, somewhere in the vicinity of the intersection of Guiyang and Xitang Roads -- maybe -- in Wanhua district, Taipei. He says he's there everyday, public holidays excepted.

Comments

[santos.]

was it a little lemony? it looks like aiyu jelly, which is made from the gel around the seeds of an asian fig. i've only ever had aiyu as a component in a citrusy drink or a shaved ice dessert, but i know it doesn't really melt, it's like konnyaku or grass jelly. sesame seeds would be a nice contrast.

[Rona Y]

It kind of looks (and sounds) like what is called "warabimochi" in Japan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warabimochi Did it jiggle a little? Really fresh warabimochi jiggles. In Japan, it's usually coated with kinako (ground roasted soybeans) rather than sesame. Actually, the stuff he's tossing it in looks like kinako, too. . . It's one of my favourite Japanese sweets!

[Katy Biggs]

On the second photo - the one with the vendor's grumpy face (!) - on top of the cart , it's got a Chinese character 'Fen' (powder), has Dave got another photo that showed the other characters- if he did, we might be able to tell what sort of flour or powder it was made from! Just a thought!

Katy B.

[juegos de estrategia]

it smells gooooooood

[J2Kfm]

looks more like what we call them 'tok-tok' sweets, here in Malaysia.
a long lost traditional snack.

[A]

This is, I believe, a dessert left by the Japanese. It's a type of summer mochi made with potato starch instead of glutinous rice flour. In Japan, they eat it with roasted soybean flour and brown sugar syrup.

[Katy]

It’s not tok-tok (rock candy, we have that too), it’s called liang fen 凉粉, it’s soft, I would compare it to Turkish Delights. Liang fen is a generic name for anything made with ground flour (none-wheat) jelly type of food that very often went in the shaved ice or cold soup in Taiwan. I doubt there is a connection with Japan, if anything, more likely is Taiwanese brought in to Japan. Everything about it is Taiwanese, the sweet potato and the tossed flour. Tossed wheat flour tea (mian cha) is an old time Taiwanese snack too. I guess it’s served as a summer mochi in Japan because glutinous rice snack goes hard in refrigeration, while this not so much and it is called ‘cold powder’.