Abstract
Since 1990, the number of papers and monographs on Taiwanese Hakka cuisine has increased year by year, but some of their research topics tend to be one-sided, e.g., featured dishes of a particular place or item, Hakka rice foods, Hakka pickles, mother’s homemade dishes, others on the bias toward the exploration of Hakka cuisine in mountainous areas, and still others focusing more on development trend and phenomenon of Hakka cuisine at this stage, which overshadow the background of the historical development. Specifically, the current research on Hakka cuisine in Taiwan is mostly scattered on various independent topics, which fails to provide a A comprehensive multifaceted discussion.
This research attempts to look into the history of the local development of Hakka cuisine in Taiwan’s northern coastal area through the culinary experiences of the Liao family in Guanyin Taoyuan. As regards time course and connotation, about 100 years from the Japanese rule to the 1980s, the Liao family's transition from an immigrant society to an indigenous one is explored in terms of the connection among yearly festivals, daily diets and geographical ties. Foods served on yearly festivals include three animal sacrificial offerings for ancestor worship, Hakka Ban food (steamed rice cakes) and banquet cuisine; the daily life diets of Hakka, including the collection, preservation and consumption of food, are expressed in the production of sauce and pickles, the culture of drinking wine and tea, and the food culture of home cooking and banquet cuisine.
The three daily meals of the Liao family feature more salty and less oily tastes and consume in a frugal and simple manner, mainly using self-sufficient varieties of vegetables harvested from the home garden with the surplus made into pickles; the meat for home consumption is largely from home-raised poultry, and a small amount of farmed and mostly purchased pork and beef; the sources of fish are pond-raised freshwater fish and wild sea fish. In contrast to the meagre meals on a daily basis, the Liao family's ritual cuisines and banquet dishes on yearly festivals are abundant with meat-based dishes to show their devotion to gods and hospitality to guests. The Liao family once created a new banquet dish known as "Tangback Stir-Fry", which became a household name in the Guanyin area.
Generally speaking, differences do exist between the local development of coastal Hakka cuisine in the Guanyin and Hukou areas, and the mountain-dwelling Hakka cuisine in northern Taiwan. It is hoped that this paper will help expand the acquired knowledge of the Hakka cuisine in the coastal area on the basis of the established Hakka cuisine in the mountainous areas of Taoyuan, Hsinchu, and Miaoli, so as to facilitate the understanding of the Hakka culinary culture in the north and to help the academic community to further investigate the Hakka cuisine in Taiwan.
Keywords: Hakka Cuisine, Hakkas in Coastal Areas, Tangback Stir-Fry, Hakka Stir-Fry, the Liao Family