Is there any food in your culture which can be used in myriad ways and is not only for eating, but also conveys the meaning “best wishes” as well as being closely connected to major life events like birth and death?
In Taiwan, this food is “misua”—Taiwanese-style wheat-flour vermicelli.
With their long, slender shape, misua (mianxian in Mandarin, mī-suànn in Taiwanese Hokkien) symbolize long life. On birthdays or to get rid of bad luck, one should eat pig’s trotters with misua, while a woman during her one-month postpartum recuperation period may often eat nourishing sesame-oil misua with fried egg. When paying respects to the Lord of Heaven, people offer the deity misua wrapped in red paper, while temples also give gifts of misua to believers to express best wishes for tranquility, good fortune, and health. Moreover, everyone in Taiwan has their own favorite kind of mianxianhu—misua in thickened soup—that they are eager to recommend to you.
Diverse vermicelli eateries
Misua are a staple of streetfood eateries in Taiwan. These restaurants and stalls can be divided into two main schools: those that serve red misua and those that serve plain white misua.
Food culture writer Chen Ching-yi, who has traveled all over to try different foods and beverages and is something of a culinary anthropologist, explains that when traditional white misua vermicelli absorb the broth in which they are prepared, they release starch, making the soup thicker, and the noodles don’t stand up well to long cooking. This is why “red” misua were developed. Taiwan has a highly developed food processing industry, and processors take white misua and further steam them. This produces a Maillard reaction, giving the noodles their characteristic copper or molasses color, and also denatures their glutelin proteins so that they do not become mushy when cooked for a long time. Although she still prefers the taste of white misua, Chen says: “The advent of red misua, with their improved convenience, has enabled misua to more easily maintain their role as a staple in many small eateries.”
Vendors compete based on the flavor of their soup and the quality of their other ingredients, of which oysters and chitterlings are the mainstay. Oysters are a common ingredient used in coastal areas, while chitterlings are a product that pig farmers won’t let go to waste. Ay-Chung Noodles, located in the Ximending area of Taipei, uses bonito flakes for their soup stock. This can’t-miss stop for tourists has no tables or chairs, and the scene of so many people standing on the street and eating out of bowls is intriguing. In the nearby Ningxia Night Market, A Chuan Oyster Vermicelli gets fresh oysters shipped in daily from Dongshi in Chiayi County, giving Taipei people a chance to eat fresh seafood. Then there is mianxianhu (mī-suànn-kôo—vermicelli in thickened soup), a specialty of Lukang in Changhua County. It is made with red misua and threads of beaten eggs with an added scoop of garlic paste, and is topped with a few drops of black vinegar. Indeed, misua are served in a dazzling variety of ways, including with squid, in thick soup with pork, and with fish crackers or cuttlefish balls.
White misua, meanwhile, are simple and flexible. Xu’s Pig’s-Trotter Vermicelli, a stall located in front of Cisheng Temple in Taipei’s Dadaocheng area, uses traditional white misua. Served in soup, they can absorb the essence of the broth and have a silky and refreshing texture. Eaten hot, freshly boiled white misua topped with pork fat and garlic paste offer a fragrance to the nose and a flavor to the mouth that are a match made in heaven. Meanwhile, in Penghu or Kinmen one mainly finds vermicelli cuisine in seafood restaurants, where they are prepared dry, in clear broth, or dry-fried. In Central Taiwan it is fashionable to serve misua with camellia seed oil, a dish which (in the terminology of Traditional Chinese Medicine) nourishes and warms the stomach; it pairs well with a wide variety of foods, including ginger duck and mutton hotpot.
The pinnacle of noodle craftsmanship
Vermicelli developed last among all the types of pasta that are consumed in noodle-based dietary cultures. In other words, they are the highest expression of pasta-making skills, requiring the most complex processes and techniques.
We visit Kaohsiung’s Yanchao District, famous for growing guavas, to visit a shop that insists on continuing to make their vermicelli by hand: Pan Shunlong Handmade Fuzhou Vermicelli. Pan Jianzhong is the successor to this business.
When it comes to vermicelli, Pan says one must first clarify what one is talking about. He emphasizes that his shop makes “handmade Fuzhou youmian” (youmian: “thin noodles”), which differ from Taiwanese vermicelli. The process for making youmian is more complex, whereas for ordinary misua many steps can be eliminated. However, as the industry has declined, people have stopped making the fine distinction between the two, and both are now called misua.
Pan gets up at 3 a.m, when it is still pitch dark outside, to start his noodle-making day.
First comes making the dough, by mixing flour with salt water and kneading it into balls. “This step determines the firmness of the noodles, so right from the start we are applying our skills.”
Next the balls of dough are moved to a table, where they are rolled flat with a rolling pin.
After that the dough is “thrown,” which comprises two distinct actions: Strips of dough are twirled in the air with one hand, while the palm of the other hand presses the strips onto the work table and twists them into a spiral shape to make them firmer. Seeing that we have doubts, Pan pulls out a cloth and asks me to grab one end of it, then twists the other end into a spiral as if spinning yarn. At this point the towel becomes denser and more solid, demonstrating the importance of this step.
“Handmade noodles can’t be finished in just one go. You have to work slowly, and a given action might have to be repeated ten or 20 times,” explains Pan Huijuan, Pan Jianzhong’s younger sister.
Making Fuzhou youmian is a complex process in which many rare and antiquated terms are used. Today you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of businesses still following the old ways of making vermicelli. Pan says: “Your photographer is recording history here.” He homeschooled his son with the intention of passing along this precious intangible cultural heritage, of which few people today still have a practical mastery.
Transformed into countless threads
Lengths of dough as thick as a person’s arm are gradually rolled and twisted into a shape as thick as a finger, and laid down into layered coils, after which comes one of the highlights of the show: “hanging” the noodles.
Pan Jianzhong asks his elderly father, Pan Shunlong, to demonstrate. Moving his body quickly and rhythmically, the old gentleman deftly winds a string of noodle dough onto two projecting metal tubes in a continuous figure-of-eight movement, twirling and rolling the dough as he goes. The speed and dexterity with which he accomplishes this almost magical feat are the result of over 60 years of professional experience.
After this process is complete, the noodles are hung in a cabinet to rest for four to five hours. However, during this time they have to be taken out of the cabinet to be pulled, stretching them to 70–80 centimeters in length, as this shortens the needed rest period. Without this step, the dough would need to rest for seven to eight hours, explains Pan Huijuan.
Next comes the showstopper: stretching the noodles. Clenching the ends of the metal tubes between the fingers of both hands, Pan Jianzhong takes two steps backwards and pulls on the dough with the strength of his whole body to make the noodles longer. It is not enough to stretch the noodles once—they are pulled multiple times until they reach three to four meters in length, and become much thinner. While stretching the noodles Pan shakes them up and down, creating the appearance of crashing white waves.
Next comes the drying process, which is performed both in an indoor drying room and outside in the sun. For this the metal tubes at the two ends of each skein of noodles are inserted into holes in a wooden framework, pulling the filament-like noodles tight like the string of a bow. In days gone by the equipment for indoor drying was poor, so one could only make noodles when the weather was good enough to dry them outside. Today the drying room has electric fans and radiant heaters, and the noodles are first half-dried indoors to fix their shape and then taken out to bathe in the sunlight.
As Pan Jianzhong demonstrates the noodle-making process to us, he explains that throughout the morning he also has to keep one eye on the weather. If the temperature or humidity changes, he must decide which processes must be moved indoors and which have to be hurried along. This is because the noodle dough is affected by temperature and humidity, and if one is not careful the dough will dry out, crack, or break, affecting the quality of the finished product and potentially wasting a whole morning’s work. “Everything we think about is related to how we can make the best-tasting noodles,” says Pan with a smile.
Pan has also created a DIY activity for this intriguing noodle-making process. Often foreign visitors can be seen rolling up their sleeves to personally experience the feeling of kneading the dough and the rhythm of stretching the noodles, making for a highly memorable cultural interaction.
Beigang’s noodles with raw egg
In Beigang, Yunlin County, locals have preserved a relatively original white misua format. We visit the Ah Feng Vermicelli in Thickened Soup shop, located next to Chaotian Temple, which has been in business for more than 60 years. Owner Ye Chengfeng (Ah Feng) succeeded to the craftsmanship and reputation his mother had built up, and has gone from being a street vendor in front of the temple to having his own storefront.
He says that he gets up at 3 a.m. to make his bone-based soup stock, and after the vermicelli are added to the pot they must be cooked for more than an hour so that they can gradually absorb the flavor of the stock.
What separates Ah Feng from other sellers of mianxianhu is his use of eggs. After steaming and dicing egg whites, he puts them in a pot and slowly braises them. They bring a savory taste to his food.
What about the egg yolks? Ah Feng’s son, wielding a ladle with a practiced hand, places a single raw egg yolk into the bottom of a bowl, then adds a scoop of boiling misua and soup from the main pot. With a smaller ladle, he stirs the yolk and noodles until they are evenly mixed and the mianxianhu turns a pale yellow. Then he sprinkles on minced pork, diced egg white, and a few teaspoons of marinade, and serves the finished dish to the customer. Ah Feng says: “In all of Taiwan, you can find this way of preparing misua only in Beigang. In days gone by, when people were less prosperous, even one egg was a precious source of nutrition.”
Ah Feng rolls up his sleeves to make pan-fried misua for us. From the main pot he scoops out some semi-cooked misua and fries them up in a pan with sesame oil and shredded ginger, producing a lovely fragrance. He sets the pan aside to cool before removing the noodles. The layer of vermicelli placed in the pan should not be too thick, and the noodles must be cooked until they are reddish brown and have a slightly crispy mouthfeel. Then he adds one egg. His work of art is finished, but it tastes even better if you sprinkle some granulated sugar on top.
Clues to understanding Taiwan
Chen Ching-yi traveled around various places in Taiwan, Fujian, Guangdong, and Malaysia to write her book Oh! So That’s Taiwanese Flavor! She devotes a whole chapter to mianxianhu. Like a detective, she loves looking for clues in food: “Looking at these foods is like tracing history, as you can know from food what kind of people have lived in a place in the past.”
Among clues from vermicelli, Chen offers the following example: The “old wine vermicelli” that you can eat in Matsu, a place to which many people migrated from China’s Fuzhou region, includes nourishing ingredients eaten by women doing their month-long postpartum recuperation period and has the flavor of red yeast rice wine. Adding in Qinghong wine (a red-yeast glutenous rice wine) is a feature of Fuzhou dietary culture. When Chen visited Sibu in Malaysia, she also tasted the Fuzhou-influenced local specialty “red-wine chicken soup with vermicelli.” Sibu is a place where many immigrants from Fuzhou congregated, so naturally there is some similarity between the vermicelli served in the two places. Chen explains: “As one understands the stories behind these foods, one also comes to understand the people and oneself.” Taiwanese vermicelli contain clues to learn more about this island.
Vermicelli-type noodles have been carried from place to place in the wake of human migration. In Taiwan, they have retained their symbolic meaning of wishing for tranquility and wellbeing, avoiding calamity and escaping bad luck. Nonetheless, the creativity and hospitality of Taiwanese has led to misua being served with not only oysters and chitterlings, but a dazzling variety of ingredients including neritic squid, Spanish mackerel, shrimp, pork knuckle, chicken testicles, and milkfish, as well as many different seasonings. Someone has even started a Facebook page dedicated to discussing the various styles of misua served in different places around Taiwan. Vermicelli have their own culture in Taiwan, so if you want to enjoy them, you had better come here!
