Page 49 - Hualien Sustainable Living Bilingual Magazine

Hualien Issue For Zhu Jin-Lang, the“wetland environment with flowing springs”and“indigenous food culture”are the two most important features of Fata’an. He knows how to best prepare the wild vegetables used by the indigenous peoples and offers new and innovative dishes each season. Through collaboration with the Hualien District Agricultural Research and Extension Station, he researched cultivation methods for various wild vegetables, and noted that there are many indigenous plants on the farm. For example, the gac melon, which has become better known in recent years, can be pressed into juice, while the flowers and leaves are also edible, and even the unripe fruits can be simmered with chicken and pork ribs to make a soup. The slightly bitter lilac tasselflower can be eaten after blanching, and the watercress grown in Fudeng Creek has a light mustard flavor. There are many vegetables around the wetland that make tasty ingredients for a stone hotpot, such as black nightshade, prunella, green amaranth, staghorn fern, Chinese onion, potato onion, Surinum purslane, pigeon pea, winged bean, and cowpea.“The restaurant’s vegetable dishes are made from wild vegetables picked in the vicinity, which means‘field-to-table’can be achieved just by walking a few steps. The ingredients are washed and then cooked with minimal seasoning; this allows diners to enjoy the most natural and healthy flavors.”When it comes to the land, farmers are committed to not over-cultivating and not using pesticides. Instead, they apply the concepts of organic farming to give the earth a chance to recover between plantings. For processed products, they also focus on the plants’own characteristics, such as pigeon pea fermented bean curd or pigeon pea miso, or incorporate the region’s abundant rice crops to develop red rice puff snacks, pigeon pea rice puff snacks, and other snacks and souvenirs with local characteristics. 44