Grilled Fish Cake Skewers 烤黑轮

Grilled Fish Cake Skewers (烤黑轮) are fish-paste cakes grilled over charcoal on bamboo skewers, a stall snack of Kaohsiung (高雄), Taiwan. In Taiwan, heilun (黑輪) is a local transliteration of the Japanese word oden, which arrived during Japanese rule, and it is also used for the fish-paste cake called tianbula (甜不辣). A Kaohsiung stallholder asked why people there like their heilun grilled could only say it was habit.

How it is made

At the Liao family stall (廖家黑輪) in Sanmin Market (三民市場), Sanmin District, which opened in 1963, the paste is a mix of three fish: milkfish (虱目魚), gouwei fish (狗尾魚) and billfish (旗魚). It is shaped into strips (黑輪條) or slices (黑輪片), sold plain or with black pepper, chilli or numbing mala seasoning. The cook turns the bamboo skewers on the charcoal grill and brushes on a house sauce made with Chinese medicinal herbs and sugar, until the cakes turn a charred reddish-gold.

Flavour and texture

A Mirror Media (鏡週刊) food columnist from Keelung (基隆) found the Liao slices, the cut Keelung calls tianbula, a little thinner than those of Keelung's well-known tianbula shop at Miaokou (廟口). They were charred on the outside with the sweetness of the fish paste coming through, and firm and chewy rather than soft; the sauce is salty-sweet.

How it is eaten

The grilled cakes share the charcoal with pig's-blood rice cake, sausages and glutinous rice sausages. At the Liao stall the grill stands at the front and a pot of simmered oden at the back, where diners ladle their own bowls of the clear broth and add spring onion.