Hakka Stir-Fry 客家小炒

Where it comes from

The dish grew out of offerings. The Taoyuan City Government explains that Hakka families, after many migrations and hard living, kept stores of food and wasted nothing. The fish among the three sacrificial meats (三牲) offered to the gods was replaced by stored dried squid. After the offering, mothers turned the pork belly, squid and tofu into a new dish for the family. HakkaNews ties it to the offerings made on the first and fifteenth of the lunar month to the earth god Bogong (伯公) and to the ancestors. The ingredients are broadly the same across regions, though some cooks leave out the celery.

How it is made

The dried squid is soaked soft and cut into strips, and the pork belly and tofu are sliced. In the Taoyuan recipe the pork is fried over medium heat until golden, garlic and the white parts of the spring onion go in, then the tofu, squid, chilli and celery with soy sauce, rice wine and white pepper, and it finishes over high heat. HakkaNews fries the pork, then the squid and tofu, slowly over low heat until lightly browned on both sides, to make them more fragrant and crisp.

A version recorded in Guishan (龜山), Taoyuan, from a 2015 book on the district's military dependents' village cooking and archived by the city in the National Cultural Memory Bank (國家文化記憶庫), cuts everything into fine shreds and adds preserved radish (菜脯) and carrot. It fries the tofu, pork, squid and radish in batches in plenty of oil until crisp, and seasons with bonito powder.