A-Gong’s Table | Cookbook Club

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I started my Taiwanese American Cookbook Club as a way to celebrate and explore all of the Taiwanese American cookbooks that have come out in the last few years. It’s a special potluck series wherein all attendees make and bring a dish from the featured cookbook. 

Our fourth cookbook club featured the brand new release, A-Gong’s Table by George Lee. George was born and raised in Taiwan but has also spent time in Berkeley, California, and received his culinary training at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. He brings a very personal and heartfelt view into Taiwanese food for the English-speaking audience, and his cookbook is entirely vegan!

I chose the Plum Pickled Cherry Tomatoes for my recipe. I’ve never had this dish elsewhere, but since I love sour plum flavors, it sounded like a dish I would definitely like. First though, I had to figure out what plums to use. I was looking for the very dried, very sour plums that I remember from my childhood, but I didn’t find those. Instead, there were two nearly identical-looking packages of dried plums at Ranch 99, but one was purple and one was blue. I called my mom to try to figure out the difference, but she didn’t really know either. I bought both to find out. The purple one has a pit and is shinier, while the blue one has no pit and looks like it has more ingredients mixed in with it. Both taste good! I think I’d use the purple kind in the future, since the pit holds up better structurally in the pickling process.

Plums plus rock sugar go in with some water to make the pickling juice. After cooling, some lemon juice goes in too. Meanwhile, I blanched and peeled a bunch of cute little cherry tomatoes. Fun little globes!

Combine the naked tomatoes and the plum juice, and leave it in the fridge for two days! I also diluted and drank the extra plum juice, which was excellent. This whole dish came out amazingly, even better than expected, and I would 100% do it again.

Alex chose the Three Cup Lion’s Mane Mushrooms, which is the vegan take on Three Cup Chicken. George uses dried lions mane mushrooms in his cooking (I assume it’s easier to find and keep in Taiwan) but thanks to Far West Fungi at the Ferry Building, we can easily buy fresh mushrooms of all kinds here in San Francisco. It is, however, quite expensive. We would make this dish with oyster mushrooms if we did it again.

Our beautiful lions mane, which looks kind of like cauliflower! I also learned that it’s ‘monkey’s head mushroom’ in Mandarin.

The “three cups” refers to soy sauce, sesame oil, and rice wine. And the dish is always topped with basil. Meanwhile, here I am loading up my whole cart of supplies for cookbook club.

 

Here is a look at my growing Taiwanese cookbook collection. Thank you also to Lillian of Yun Hai for providing a coupon code for our participants to buy a signed copy of A-Gong’s Table and many of the other cookbooks!

What a spread!

Fried Taro Balls by Caroline and Saimon; Preserved Radish Omelette (modified to not be vegan) and Preserved Greens and Bean Curd by Acer; Plum Pickled Cherry Tomatoes by me.

Three Cup Lion’s Mane Mushrooms by Alex; Tomato and Cauliflower Stir Fry by Linette; Mung Bean Soup with Pearl Barley by Christine; Braised Bamboo Shoots by Lillian.

Lotus Root Soup by Tinya; Eggplant with Basil, Peanut and Rice Milk, and Braised “Pork” Over Rice by Lillian and Gee Wey.

 

Mee Sua by David; Loofah Stir-Fried with Ginger by Jaren; Twrl Milk Tea (also vegan!) provided by Olivia; and a sampler plate of most of the dishes!

Thank you everyone for the excellent turnout, wonderful conversations, and delicious meal!

Let’s do it again soon! Message me directly if you’re interested in joining a future  Taiwanese American Cookbook Club.

Anna Wu is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. She compulsively documents and blogs all of her daily adventures. Follow her on instagram and view more of her professional work at annawu.com.


Taiwanese American Cookbook Club

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