This is Yun Hai Taiwan Stories, a newsletter about Taiwanese food and culture by Lisa Cheng Smith 鄭衍莉, founder of Yun Hai. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, sign up here.
Today, I get to write about something I’m known to go on and on about: Taiwanese tomatoes! In Taiwan, tomatoes are very often treated as a fruit, enjoyed on dessert plates, and even in shaved ice shops. If you know me, you also know how much I hate the “fruit vs. vegetable” dichotomy, so there’s a bit of a rant (read: love letter to ambiguity) in here about that, too.
This week, we’re launching Yanshui dried tomatoes, which came to us as a windfall. Contrary to what you might expect, these are a lightly sweet treat and have little in common with the more familiar sun-dried variety, which I would never eat whole. They’re so good, we’re calling them “fruit snacks” in the office. And, yes, they are seasonal and quantities are limited.
As for the handsome guys, well, read on.
Once upon a time, my family and I went on an Alaska cruise with my aunts, uncles, and cousins for a Cheng Family Reunion. It was then that I realized my Aunt Judy was an expert cruise passenger, and a hilarious one. More than ten years later, so much of that trip is still encoded in my daily language and inside jokes.
One of my favorites: “drop point was good,” something she would say to compliment our bowling abilities (yes, there is bowling on cruise ships, which is counterintuitive given they’re always rocking side to side). She meant that even if the ball ended up in the gutter, it looked good at the moment it hit the lane (the so-called “drop point”). What an encouraging concept—I’m constantly telling myself that my metaphorical “drop point was good” in many of life’s most challenging moments. In other words, effort counts, even if things don’t go exactly your way.
Another originates from her description of one of the cruise social coordinators (whose job is to dance the Macarena with you the very moment the ship casts off) as a “hank, youngsome” guy. She meant “young, handsome,” but no matter. An attractive man has come to be known as a “regular Hank Youngsome” in our family, forevermore.
Which brings me to the actual topic of this newsletter. Not men, but tomatoes: specifically, a hardy variety of cherry tomato that grows well in the salty, alkaline soil of Yanshui County in Tainan, nicknamed 帥哥番茄, or… “handsome guys.”
Much of the farmland in Yanshui was created by the silting up of the Yanshui Harbor, which created an alkaline, salty soil. Additionally, Yanshui is situated at the tail end of the local irrigation system, and doesn’t have as much access to freshwater for farming as other regions nearby. This is a difficult agricultural environment, but local farmers found that the Handsome Guy cherry tomato not only grows very well there, but also takes on a unique salty, sweet, and tart taste from the salinity of the soil.
Because of their hardiness, they are exceptionally drought-tolerant and don’t need greenhouses to grow well, which allowed for more farmers to plant them without significant investment. This article in Agriharvest Taiwan points out that most of these tomatoes are grown in open-field, laissez-faire cultivation 放任式的露天栽培, which means that the plants are grown outdoors without being trellised, staked, or trained.
They’re generally harvested from November through March. To deal with peak-season oversupply of these handsome guys, the Yanshuei Farmers’ Association began to dry them and even make candy from them. Because of their thicker skins, they are well suited to preservation, and the dried versions have become so popular locally that they sell out every year.
After trying one of their tomato candies (not the same as the dried tomato, and hopefully something we can offer at a future date), we were so impressed that we added ourselves to their waitlist. We luckily (and unexpectedly) received a small supply of the dried ones, and are excited to launch them today as a seasonal offering.
We hope to get more next year, but can’t guarantee it, so act now if salty-soil dried tomatoes that taste like candy are a must-have for you. They are for us—I’ve had to firewall my remaining photo samples from the rest of the office, lest they get eaten.
Dried “Handsome Guy” Tomatoes
If you weren’t convinced that tomatoes are also fruits, you will be after having one of these dried tomatoes by the Yanshuei Farmers’ Association 鹽水區農會. The dried version has a snappy skin that gives way to a tender and sweet interior. It’s lightly salty, surprisingly sweet, and zingy. Texturally, think of a raisin meeting a medjool date.
The process for making these begins with ripe handsome guy tomatoes. After picking them by hand, farmers wash them, then preserve them using minimal sugar and salt. The sugar is used primarily as a natural preservative, but it also helps to balance out the acidity of the fruit, resulting in a bite with complexity.
Each bag contains individual sachets packed with three to four dried tomatoes. They’re great to snack on while traveling, working, or any other time you need a sweet and sour pick-me-up.
Available in single bags or as a bundle of two.
Tomato Is a Fruit and This Is Not Mutually Exclusive as Far as It Also Being a Vegetable Goes
Ok, the whole “did you know the tomato is actually a fruit” thing that is often presented to children as a trivia item has always annoyed me, because yes, it is a fruit, in that it is the swollen ovary of a flower and contains seeds, but it is also a vegetable, which is a culinary distinction. This is true for a jalapeño, an eggplant, a cucumber, and a squash, too, but those are rarely referenced in the headline.
Instead of complaining, it might be more productive to point out that our language here is limited. Fruit has both a botanical (ripened ovary) and culinary (sweet) meaning, while vegetable is a term only used in the culinary context and encompasses many parts of the plant. In the US, tomatoes (a fruit, botanically) are generally used as a vegetable, and that’s not a rejection of their technical classification. Fruit and vegetable are not mutually exclusive!!!!! People!!!
In Taiwan, tomatoes are regarded as both a vegetable and a fruit, in the culinary sense. You’ll see it in beef noodle soup stocks, tomato egg stir-fry, brined in plum vinegar, and even as an ingredient in hot sauce. Heck, you can even find it in our Spicy Soy Paste.
It’s also encountered in sweet contexts: on fruit plates (see above), stuffed with plums, or dipped in crystallized sugar to make tomato tanghulu. One of my favorite ways to enjoy tomatoes, Tainan style, is dipping fresh slices in a sauce made of Taiwanese soy paste, ginger, licorice powder, plum powder, and brown sugar. It’s the ultimate uncategorizable fruit-vegetable continuum dish. Patty Lee of Lei made a salad for our recent Star Route Farm Fundraising Dinner based on our shared love of this snack.
And finally, another lovely example of the Taiwanese embracing of tomato as fruit-vegetable: tomato shaved ice, made with pickled tomatoes, plums, and brown sugar. This is on my list for my next trip, available at 杯子和糖 Cup and Sugar in Tainan.
Before I Go
Taiwanese? by Eric Sze is now officially out! Eric, the chef and owner behind Wenwen and the now-closed 886, is a longtime friend of the shop, and we’re so excited for his contribution to Taiwanese and Taiwanese-American food discourse. Aptly named, the book takes the stance that the answer to the oft-asked question, “what is Taiwanese food,” may be to question your assumptions and not worry too much about definitions. You can also read the newsletter I wrote about it here.
Kuai Kuai Seaweed is back in stock online and in-store! This limited-edition flavor is made using two kinds of seaweed, cultivated off the coast of Hualien: sea cabbage (aka green laver) and sea lettuce. It’s savory, marine, and toasty, with a crisp and airy texture.
We have some Dried Pearl Guava that is reaching its best-before date in December, so we’ve decided to put it on sale. Please help us move through our surplus stock and reduce food waste, too.
Stay tuned for so many more fun things, including brand new sparkling tea, a whole new line of ceramics, the upcoming release of our 2027 lunisolar almanac, and two more episodes of Cooking With Steam.
a regular Hank Youngsome,
Lisa Cheng Smith 鄭衍莉
Written with editorial support by Amalissa Uytingco, Jasmine Huang, Lillian Lin, and Natya Regensburger. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with friends and subscribe if you haven’t already. I email once a month, sometimes more, sometimes less. For more Taiwanese food, head to yunhai.shop, follow us on instagram and twitter, or view the newsletter archives.
臺灣味: Taiwanese? A Cookbook by Eric Sze
Out now! Proud to be pictured eating Beef Noodle Soup with my pals.
