日曬: Consider the Sun

sun-dried cabbage, end of season sale, and last chance before a Tatung price hike

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.

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Today, we’re introducing a new version of our popular High Mountain Dried Cabbage, but it’s much more than a swap off the bench. When we needed to find a new vendor, we lucked upon Mr. Chen 陳, a cabbage dryer with a passion. He personally oversees the sourcing of cabbage from small farmers in Central Taiwan, and uses a sun-drying method based on his past experience as a champion oolong tea producer. It’s truly superior.

Researching his methods took me on a trip through the sun-drying traditions of Taiwan, where the sun is used to preserve food, concentrate flavors, and fuel fermentation. Read on.

And now, good news and bad news. Good news first: To celebrate End of Heat 處暑, the current solar term (microseason), from now until 9/1, we’re putting our favorite products on sale for your fall larder stock-up. Take 10% off sale items with checkout code ENDOFHEAT, valid only through 9/1.

The bad news: we will be raising all prices on or before September 10th, to account for 20% tariffs. We’re not sure where this will land yet, but Tatung rice cookers in particular will see a price jump of at least 10%. If you’re considering them, or anything else, we encourage you to get them now before the price hike.

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Consider the sun.
A miasma of incandescent plasma? Yes.
Giver of life and god of all seasons? Yes.
Unsung hero in Taiwanese food? Also yes.

You can’t travel through rural, or even residential, areas of Taiwan without coming across some kind of sun-dried something. Mustard greens, mullet roe, noodles, shiitake mushrooms, squid, kelp, fruit, rice, tea, and even ai yu jelly seeds are seen spread out on racks and left to dry, slowly, in the dependable heat of our star.

I snapped this pic in Penghu in 2008, fascinated even then by the subtle art of the sun-dry. The bamboo frames are beautifully constructed, including what looks to be a repair made with a portion of pipe in the rightmost scaffold.

Sun-drying is a simple technology, positively ancient. It uses very little energy, making the most of what is already freely beamed to earth. And it requires very little equipment. Sometimes none at all, if you’re a resourceful auntie that doesn’t mind using the occasional railing or municipal bollard.

Debbie Carlos, friend of the shop and Taiwanese-American ceramicist, and Ama Uytingco, our Brand Marketing Manager, shared a few photos they took in Taiwan of what can only be called radical drying:

Napa cabbage, dried in the style of the guerrilla granny. Photo: Debbie Carlos, Taipei.

You know how skaters are always like “wow sick rail”? I think Taiwanese aunties might have that in common with them. Photo: Debbie Carlos, Fanlu Township, Alishan.

When life give you taro, dry the taro. Photo: Ama Uytingco, Pingxi, Taiwan.

No rail? No problem. Photo: Ama Uytingco, Taichung.

Orange you glad this wasn’t a banana? Photo: Ama Uytingco, Datong District, Taipei.

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Sun-drying is a common practice in many places in the world, but is much less common in industrialized societies, where lifestyles and cultural norms have changed. I’m constantly tempted to hang up sausages and orange peels in my shared backyard, but I know the sight of withering foods might be off-putting to the neighborhood, or would at least require some amount of explanation that I’m not really wanting to engage in (beyond the confines of this newsletter, that is).

The sun dries things slowly, making time for flavors to gather, intensify, and transform through enzymatic and non-enzymatic reactions. UV light from the sun is also anti-microbial and has a mild bleaching effect; this makes it good for hanging laundry but also preserving food.

Our Ai Yu Jelly Figs drying in the sun. Photo: Yun Hai Selection.

Sun-drying is fickle. Processors must work by hand and be very aware of the weather, moving ingredients into storage as soon as rain threatens. One guanmiao noodle maker, who dries his 麵 in the sun, says they have only two kinds of days: sunny days and rainy days. They work the sunny ones and the rainy ones are off.

Meinong Farmers’ Association drying White Jade Radishes in the sun in preparation for making the cured radish we offer. Photo: Meinong Farmers’ Association.

The sun features fully in many other traditional Taiwanese foods, like soy sauce, which isn't sun-dried, but sun-fermented. The brewers often refer to their soy sauce as “sun-brewed” because it’s so central to the process in their subtropical/tropical environment.

Here’s a charming video of Ozzy Hsieh, one of the brewers, smelling the soy sauce in their Xiluo brew yard to gauge it’s quality. Watch it to find out what it smells like:

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Sun-Dried Taiwanese Cabbage

Ok, solar digression (progression?) aside, I’m here today to talk about one of my favorite sun-dried ingredients: cabbage.

Eleven months ago, we launched Dried Cabbage 1.0: high mountain cabbage mixed with carrots and some light seasoning. This was a long-time favorite in our shop for its flavor and convenience. When we launched it online, we were surprised (pleased) by the outsized reaction to our little bag of dried leaves and roots.

Cabbage 2.0. Photo: Jasmine Huang.

Unfortunately, we quickly found ourselves in need of a new source, and though I was disappointed to lose the original product, I feel even more excited by its replacement: pure sun-dried cabbage, meticulously prepared under the close watch of a former oolong tea production master, mostly by hand, nothing added. The former product was delicious and convenient, but this one elevates dried cabbage to an art form.

In the same way that sun-dried tomatoes are revered as a transformed version of the perfect tomato, so too this cabbage. Through sun-drying, the flavor is concentrated and enriched, and the texture gains a pleasant chew.

Taiwanese cabbage growing on one of the mountain farms that supplies our dryer.

Dried cabbage is actually not a well-known product in Taiwan, especially compared to fermented forms of the vegetable. It’s around, but most likely homemade by farmers and aunties in rural communities who are hyper tuned into food preservation, always pickling and drying everything.

But, the cabbage dryer we work with, the amazing Mr. Chen 陳, hopes to popularize it by providing a superior product, as good as those made at home by A-ma.

I’ll tell you how to use it (a cinch), but first some details on how this dried cabbage is produced, with a big nod to oolong tea.

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How It’s Made

Cabbage, and in fact most leafy vegetables, aren’t difficult to dry, but processors might employ salt to speed up moisture removal. The end product is good, but Mr. Chen wanted to preserve as much flavor, texture, and color without the changes that come with salting. He needed to find another way to wick the moisture out relatively quickly, replacing the function of the salt. This required several innovations unique to his production, inspired by his tea-making background.

I’m a Cabbage Patch Kid at heart.

First, sliced cabbage leaves are spread out on cloth placed on the ground for an initial sun-withering. Then (and here’s where the oolong tea background comes in), they’re all picked back up and placed into large cloth bags, which are rolled around, kneaded, and tightened to express any remaining moisture and wick it away.

The bag kneading method used in oolong tea production. Source: Yoshan Tea.

This technique, known as 團揉 tuán róu (translation: “roll-kneading”) is traditionally used for producing ball-shaped oolong teas, like Dong Ding. The rolling of the oolong leaves helps encourage and control the oxidation process. For the cabbage, the primary function is to remove moisture, quickly. You’ll see our dried cabbage leaves have a slight curve to them from this process.

Each leaf a gem.

After this kneading step, which is sometimes repeated, the cabbage is laid out to dry in the sun again. It’s manually checked for “doneness," and when the texture reaches a certain point—half crunchy, half soft—it’s tumbled in bamboo tubes (also similar to oolong tea), to continue wicking out the moisture. Then, it’s dried one last time for a couple hours more.

The final step is to gather the leaves, sift them, clean them, and pack them into linen sacks for safekeeping. Then, they’re put into cold storage and packed to order for us.

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How To Use

All this careful preparation and labor results in a product that is incredibly easy to use, truly instant. I’m eating it raw, like chips out of the bag, as I type. Mostly out of nervousness, but I’m grateful for the healthy and delicious stress snack.

Cabbage reconstituted. Photo: Jasmine Huang.

In all seriousness though, we recommend using it in the following ways, for both convenience and cruciferous complexity:

• Soak it in hot water for a few minutes, then drain, squeeze, and add to any stir fry (reserve the cabbage soaking water to make rice or use as cabbage stock).

• Add a handful of dried leaves into any soup or braise to add instant brassica.

• Sprinkle it into hot oil at the beginning of a stir fry, with the aromatics, to flavor the oil. It will caramelize and soften a little bit, but retain a bit of a chew.

• Add a handful into the rice cooker with rice to make a nutritious cabbage “terrazzo” steamed rice.

• Add soaked cabbage that’s been wrung dry into dumpling fillings for classic pork and cabbage dumplings.

We’ve also developed a couple (amazing) recipes for easy weeknight dinners and decadent weekends. As follows:

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Sun-Dried Cabbage Stock

This is a method to yield an instant no-cook cabbage stock. That’s right, an all-natural, vegetarian, flavorful, complex cabbage stock in a moment. Honestly, we’re essentially salting the soaking water and enjoying it hot. Shockingly simple, shockingly humble, and shockingly good.

A tiny bowl of divine cabbage water.

The process is simple: pour boiling water over a handful of leaves, let it steep for five minutes, salt (use our tart algae salt if you can), and sip. If you want to go further, garnish with a pinch of chopped scallions, a dash of white pepper, and a drizzle of sesame oil.

Just to show how good this is, my five and seven year olds devoured a big batch when I was recipe testing and begged for more, complaining when I ran out. Cabbage and water, a parent's dream.

Photo: Jasmine Huang.

For your convenience, we’ve bundled the cabbage togther with our favorite algae salt, also made in Taiwan with the energy of the sun. It’s got a tart, cheek-puckering flavor due to the minerals from a beneficial algae that grows on the salt flats. I think it really dresses up this simple dish.

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Sun-Dried Cabbage Stock

serves 1

Ingredients

• 1/4 to 1/3 cup of dried cabbage leaves (1/3 cup will taste more sweet, and be more packed with vegetable)

• 1 cup of boiling water

• heaping 1/8 teaspoon of algae salt, or to taste

• sesame oil, scallions, white pepper as optional garnish

Instructions

1. put dried cabbage leaves into a medium-large soup bowl (it should comfortably hold one and a half cups of water)

2. pour one cup of boiling water over the leaves, and let sit for 5 minutes, while the dried cabbage unfurls

3. sprinkle with salt, mix lightly

4. garnish, if desired, and serve

You can multiply this recipe to serve as many as you like, or use it as a veggie stock for other dishes. If you’re making a larger volume, I’d recommend boiling the amount of water you want, turning off the heat, adding the cabbage in and covering it to steep. Then you can salt it to taste and serve it individually.

Thanks to Natya for the inspiration!

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Taiwanese Cabbage Rice

“Cabbage rice” doesn’t begin to evoke the majesty of this dish. For the uninitiated, the name might suggest soft, braised, mushy, and pale. No, no, no, and no. It’s hot, sticky, smokey, savory, sweet, caramelized, golden, and downright stick-to-your-ribs decadent.

A bowl of cabbage rice for lunch in my studio.

The concept is simple, you make a caramelized pork belly, shallot, mushroom, cabbage mixture with a soy paste glaze, and steam that with rice until it’s perfectly al dente. The oils and flavors from the pork and aromatics coat the rice, and the carrots and cabbage provide color, sweetness, and nutrition to make it a complete meal. I really like to use slab bacon as a swap for pork belly, which gives the whole thing a kiss of smoke (and bacon is a bit easier to keep on hand in the fridge).

As fall rolls around (sob?), I love to have “pantry dishes” on hand—hearty meals that can be made from preserved, cured, or easy-to-store foods. Cabbage rice fits the bill, especially because our new sun-dried cabbage works so well in this recipe.

You can make great cabbage rice with this bundle and many other things, too. Photo: Jasmine Huang.

We’ve also put together a Cabbage Rice Bundle, so you can make this dish almost entirely from the larder, provided you have some bacon or pork belly in the fridge and an old carrot in the back of your veggie drawer. A few dried paper shrimp and a quantity of rice wine would be great too. Vegetarians could skip the pork and the shrimp and the whole dish gets even easier.

Find the recipe on our website:

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Thanks for your attention, and don’t forget about our End of Heat Sale (through 9/1) and the impending price hikes coming on or before September 10th. We really hate to raise the prices, but have no choice. We’ve waited as long as possible, and hope you’ll take advantage of this little grace period.

I’m really excited to experiment more with the sun-dried cabbage recipes! Next idea: Cabbage two ways, where I stir fry fresh cabbage with reconstituted cabbage and season it all with a heavy dose of garlic.

Wow sick rail,
Lisa Cheng Smith 鄭衍莉

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Written with editorial support by Amalissa Uytingco, Jasmine Huang, and Lillian Lin. 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.