Studio Notes 13: Taiwan Canteen
and a recipe for hot and numbing wok-blistered cabbage
Hi, it’s Lisa Cheng Smith, founder of Yun Hai. I write Taiwan Stories, a free newsletter about Taiwanese food and culture. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, sign up here.
This is Studio Notes, a paid series within that newsletter. It’s an informal exploration of the things on my desk—cultural references, first-hand research, and archival material—all in relation to how we tell stories, create spaces, and design products at Yun Hai. Your paid subscription supports the free newsletter and our cooking show, Cooking With Steam.
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It’s been a summer full of cooking, a summer full of joy.
A summer full of one million dishes to do, and surplus ingredients, and deli containers, and herbs, herbs, herbs, and more herbs.
A summer of pop-ups, cooking show shoots, dinners with friends, camp food, and recipe development. I don’t think I’ve ever cooked more creatively or more frequently.
Taiwan Canteen 台灣食堂
In this week’s studio note (or this summer’s, as it were), I want to tell you about Taiwan Canteen 台灣食堂, an experimental pop-up series I kicked off last month, bringing together the here and the there. The “here” being whatever place or state of mind I’m in, and the “there” being Taiwan, and all the excitement to be found within that cuisine, of which I am a lifelong student.
This is a Yun Hai project, but also a bucket to capture concepts that don’t fit neatly into the traditional cooking we usually lean into. It honors all the ways we might cook at home: experimentally, improvisationally, with what’s on hand, what’s around, and what’s given to us. Opening up the ways I interpret Taiwanese cuisine allows me to incorporate more of what’s around me: readily available pastas instead of Asian noodles in a rural community, day old baguettes from local bakers, and all the produce bursting out of the ground in upstate New York.
Finally, the idea of the canteen 食堂 is distinct from the idea of a restaurant. It’s a casual, communal eating place that makes the most of whatever we have to nourish our people. It’s no frills. At the canteen, you bus your own table, maybe even have your own tissue pack for napkins.
Of course, the inspiration for this comes from around Taiwan. My moodboard:
If you’d like to be notified directly of Taiwan Canteen events by email or text, please sign up here for a casual ping. Otherwise, read on for a recap of the first two.
01 & 02 Cool Noodle
The first iterations of Taiwan Canteen happened across two Wednesdays—July 15th and August 5th—when I had the opportunity to cook lunch at Hamden General Store, a grocery store and farm kitchen in the Western Catskills (that’s the Great Western Catskills to you, buddy).
When crafting the menu, I thought all the way back to the very first pop-up I cooked, with my friend Michael. He made focaccia. I made Taiwanese cool noodle. We fabricated a sweet little cart out of 1x2s and trellises, played Teresa Teng on a crunchy little speaker, and hung paper lanterns up in Italian colors (red and green theme strong, even then).
I wanted to revisit this idea, concocted so long ago between friends. I thought about how Italian pasta was so often subbed in home kitchens of Asian immigrants for noodles. When Asian brands weren’t available, we got spaghetti…in sesame sauce. I was also reminded that during the pandemic, one of my favorite local restaurants here, Hollow, survived by making meal kits with restaurant-prepared sauces and packaged bucatini.
I mashed these memories up for Taiwan Canteen: Cool Noodle and came up with a menu equal parts Taiwanese and other stuff, utilizing the best of what local farms in the area had to offer.
Here’s what I made, across both dates:
Appetizers
Taiwanese Cucumber Panzanella
fermented black bean, green peppercorn
or
Taiwanese Cucumber Gazpacho
tahini, black sesame oil, green grapes
My homage to Taiwanese cucumber salad. I love this salad but I had to mix it up. In the panzanella, I soaked Solinsky’s excellent day-old baguettes in cucumber puree and exploded it with herbs and fermented black beans. In the gazpacho, I added sesame paste and green grapes instead of the traditional tomato. Muah muah muah.
Hot and Numbing Cabbage Slaw
su chili crisp, worcestershire sauce, sun-dried cabbage
or
Hot and Numbing Wok-Blistered Cabbage
su chili crisp, worcestershire sauce, hand torn leaves
Two versions of the same dish, with slight variation across the events. The first was a picnic slaw, bulked out with rehydrated dried cabbage for sweetness and texture. The second took on the character of fire, with blistered palm-sized cabbage leaves instead of the shreds, and more heat. This was a crowd favorite; a recipe for this follows at the end of the newsletter, for paid subscribers.
Main
Cold Sesame Peanut Bucatini
amber river soy sauce tomato jam, peanut sesame paste, and local herb(s)
A hard riff on Taiwanese Peanut Noodles, made with bucatini instead of the typical Taiwan-style noodles. I added a burst of tomato soy sauce jam (made by slow roasting local tomatoes with amber river soy sauce) as a nod to the Taiwanese love of soy and tomato together. Basil and shiso made an appearance; their leaves run amok all summer in the garden.
To make the bucatini work, I alkalized it by boiling the pasta in lye water, creating a yellow appearance and a springy texture that more accurately matches that of a Taiwanese cold noodle. This way, the sauce clings instead of being absorbed, and the pasta takes on the mild flavor of a pretzel.
Dessert
Kumquat Kirsch Oolong Jelly Bowl
black oolong, agar agar, condensed milk, cherries
or
Peach Iced Tea Jelly Bowl
black oolong, peach syrup, bitter almond milk
I’ve learned that relatively few people order dessert, but I refuse to stop making it, because jelly desserts are my favorite kind of food. For this pop-up, I incorporated in-season fruits (cherries, first, then peaches) into memories of my favorite iced tea beverages. I set double-brewed, sweetened oolong tea with agar agar or konnyaku starch into jelly, then dressed it with fruit syrups. To finish, I used a small amount of condensed milk or a house made bitter almond milk.
I love research and recipe development, but the best part of doing pop-ups like this is the opportunity to connect with others. I’m so grateful to the folks at Hamden General, Lucky Dog Organic (who literally gave me frisée out of the ground, day of), Berry Brook Farm, Hollow, Solinsky’s, Uplands, and Greentopia for all the wonderful ingredients and support. And thanks to Kento Igarashi, Jam Murray, Chris Roeleveld, and Rafael Roy for coming by to help out. And of course, I’m so grateful to everyone who attended and helped spread the word!
Upcoming Events
In today’s newsletter, I’m sharing my recipe for the Hot and Numbing Wok-Blistered Cabbage. But first, a quick rundown of upcoming Taiwan Canteen and Yun Hai events:
Grill Time: a Taiwan-inspired BBQ
Saturday, August 22nd, 1pm
Hudson Wilder
142 Plymouth St, Brooklyn, NY
I’m grateful to Hudson Wilder for inviting me to be a culinary resident for a one day Taiwan-inspired BBQ pop-up, featuring recipes from forthcoming episodes of Cooking With Steam. Ghost Month Taro Cakes and Mid-Autumn BBQ Tofu skewers, plus a few apps and desserts from my summer cooking at the canteen. It’s a vegetarian and vegan BBQ, so come one, come all!
Taiwanese Melon Stand w/ Natoora
Sunday, August 23rd, 12-3pm
Yun Hai Shop
170 Montrose Ave, Brooklyn, NY
We’re opening a one-day-only Taiwanese melon stand. We’ve teamed up with Natoora to bring you a taste of the Bonny Melon, a rare Taiwanese cultivar prized for its sweet-sour flavor and climate resilience. It’s the sour candy of the melon world. Cool off with freshly sliced Bonny Melons, sprinkled with Taiwanese plum powder; melon fen guo 粉粿 (sweet potato starch jelly, concocted by yours truly, just for the occasion), and whole peak-season fruits for sale.
Here at Yun Hai, we love to champion Taiwanese agriculture and traditional foods. Our interest isn’t only what’s happening in Taiwan, but how Taiwanese growers and agriculturalists make waves in our world. This melon is one of those ways.
Farm Dinner 2026
Sunday, August 29th, 4-10pm
benefitting Catskills Agrarian Alliance and Star Route Farm
with Chef Patty Lee and Wine Director Matt Turner of Lei
and musical guests BABAS and PEEPERS
852 County Hwy 40, Charlotteville, NY
I'm on the board of the Catskills Agrarian Alliance, a farmer-led agrarian non-profit, and I'm helping to organize the annual farm dinner (and contributing a few dishes to a phenomenal menu by our friends at Lei, too). I look forward to this dinner every year, connecting with our community and the land.
My god, it’s going to be an August to remember! Now onto the recipe.