Nutrition and the Night Market

I’ve got nowhere to go, just hang out on the street
My folks say I’ve got no ambition
At least I give a shit about the stuff I eat
Yeah, I care about nutrition!

“Nutrition” by Dead Milkmen

Those have traveled or resided in parts East–for the record, I am not among their number sadly–tell stories of the night markets of Asia. Some time near dusk, vendors congregate–perhaps in a purpose-built structure, a well-trafficked alley, the fringe of a busy street or simply on the most direct route between the bars and the nearest transit station. They hang bolts of cloth or finished clothing, fold blankets or towels or rugs all in a row, line up their watches and jewelry and electronics for display. They light their charcoal, heat the frying oil, chop the vegetables, peel the fruits for juicing. They ready themselves for the people they know will come

Local, expats, tourists… Everyone and anyone comes to the night market. The traveler, in need of provisions or simply curious to see what is available. The knowledgeable locals, driven by the need to find that one stand, that one deal. The reveler, reeling after a night of nibbles and booze, seeking a simple cup of noodles to cap off their night. Or simply the passer-by who smells a hundred different treats cooking and wanders in almost without conscious thought. On a busy night, the night markets teem with people, a confusing, chaotic polyglot babel, the banter of hundreds of hawkers colliding with the uncountable purposes of the horde.

There’s nothing like it around here, not really. Chicago has day markets like Maxwell Street Market, the various Swap-O-Rama locations, the Tianguis at the old Milk Pail in East Dundee or the Open Air Market in Robbins near me. They may be open once a week or several days a week; they may be chaotic in their own way; they may “cheat you fair.” But these markets take place in the light of day. There has in the past been an Argyle Night Market in the Little Vietnam area of Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood–it is currently on hold due to Covid-19 but may come back next year. Mindy and I encountered a street festival called “Charm City Night Market” while we were in Baltimore 2 years ago this month–it feels like a decade ago–and while we ate some delicious things there, it was nothing like descriptions I’ve heard of the night markets of Asia.

While the night markets of the West–what few there are–don’t compare to the night markets of Asia, the many, bustling night markets of Taiwan seem to stand above those of its East Asian neighbors. Among these, one stall operating in the night market that has grown around the Dianji Temple in Keelung offers a unique product that has captured the imagination of many of the temple’s visitors; the Nutritious Sandwich.

The sandwich consists of such nutritious elements as ham, tomato, cucumber, boiled eggs marinated in soy sauce, tea, and spices, and sweet eggy Taiwanese mayonnaise. Naturally, this healthful assembly of ingredients is presented in a long, narrow roll much like a hot dog bun. If, that is, hot dog buns were routinely dipped in egg wash and panko bread crumbs then deep-fried like a donut. For additional nutrition.

For people who actually do care about nutrition, that may sound somewhat unhealthy. For people who are on the fence about nutrition, that may sound both delicious and unhealthy. “Nutritious” in this case may be more accurately described as “highly caloric,” and calories are certainly part of nutrition. A healthy balance of proteins, carbohydrates, and fat with dietary fiber and good hydration levels may not be the immediate purpose of someone walking the night market, though. I know when I’m at a street food festival, my thoughts run more along these lines:

“Give me fried things to shove in my face”

Online culinary magazine The New Gastronome, published by the University of Gastronomic Sciences in northern Italy, provides a recipe for the Nutritious Sandwich in their writeup of the sandwich, saving me yet again from having to leave my house and actually travel somewhere interesting.

Sigh

The bread recipe describes splitting a dough that is 600 grams and change into 12 rolls. That makes these 50 grams each, which should be a good size for a hot dog bun–Ball Park’s website claims their buns are 46 grams. My buns though… They look nothing like hot dog buns. These dark footballs of doom look more like they’ll hatch some beast that kills a red-shirt crew member in the second act of a forgotten Star Trek episode. The bread inside though is light and airy, the crumb-flecked surface deeply browned by oil that was just a few degrees too hot

In addition to some extremely cheap ham cold cuts, I gathered the requisite ingredients–tomatoes from my garden, perhaps too good for this sandwich but impossible to pass up this time of year; thin slices of seedless cucumber; an attempt at a homemade Taiwan-style sweet mayonnaise that didn’t quite set up as thickly as I’d like but is passable; and some Chinese-style tea eggs.

A Digression: Tea Eggs

The scene: a Friday evening, browsing the shelves of a tea shop in Chicago’s Chinatown, texting my son Damian for advice on tea. To brew? No. To marinate eggs in. “Do you want something? We’re closing.”

“Yes, I’ll take…” I reached out and grabbed a shiny red box of tea, hoping it was right. “…this!”

It was not right. The tea shop upstairs was still open, though, and I found a nice Chinese black tea there called Keemun, sold in bulk from lidded containers. “How much do you need?” the shopkeeper asked. “Half a pound?”

“Sure,” I said. Half a pound was $40 worth of tea, far more than I was likely to use. But it smelled nice, and I have sons who drink a lot of tea. Someone will enjoy it.

Tea eggs are hard-boiled eggs that are then simmered, or sometimes simply marinated, in a solution of light and dark soy sauce, some subset of Chinese five spice–cinnamon, star anise, Sichuan peppercorn perhaps–and brewed black tea. The eggs I’ve seen more commonly associated with the Nutritious sandwiches served in Taiwan are uniformly dark in color. These marinated eggs are delicious. The more interesting looking variety of tea eggs though bear interesting spiderweb patterns caused by cracking the eggshells and allowing the marinade to only partially penetrate through those cracks.

It’s a slower process, but these eggs are both delicious and beautiful. They are aromatic, with elements of warm cinnamon and sweet anise, fruity and roasty notes from the tea and a floral, citrusy hint of Sichuan peppercorn. 24 hours in the marinade have allowed enough of the soy sauce through the cracks in the eggshells to magnify these flavors without overpowering them. They are spectacular, worthy of a post all their own.

Nutritious Sandwiches

To make the Nutritious Sandwich, I first added a substantial amount of the sweetened Taiwan-style mayonnaise, then inserted slices of cucumber, tomato, tea egg, and ham into a split open fried roll.

The mayonnaise is not easy to spot, hidden away under the rest of sandwich fillings as it is. It doesn’t look quite right squirted over the top though.

So let’s start over. First we fry up some new rolls, in slightly cooler oil.

We’ll split one open

Give it a… judicious amount of mayonnaise.

Add our vegetables

Then our ham and eggs

Behold, a Nutritious sandwich!

Again, my buns are both fatter and shorter than the Taiwan standard. The above photo features the sandwich on a salad plate which may not accurately convey scale. Here is the same sandwich held in my hand.

It’s a little dinky. But let’s not forget that that is 50 grams of breadcrumb-coated deep-fried bread there. It’s more nutritious than it looks. The crumb coating makes this bread crisp, with a soft interior that is still sturdy enough to soak up some mayonnaise and tomato juice without disintegrating. The ham in this sandwich is almost a non-presence in the face of the attention-grabbing bread and the quietly delicious tea eggs, to my mind the star of the show. That cucumber provides a nice, crisp, freshness to be sure, and the mayo and tomato are a fantastic combination as always. The tea eggs are where it’s at though.

I tried other combinations. One writeup mentioned egg salad as an ingredient in these sandwiches, so I made some from tea eggs, naturally, combined with the sweet mayonnaise and some hot Japanese mustard. It was good, along with some cucumber and lettuce and additional mayonnaise. The aromatics of the tea egg added an element to the egg salad that I’m not quite sure fit it, though the hot Japanese mustard was a good choice. I think I prefer the tea eggs on their own though.

I also tried the fried bread rolls with some rotisserie chicken breast, homemade bacon, and more fresh tomatoes from my garden along with the requisite lettuce and mayonnaise to make it a Club sandwich. (No middle slice of bread required!) This was a good sandwich, but wasted in this bread, which I think is kind of a gimmick.

The Nutritious sandwich is delicious, sure, and I do hope one day to make it to the Keelung Night Market and try the real thing. But it is also a street food, meant for small doses on special occasions, not meant for everyday sandwiching. I made a batch of these fried bread rolls and I don’t mean to make another. These are far better than the donut sandwiches we’ve tried in the past, but the main thing I will take away from this sandwich is that I need to be making tea eggs more often.