What it is
A clear soup of milkfish (虱目魚) with thick rice noodles (粗米粉). The usual order is belly-and-paste soup (虱目魚肚漿米粉湯): skin-on strips of milkfish in a thin starchy coat, plus a generous helping of fish paste. The noodles are chunky and springy and soak up the light, sweet broth. Rice can replace the noodles.
Where it came from
Milkfish is the most popular fish in Taiwanese cooking and, after tilapia, the island's biggest farmed fish. Ponds line the southwest coast from Yunlin to Pingtung, with Chiayi, Tainan and Kaohsiung farming the most.
Dutch records from the 1640s mention fish ponds around Madou, in present-day Tainan, and a Qing county gazetteer of 1717 lists milkfish among pond fish. A common story credits the Dutch with bringing the fish over. Weng Jia-yin (翁佳音) and Tsao Ming-tsung (曹銘宗), who write on Taiwan's food history, disagree: wild milkfish already lived in local waters, and farming it in Dutch times does not prove the Dutch introduced it. The name is disputed too. In one legend Koxinga (鄭成功) asks in Hokkien what fish he is eating, and the question is taken as its name. Other theories trace the word to Spanish, Siraya or Taiwanese.
The fish is full of fine bones, so southern farmers often send it to plants for deboning, and the fatty belly is sold as cheap everyday food. In Kaohsiung's Yancheng district, stalls have served it with rice noodles for about 60 years.
How it is made
The belly is cut into thick strips with the skin left on and dipped in a thin starch batter, which keeps it smooth and slightly chewy in the soup. Fish paste goes into the bowl as well. The rice noodles are a coarse kind with a different bite from the rice noodles of central Taiwan. Ah Zhong (阿忠米粉湯) in Kaohsiung simmers its stock from pork bones, ribs, chicken bones and fish over a high flame.
How to eat it
This is breakfast and early lunch: Kaohsiung stalls open early in the morning and close by early afternoon. Regulars mix the soy sauce and wasabi on the table into a sweet, slightly sharp dip for the fish, though it is worth tasting it plain first. Common sides are fried burdock fish cake (炸牛蒡), pan-fried fish intestine (煎魚腸) and braised pork rice.
Around Taiwan
- Tainan
- Tainan farms more milkfish than anywhere else in Taiwan. Its milkfish breakfasts lean towards belly and skin soups, often eaten with fried dough sticks.
- Kaohsiung
- Two long-running stalls in Yancheng (鹽埕) are known for it: one in the Dagouding (大溝頂) covered market and Ah Zhong on Xinle Street, both around 60 years old. Ah Zhong started with milkfish and later added blanched squid at a customer's suggestion.
