Taiwan Ho! Forums

I'll start with cornstarch, ie cornflour....and canned clamjuice.

oh, and zucchini! I've seen it before in the Japanese supermarkets in Taipei...and will be going into the big smoke this weekend <nudgenudge>.

To entice you, I can supply you with an English speaking foodstuff import company in Taipei that has weekly flights from France and Belgium. I get great stuff from them, most recently French oysters. They do small orders...which is bitchin!

They have real cheese, salami, ham, veggies, salmon...etc...good stuff.

Personally I use potato flour (which they sell in any 7-11) instead of cornflour. If you're making sauces, gravy, etc the result has a slightly different texture than you get with cornflour but perfectly acceptable. Depends what you're using it for I suppose.

As for clam juice ... WTF? Is there really such a thing? Please tell me it ain't so. Is this some awful, awful American invention (like pureed corn)? How about buying some clams and cooking them?

The corn flour is for a particular Mexican dish or two.

The clam juice, I guess, is concentrated. I suppose I could just boil a bunch of clams and eat them while I wait for the other dish to be done....

Well how about that ... I was just in Chuan Lian (the old government supermarket with the three-mountains logo on a blue-and-red striped background). There by the stock and spices was a little plastic bottle of clam juice. Actually, it said 'clam and chicken stock' on the label but it might substitute for what you want. Failing that, right next to it were clam-only stock cubes. You might have seen these already, since it's a ubiquitous supermarket, but just thought I'd mention it...

Oh ... the cornflour ... you don't mean 'corn flour', do you? As in masa harina? I'm 99% certain I've seen polenta flour in Jason's (basement of Taipei 101) which might do the job.

Niice. Thanks. Yes, it's masa harina. And good thing I checked in today as I'll be at 101 tomorrow and will def go down to jason's to look for the polenta flour.

Thanks a bunch!