Nori is very similar in taste and texture - possibly a little less extreme/more mellow. Its the same species of seaweed but prepared differently - isnt it dried instead of smushed?
Nori in Japan are dried, but used in soup here it's smashed. And Japanese export a lot of the dried nori to the neighboring country as packaged snacks. 海苔 is Nori and 紫菜 is wet not-dried nori.
A common food stand in Taiwan often looked like this and has some basic snacks
The chicken feet of duck's feet on the bottom right next of the green vegetable. (we called them 鳳爪- phoenix claws). The duck/chicken wings 雞/鴨翅 on the bottom left. (soy-sourced not fried). On top of the wings in middle left are two kinds of intestines and stomachs 粉腸, 豬肚. On the top left in a roll are chicken/duck liver 雞肝, heart 雞心, and kidney 雞胗. Most of time there will be others like chicken/duck's ass 雞屁股 (I am not kidding, a triangle shape meat which is the tip of the ass, and it has a poetic name as "smell from 7 miles away" 七里香). Also due to possible grossness for some people, the head 雞/鴨頭 and neck 雞/鴨脖子 of the chicken/duck are common as well. (We have food stand called 東山鴨頭, who specialized in selling the duck's head and neck and other part of the duck).
In the middle the black block thing is the infamous Pig's blood cake 豬血糕. Sometimes it's made of chicken/duck blood 鴨血糕/雞血糕, and mixed with rice, and then waiting it to clot. Sometimes it doesn't add rice in it but just clotted-blood block 鴨血/雞血. It can be fried or just cooked with soy-sourced. And the round orange thing below the pig's blood cake is a kind of tempura 甜不辣 originally from Japan, but hardly like the original in shape and cooking. The dark small block on the right of the pig's blood cake is the dried tofu 豆干 (Also there are not-dried but iced tofu 凍豆腐). They have different sizes and are almost always the cheapest snacks in a food stand. And on top of the dried tofu, the yellow pieces are sour vegetable 酸菜, a lot like pickled cabbage, and are often free additive with a bag of snacks.
There are something missing in the picture, like 米腸 which is rice stuffed into pig's intestines, a little like sausage but in white colors. (The actual sausage as well). A kind of pork ball 貢丸 made of pork, starch and cuttlefish, and not like western meat ball it's very compact. Also the skin of chicken 雞皮, the ear of the pig 豬耳朵, the chicken crest 雞冠, the leg, the chest, and the egg of course. There are some not so unusual of varied kind of vegetables, mushrooms, maize and other soybean made snacks. (made into the form of other snacks, so people who are vegetarian can eat them.) And a kind of kelp (Kombu) as 海帶.
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Topic: Bizarre and/or Disgusting Foods (Read 20956 times)