Let’s Lunch! High Tea with Taiwanese Sandwiches

When Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, author of A Tiger in the Kitchen, invited me to take join fellow bloggers in #LetsLunch, I was excited.

I was even more excited when I heard this month’s theme: High Tea.

Now, English tea time is not really part of my culinary tradition. Of course, my food memories include tea — the Chinese kind. Golden, aromatic oolong, usually poured out of a utilitarian ceramic pot alongside dinner .

As a young adult, I became enamored with English tea time and it’s accoutrements: the delicate bone china, the teacozies, and the dainty finger sandwiches. The idea of putting milk and sugar into tea seemed ludicrous when I had only known oolong and green brews, but once I was introduced to my favorite black tea, Earl Grey, adding milk and sugar made perfect sense.

I happened to admire some chintz (an all-0ver floral china pattern, as opposed to chintzy, meaning cheap or shoddy) tea cups while at an antique shop with my mother-in-law, who happens to be an antiques dealer, and the rest is history.

Here is my collection of tea cups. Over the years, I’ve accumulated many more — mostly as gifts. Space is limited in my house, so I’ve cycled through the cups as I’ve acquired new ones and grown tired of older patterns. While I love looking at my collection, I rarely actually use them.

As you can see, I am an equal opportunity tea cup collector, with European style china, as well as Japanese ceramic and Taiwanese terracotta tea sets.

Taiwan Meets England

Tea was introduced to England by way of China, right? But it seems like the Asian tea ceremonies and the British tea time have little in common anymore.

One connection I’ve always found curious are the square loaves of white bread sold in Taiwanese bakeries, such as Sheng Kee. They are referred to as English toast or Taiwan toast, and often made into triple decker sandwiches layered with ham, cucumber and egg. The crusts are trimmed off and the sandwiches are cut into triangles, resembling… tea sandwiches.

I described this sandwich to my Facebook friends and asked if anyone knew its origins. My Taiwanese friends and family were stumped. My cousin Lisa suggested that the triple decker “sandwich” might derive from the Mandarin term san ming zi, meaning three layers. But my British friend Jan, commented, “Sounds very English to me.”

While Taiwan has been under the colonial rule of the Portugese and the Dutch, the island has never been under the influence of the British Empire. And strangely, with Hong Kong’s long history under the crown, I’ve never seen this type of English sandwich in a Cantonese bakery.

So the mystery continues… Do you know anything about how the Taiwanese sandwich came about?

 

 

 Taiwanese Tea Sandwiches

In this variation of the Taiwanese sandwich, I’ve replaced the ham with shredded pork sung (also called pork floss, but I find that name unappetizing), a sweet type of dried pork commonly eaten with rice or bread. I’ve also used Sheng Kee’s wheat and bran version of the Taiwan toast.

Ingredients:

• 6 slices Taiwan toast, or other fine grained white bread with the crusts trimmed
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 4″ section of English cucumber, thinly sliced
• 1 green onion, thinly sliced
• 2 TBS pork sung
• 2 TBS mayonnaise, preferably Kewpie

 Note: Don’t forget to check out the other offerings and check the #LetsLunch tag at Twitter to see many more blogs.

Patrick’s Welsh Rarebit 

Cheryl’s Brown Sugar Shortbreads With Hawaiian Jam at Dreaming of Pots and Pans

Linda’s Singapore-Style Ginger Tea & Kaya (Coconut Jam) Toast at Spicebox Travels

Lisa’s Little Lemon Meringue Tarts at Monday Morning Cooking Club

Rebecca’s Millionaire’s Shortbread at Grongar Blog

Steff‘s Lemon-Lime Shortbread Cookies at The Kitchen Trials