Taiwan's mountain food delicacies

It was sunrise. Shrouded in mist and dabbed with 2,000-year-old cypress trees, the vast craggy range of Taiwan's Jade (Yushan) mountain – at 3,952m the highest peak in north-east Asia – lay before me like breakers in a stormy ocean. Much of the appeal of Alishan, the country's dramatic mountain region, lies in getting there – on a small steep-grade train that winds round the peak, passing banana trees, bamboo plantations and dense walls of firs. After dawn, I found myself drawn to a nearby cluster of food vendors. A woman with a rose-pink hat sat in front of a vat of "thousand-year eggs" a prized local delicacy – although "hundred-day eggs" would be a more accurate description of their preservation period. She opened one up and showed me how her lime-and-clay marinade turns the whites into brownish jelly and the yolks to radioactive green. "Try one?" she gestured with a wide grin. I'm with Dr Seuss on green eggs: "I do not like them here or there, I would not eat them anywhere." Least of all when they smell strongly of sulphur and some people say they're soaked in horse urine (untrue, but believable if you've ever smelled one). Even so, these less-than-sweet-smelling eggs are nothing compared with the island's most infamous dish: stinky tofu. It's said that westerners turn their noses up to it in the way people from the east react to blue cheese. But has anyone ever crossed the road to avoid a slab of Roquefort as I was forced to do at a Taipei night market a few days before? These acquired tastes aside, Taiwanese food is delicious, and one of its major draws. Alongside the indigenous specialities, you'll find a huge variety of regional Chinese cuisine and, in the capital at least, good Japanese, Thai and pan-Asian food. Advertisement Buzzing night markets, such as Taipei's Shilin, Huahsi or, if you can handle it, the carnivalesque Huaxi, aka Snake Alley, are a great place to start. They are also the places for picking up a nice pair of dungarees for your dog, or a Taiwanese massage. Today Fencihu, a small village in Alishan national park, draws tourists with its historic main street, winding alleys, wooden shops and backdrop of huge firs. I tried another local speciality here, one which workers in this once busy outpost for the logging industry, would pick up as they passed through on the railway – the traditional boxed lunch. These days the appeal of replicating the box (a mixture of meat and pickled veg) seems to lie in the novelty of the little, embossed tin-pot rather than the food itself. A more interesting Fencihu experience was wasabi coffee, a speciality at Old Master A-Kun's Noted Products Shop. The locally grown wasabi root, known for a piquancy that can be eye-watering, is surprisingly complementary in the highly sweetened coffee, giving it a notable, but not overwhelming, kick. The place is easy to find as the white-bearded owner, Lin Jing-kun, has plastered billboards of himself and his premises all around town. Another local delicacy was served by Uncle Love Jade (Bo Bo Ai Yu), who runs a small cafe just off Old Street, where he specialises in love jade, a refreshingly cold dessert made from jelly cubes infused with citrus, sold for 50p a bowl on his terrace, where guests sit on seats made from tree stumps, looking out over the tree-covered mountains.