Aboriginal Food – Unity Magazine

The March April issue of Uni Air’s magazine has an article about Aboriginal food using ten of my photos.Banana heart on my land in Namasia.This was taken at my nephew-in-laws wedding. A large number of pigs (ten I think) were given as a dowry. The men cut them up and the women cook them. What is not eaten at the wedding is given to family members. It is a way for families to get together and know each other. I did the same at my wedding.Steven Crook (the article’s writer) mentions six great restaurants to sample some authentic aboriginal food. He also tells of some more exotic foods eaten by Taiwan’s Aboriginals like raw pickled flying squirrel intestines (not my favorite) and snared game that has begun to rot, cooked in a special ginger sauce (yum! But my wife always warns me not to eat too much of this). Above is my personal favorite. freshly killed boar intestines boiled with a bit of salt. Don’t let the look put you off, it is really, really good.Here it is being served. This wedding was in the bride’s home of Hualien and the groom was from Namasia. It seemed to me that the Bunun families were trying to ‘out-Bunun’ each other. I’d never seen half the customs I saw here, nor a wedding meal served off the floor; but when the bride’s family served from the ground, the groom’s family acted like they always ate wedding banquets off the floor. “It’s the way Bunun always do it”, I was told — although I’ve never seen it since.For another post with photos of Aboriginal food go here