Saturday night at the movies

My aunt has a "movie club" with a dozen or so friends, all architects and interior designers. They've been meeting for years, about once a month, for a movie and dinner.

Our host for the evening is L.C., is a German-trained architect. He lives outside the city on the mountain. He gutted two adjacent apartments and built a space that is all white, with lots of light and sparely furnished (eg there is no sofa).

He makes his own plum wine, delicate and not too sweet.








The movie is shown on a large projection screen that descends from the ceiling. It's a BBC documentary called "49 up" about a group of people in London, from different class backgrounds, whom the BBC filmed starting in 1964 when they were seven years old and then every seven years. An interesting longitudinal concept but the people were depressingly similar, all with rather narrow casts of minds and lives. After about 45 minutes, after the sixth or seventh person and with eight more to go, someone speaks the collective mind and stops the showing. Enough--on to dinner.

Dinner is pot luck with everyone bringing very special dishes. We start with bread made with brown lichee nuts from Kaohsiung, which is dense and sweet from the nuts. (This is not available in Taipei but the same baker does distribute other nut breads here. You have to order it in advance and then stand on line to pick it up when it comes in. )









Our host has made German-style pigs knuckles and sour kraut (photo above). My aunt has brought chicken with eggplant and tomato sauce. There is a big salad and a little one made with cucumber and hard boiled eggs, tossed with a sugar/vinegar dressing and topped with a crumbled chips that are made from an Indonesian root that has a slightly bitter taste (plates of bread and chips can be seen on the table in photo above right). Half-way through the meal we switch from red wine to plum wine.

Desserts include a cake from the Red Leaf bakery, very light (the purple frosting is made with taro, and is delicious); and little chocolate cakes that are caramelized on the outside, from the Boite de Bijou bakery. More red wine and plum wine. A very cosmopolitan evening.