We had hot pot for dinner tonight, just the two of us. In my home town, Hong Kong, there are restaurants specialise in hot pot, so it’s not just for winter nowadays. These restaurants have people queue up for a table at 9pm, it sure is very popular over there.
I love having hot pot in winter, especially with a group of friends, or even better, with my family when I go back to Hong Kong. The beauty of hot pot is that the host doesn’t need to cook anything, and we all have a good variety of food, all cook on the table. You would imagine it’s a popular choice for impromptu gatherings.
Every family does this differently, people tend to have different combination of food, and their own way of preparing their broth and sauces. We love seafood, so we usually have clams, oysters, crabs, prawns, sliced beef, tofu, dumplings, siitake and enoki mushrooms, and some seasonal veggies (we’d get Tong Ho if we’re lucky. Tong Ho is a very strong flavoured Asian vegetable that is absolutely delicious when cooked in a hot pot). And I make my broth with radish, chicken stock, and coriander. I like plain stock because at the end of the feast, the stock will become so full of flavour, there’s no need for a strong stock to start with.
See also sukiyaki and shabu-shabu.
//icecjan/ 