38. Hot pot 打邊爐 for Presto Pasta Night #52

I joined Presto Pasta Night recently and have enjoyed myself so much, reading the posts and recipes of other pasta-loving bloggers and playing PPN. Thank you so much, Ruth!

In honour of this special occasion, I am submitting a hot-pot dinner.


Hot pot dinners are communal meals best eaten on cold days. A group gathers around the table with a pot of simmering soup in the centre and enjoy themselves cooking their own dinner. It is slow food. It would be difficult to rush through a hot pot dinner.

The only work needed is to gather the ingredients together and arrange it nicely on the table.

The diners do the work of cooking their own meal. It can be as simple or as elaborate as you please. It is nice to have the special equipment, gas heaters, divided pots, etc. but it is not necessary. An electric skillet works fine though it is a bit shallow. I am using an electric hot plate and a saute pan.

A round dining table is ideal and four or six people sharing a hot pot is the best, in my view.

Here is what you need:

Equipment:

An electric pot or skillet or a hot-plate and a pot
Slotted spoons
Ladle
Long chopsticks
If you have sufficient, everyone could have individual strainers or slotted spoons.
Soup bowls and soup spoons. The flat soup plates are great.
Wooden or bamboo chopsticks to eat the food. Avoid using plastic chopsticks, they bend in the hot soup.

Ingredients:

Most supermarkets carry the ingredients needed. Some Asian supermarkets have a kit for hot pot assembled. You don't need to go from one department to another in the store.

Soup stock - can be homemade vegetable, pork or chicken broth. A large can of chicken broth is fine. There are divided pots for two stocks; clear soup and hot spicy soup. I don't bother with this. I have the plain clear stock and let the diners add as much spicy sauce as they like to flavour their soup. When we had a vegetarian guest, we had two hot pots on the table - I used vegetable stock in a fondue pot for the vegetarian, who helped herself to the non-meat items.

The following is a suggestion. Items and amounts are your choice. If you only want spinach, by all means just have spinach. The ingredients are usually raw.

An assortment of vegetables: Napa cabbage, bok choy, shitake mushrooms, white mushrooms, brocolli, spinach, water cress, carrots, snow peas, sugar snap peas, green beans and bean sprouts. Vegetables should be cut or sliced into small pieces to be cooked quickly. Ginger and green onion are cut into shreds for garnish.


An assortment of sliced meat: Beef, lamb, chicken, pork. Frozen, thinly sliced meat for hot pots are available in Asian markets.

An assortment of seafood: Shrimps, scallops, clams, calamari, sliced fish, fried fish/shrimp balls

No need to thaw the frozen food. Just put them on plates around the hot pot when you start boiling the soup.

An assortment of pasta: Mung bean vermicelli (pre-softened in water and drained), udon, instant noodles, wonton or dumplings. I cook the wonton or dumplings separately on the range as they take too long to cook at the table.

Miscellaneous items: Eggs, tofu, fried tofu skin


Sauces: Hot chilli sauce, Satay sauce, XO sauce, soy sauce mixed with sesame oil, wasabi, anything you like.


Arrangements of food:

Put the meat, fish and sauces in individual plates and arrange them around the hot pot. I put all the vegetables together in one large platter and put it on the sideboard. Noodles are eaten last and are on the sideboard.

Start about 10 minutes before dinner and plug in the hot plate. Be careful where the electric cords are put so no one trips over them. Fill the hot pot with soup stock, add some ginger, scallions and pepper to flavour the soup. Cover the pot and turn on the element.

When the soup boils, invite the people to table.


There are different methods to eat this. Some cook their food individually, whereas we do it for everyone putting in one or two items at a time and they help themselves to the food. This saves having to pass plates of food around. The food is cooked briefly. The udon is put into the hot soup for a minute or two. The instant noodles are put directly into the soup to soften and cook.

For the eggs, crack the eggs and drop them into the hot soup to poach.

To eat: Take some cooked meat, vegetables and put on your soup bowl/plate. Add sauce and enjoy. Eat some noodles with soup. Continue until everything is eaten up. You may have to add more liquid to the pot. Boiling water is fine as there is enough flavouring in the pot.


Tonight we are having plates of :

Sliced steak, shrimps, mussels, fried fish balls, napa cabbage, spinach, king mushrooms, broccoli, carrots, mung bean vermicelli, won tons, udon, instant noodles and eggs

I promise you a very enjoyable evening of slow food with your friends and family! The room will become hot and steamy so I suggest you dress like an onion, in layers.

We only had hot pot on cold winter days in Hong Kong but now the restaurants serve it all year round. There are huge, hot pot restaurants and the air conditioning is kept at arctic temperature. I had a strange experience eating hot pot in HK in July - My body was in two temperature zones; tropical in front and artic in the back!