Week #23 Chinese Hot Pot

Want to know how to put fondue to shame? Introduce Chinese hot pot!

Our friends, Grace and Bob, invited a group of us to their home to experience this fixture of Grace's childhood. As a Chinese-American, she says this was one of her favorite meals growing up, and she was eager to share the experience with the rest of us. Oh happy, lucky day!

We arrived to find four broths bubbling on the table in two divided pots: chicken, vegetable, shrimp and spicy fish. Plates scattered about the table contained raw beef, pork, scallops, salmon belly and shrimp, along with cubes of tofu, fish balls, shrimp balls and fish and tofu balls, several types of mushrooms and Chinese cabbage.

 In front of Himself is a plate of thinly sliced beef and pork. To his right is a platter of pot stickers and tofu.

 

Balls! The sculpted looking ones at the top are a combination of fish & tofu; the pink ones in the center are shrimp and the white ones at the bottom are fish.

 Enoki, boletus and shiitake mushrooms each have their own texture and add their distinctive flavors to the broth as well.

 With Chinese Hot Pot you select what you want to eat, drop it into the broth of your choice, pull it out when you think it's done and chow down. But after awhile you're not sure what you're fishing out of the broth or who dropped it in. That's just fine, though, because we all got plenty and it was all tasty. I did try to take care with the salmon belly, scallops and shrimp, to be sure they didn't overcook. I babysat them the best I could amidst the general confusion and fun that results from 10 people all simultaneously cooking and reaching and eating and talking around the table.

Oh, and yes, the oysters! I'm sorry I didn't shoot a close up of them (that's a hazard of having too much fun when you're trying to document something). Those were the biggest, most beautiful oysters I've ever seen in my life. When Grace walked in and set down the dishes of salmon belly and oysters, I knew we were truly amongst the rank of the elect.

  My bowl, with some pork, a fish and tofu ball, a scallop and a piece of tofu, along with a tangle of noodles fresh out of the broth. The bits of tomato and cilantro were already in the broth, as each is quite flavorful before the cooking begins.

 

 These are just a few of the dipping sauces and ingredients from which dipping sauces were made. All have different flavors and run the gamut of heat from tame to "I can't feel my lips!" But nothing disappointed.

The idea is that after eating all the meat, seafood and veggies, you throw noodles into the broth and have a bowl of soup and noodles to finish the meal. But here's the kicker, something Grace didn't tell us until we were too full to do anything about it: All the time we were tossing meat, and fish and veggies into the broth and cooking and eating, that broth was becoming so unbelievably rich and flavorful as to constitute some sort of drinkable ambrosia, barely legal for it to be in the possession of mere mortals. She says the best breakfast is a bowl of that super-rich broth with some noodles thrown in. It's certainly her kids' favorite.

So here we are, all happily making the family's breakfast without even knowing it. Was that the point, Grace? To invite over a group of people and feed them really well, just so you could get some exquisite broth out of the deal?! Okay, I guess that's a fair trade. But be advised, Girlfriend: If I ever see you at the store buying all this stuff, I'm showing up at your house the next morning, because I figure there's going to be a seriously good breakfast awaiting me!

 

Grace asked me to bring a Chinese dessert, laughing to herself because she knew full well that the Chinese don't eat dessert, not very often, anyway. But I had fun with it, recalling every Chinese buffet I'd ever seen. There's always fresh fruit, usually melon, and an almond gelatin, which my pal Mark claims is an abomination on account of the unnaturalness of gelatin that looks milky and tastes like almond. He objects to the mouth-feel, too. "I have texture issues," he once told me with a shudder. For authenticity, I even made it with agar agar, a seaweed-based gelatin that's popular amongst the vegan crowd. Everyone took a bite just to give it a try, or so as not to hurt my feelings, although I'd already assured them that my feelings wouldn't be hurt if they didn't eat it. A couple of people liked it okay. One person actually liked it well enough to carry some home with him for later. I probably won't make it again, but I'm glad to have tried it and to have had the experience of working with agar agar.

We feasted grandly, but after all that food we didn't feel stuffed or overindulged, because it was lean, healthy stuff. No reaching for the antacids afterward!

Himself and I are eager to do Chinese hot pot ourselves now. Grace said they stopped at 99 Ranch Market and bought all the meats, seafoods and assorted items pre-prepared and ready to drop into the pot. That means the prep was all done--all they had to do to get ready for a dinner party was to tidy up the house, set the table and make some broth.

To eat hot pot alone would be about as much fun as watching a DVD of Rocky Horror Picture Show at home all by yourself. This is social food. Make a lot of broth, buy extra ingredients and invite people over, or ask them to bring something to add in. I brought regrettable but fun dessert. Wes brought his portable bar and mixed cocktails that paired well with the meal. It was a great feast and a great evening. And certainly a memorable one.

Nuclear Soup

This time of year a lot of attention is paid to putting up fruits and vegetables for the winter. Since I live in southern California with its year-round growing season, it doesn't seem quite so crucial, although the nesting impulse is always there that makes me want to put things back for a harsh season that just never seems to materialize out here in the land of endless summer.

No, now that summer is winding down, it's about time to pull out the stockpot and make chicken and beef stocks. It's great having both in the freezer--along with a bit of demi-glace--for making great soups, stews and sauces during the coming months, especially when holiday cooking time rolls around. But I employ that giant stockpot for another reason--to make what we in our household call "nuclear soup."

Looks mild mannered but it packs a punch!

Nuclear soup has no set recipe. Essentially, it is a chicken and vegetable soup that includes grain--sometimes barley, sometimes brown rice, sometimes something else--and that's loaded with as much garlic, onion and cayenne pepper as I dare put into it. This stuff is purely medicinal. Whenever one of us starts to sneeze, cough or feel the familiar malaise that signals the impending arrival of a winter cold or infection, we thaw some nuclear soup and shovel it in. It has the power to loosen the tightest head cold and ease and warm the passages from skull to chest.

I don't know if there's any hard science behind it--although for many years garlic has been touted as Russian penicillin--but I just know what happens when one of us eats it while we have a case of the winter miseries. Or the summer miseries--my husband, Andy, is suffering with a summer cold right now, which feels particularly bad when the temps reach into the 90s.

We're out of nuclear soup, so I just popped out for some chicken to make a new batch, enough to last us through this cold and, I hope, through several more. Each batch is different, depending on what's on hand, but I prefer to base the soup on lots of dark chicken meat, because it has better flavor and doesn't dry out. Sometimes I use a whole chicken, so I get the stock-enriching benefits of the carcass. I always have carrots and celery to go with the onion and garlic. Today I'm adding fennel and leeks, because they're languishing in the veggie bin, and farro, because I have a new bag of this grain and I've never made soup with it before. Sometimes I toss in potatoes, parsnips, turnips or rutabagas. As I said, whatever is on hand will do (well, maybe not gummy bears or miniature marshmallows!). I'll also add a fistful of fresh herbs from the garden, just to jazz it up.

The idea isn't to kill the person you're trying to nurse back to health, so I try not to get stupid when it comes to the cayenne, but rather I seek a balance between reasonable and bold. As for the smelly stuff, I typically use one large onion and one full head of garlic, sliced or minced.

It's possible to make nuclear soup so that it's both tasty and health restoring, so I do taste as I go. Once when Andy had a particularly bad cold and his head was completely blocked, he started into a bowl of nuclear soup, and by the time he was halfway through, everything opened up. After an extended nose-blowing session, he resumed his meal and then said, "Hey, this tastes good!"

And so it should. Being sick is punishment enough without having our tastebuds dulled by whatever it is that's responsible for such evil.

Soup's on, and Andy's home, so it's time to feed him and burp him and put him to bed.