This is most of the food that i prepped for the meal. included (clockwise from the bottom) is: noodles, winter melon (dong gua), mushrooms (enoki, shiitake, oyster), potatoes, fried tofu, a menagerie of balls (fish balls, beef balls, cuttlefish, and a lot of other crazy things - i just grabbed things that looked good), sliced beef, silken tofu, pakchoy (i think).I ended up cheating, and making the soup from a tom yum base, and then adding lemon juice and fish sauce to get the flavours balanced. it had the chilli at the right level, but really needed the zing of the lemon to make it nice. everyone loved it (thank god - i always have a nightmare about cooking for people and they hate it. i think it's almost as scary as the dream where you walk around naked)
the sauces i had for everyone to play with were a ground chilli sauce, bull's head barbecue sauce (i cannot begin to describe how "barbecue sauce" is false advertising, but it was nice), sesame paste (tasted like peanut butter), sesame oil, and garlic. and so it began!
Sixin and Ying enjoying the hotpot.I think that between the 4 of us, we only ate half the ingredients, so i'll throw it together for a stir fry later today, with garlic, chilli, and some good oyster sauce.
Victims of the subsequent drinking were:
- Korean raspberry wine
- Limoncello
- Japanese plum wine
- Bress winery apple cider http://www.bress.com.au
- Glenlivet 15 year old single malt
- frozen margarita bucket
- chang beers, and i think some other things (can't find the bodies)
Over all, a good time i think ;)
6 comments:
Hotpot's a good social activity. in fact, a lot of asian meals are about sharing; very rarely do we have individual portions. I remember my friend in Nordic Europe commenting that some of his friends are repulsed when asked to share a meal placed in the centre of the table.
A tomyum soup base is delicious. We use a lot of lime in our tomyum soup.
yeah, i totally agree - a lot of my australian friends order meals and ten hoard them, thinking that we are crazy sharing them all.
i like the social element of it though, and it can be fun. still don't have the hang of the sorts of dishes to order - like 1 meat, 2 vegie, 1 fish, etc etc
omigod, you mean lemongrass's brown sugar vs palm sugar INSPIRED YOU to start blogging? wow, i am speechless!!!! heard about your knuckles and the orange zest. will we be reading about that?
what's the difference between hotpots and fondues? sharing also, right? lol!
that's quite a spread for 4, i reckon. and no worries, we cheat here all the time too, with that tom yum paste! haha!
there's another type of chinese soup base gaining popularity here in malaysia/singapore called the "ma la" soup base..which has a spicy and numbing effect! we can try that in singapore!
How about a hotpot for two? That'd be more practical for me during weeknights after coming back from a long day's work, and me + my better half really are too tired to whip up multiple dishes.
Hotpot for more sounds great for the weekend though. Especially the spicier "ma la" variety... *slurps*
Looks like a great hotpottie party - you've so many galfriends, ah? Wah, lucky!
By the way, I read somewhere you might want a good, no-fail brownie recipe. I have one:
http://argusworld.blogspot.com/2007/06/blown-over-by-bloomin-brilliant.html
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