Celebrating 1st Day w/ HOT POT

[Caroline & MaryAnn]

A few nights ago, we decided to celebrate Mom's first day of work and my first day of hybrid homeschool.  We went to a hot pot restaurant with Bob (or driver and best friend at this point) and one of our family friends from Texas, Zach. He was visiting for his business, but stayed in the Ritz-Carlton hotel that is connected to our apartment.

When you go to a hot pot restaurant, there is a big bowl with two sides to it, sitting on a burner in the middle of the table. You can choose from several types of cooking broths; on one side, we chose a spicy oil with lots of different peppers in it. On the other side, we chose a broth that is more like a chicken stock. It has peppers and greens in it.

The first thing that you do while you are waiting for the oil to heat up, is to walk up to the ingredient bar, and grab a ramekin. You use a spoon to put the things you want in your sauce into the little bowl. Some of the options are crushed peanuts, MSG, bean paste, salt, pepper, various spices, cilantro, basil, and chives. That is really only half of the list.Then you have to add a liquid to make it an actual dipping sauce. Your options are soy sauce, sesame oil, and vinegar. You can use all three if you wanted.

The waiter turns the burner on, and when both sides are boiling, you can begin. You order different items to cook, set, or dip into the bowl, such as lamb, ox tongue, greens, beef, rice rolls, quail eggs, lotus root, noodles, and several types of tofu. You put the items that need to cook, such as the meat (since it is raw), and the noodles in for longer. Since the foods such as the greens and the tofu are already cooked, you do not put them in for as long. Just long enough to soak up the flavor of the oils & spices.

When the item is finished in the oil, you use a communal pair of chopsticks to get it out of the hot bowl, and put it on your plate. You can then use your own chopsticks to dip the item into your sauce and eat it. It is very unsanitary to use your own chopsticks into the bowl since your mouth has been on them.

Once you cooked the item you wanted, you take it from the hotpot and dip it in your sauce, and eat it.

For dessert, you get a fried sticky rice roll. It is pretty much liquid sweet rice fried into a roll shape. It is more liquid-y at the beginning, and when it starts to cool, it hardens. You dip it into some sort of sweet sauce served beside it. This is the only thing you will be served in this restaurant that you do not have to put in the pot of oils.

 I was curious about the history of the hot pot restaurants, so I decided to do some research, and this is what I came up with.

• The Chinese hot pot has stories and a history over 1,000 years old.
• Hot pot started in Mongolia with the Jin dynasty.
• In the beginning, the usual ingredient was usually beef, mutton, or horse.
• It spread to China during the Song dynasty.
• Hot pot is usually eaten during winter at dinner.