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Typical hot pot set-up; Typical sukiyaki set-up at BD household.
Like a dummy, I totally neglected to take pictures at my own hot pot gathering over the weekend!!
 ~Babydot74 here Whew! My last blog was December 2005!! How time flies! And my premium has totally run out! Sorry for the neglect. Snot has been busy planning for her own wedding and I totally forgot about updating the site. I haven't been really doing any Taiwanese cooking as of late so if anyone has anything to contribute, please let me know so I can post this up! I've been doing a lot of tinkering in baking - like pies (Banana Cream, Chocolate Custard pies), cakes and ice cream. I can always post up those recipes if you guys are interested. Also, a Chicken Pho recipe if anyone's interested.... I recently just threw a hot pot party at my apartment this past weekend for my friends. Hot pot goes by many names and I think all of the Asian cultures have some version of hot pot in their cuisine. My family have always called it "Sukiyaki" -- it is also known as Chinese fondue, Huo Guo, Da Ben Lo, Shabu Shabu, etc. etc. And I realized over this weekend that there are many many ways to eat your hot pot food. We decided to run two different hot pots since my husband only likes to eat his with a spicy broth. After much research, I discovered it is called a Ma La Broth. The other hot pot had the Daikon/Pork Bone broth (see recipe in older post) for the non-spicy people. 
I usually make my dipping sauce consisting of: raw egg Soy sauce Sesame oil Vinegar Raw garlic Scallion
We had the following items to cook in the hot pot: Thinly sliced beef (usually frozen) - I buy it frozen in Chinatown at the meat market on Bayard. Various fish balls (fish, cuttlefish, shrimp) and meatballs (ground pork, beef, beef tendon) Various fishcakes Seafood - clams, mussels, shrimp, squid Vegetables Tofu - fried and regular Mushrooms - my favorite are the Enoki mushrooms, shitake, oyster, button Taro (my dad's favorite)
Some people also use pork and chicken in their hot pot but I don't like to for bacteria purposes. You have to be really careful about cooking pork and chicken all the way through so that you don't get food poisoning. Basically if you want to throw anything in your hot pot to cook, you basically can. I regret to say that there are no pictures from my gathering and now I am regretting it. Hopefully I'll think to update soon and more often.  Again, if anyone has anything to contribute, please let us know! ~BD |
