(The secret of taking this photo with my GX200 is to stand on a chair and do the shot as quickly as possible. The hungry stomachs started without waiting for me)
Today, follow me on an utterly naked account of my favourite Cnatonese way of eating: the Cantonese hotpot.
After the invention of air-conditioners, hotpots made its way into one of the most common dinning style in all seasons. Most Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong serve hotpot dinner at a reasonable price. Notably, there are some famous hotpot eateries in the neighbourhood of Kowloon City which are worth a special visit next time you are in Hong Kong.
So what for a hotpot?
The King and the Queen
Frist things first. The prima donna of a hotpot is the soup base. There are a whole array of soups for a hotpot. For those who have a penchant for spicy food, the satay or the curry soup. Otherwise, the regular Chinese soup is all very fine. Eaters can order special Chinese herbal soups too. The soup is filled with tofus and corn cobs to make the soup sweeter to the taste.
The second-in-command for a hotpot meal is the dipping sauce. Like what the dips are to the Mexican foods, the sauce is the soul of hotpot. A mouth-wetting sauce is usually the secret weapon of a successful hotpot eatery. Mix the sweet soy sauce with some Japanese wasabi, sesame oil, and you will end up with a great dish of your own secret weapon. A dip or two for the food will be as refreshing as a tall cup of coffee in the morning.
So with these two king and queen of the hotpot, you are ready to serve all the raw foods on the table. The cooking is done individually with the small metal sieves provided to each person. Now, what to cook?
The Must-Haves
The must-have dishes for a hotpot meal are, from left to right, fatty beef sheets, srhimps/ beef and fish cutlets. The fatty beef sheets are specially cut into such thin slices for quick cooking in the hotpot. As for the fish cutlets, try the scrumptious carp cutlets. Marinate the fish cutlets well before serving on the table.
There is no hotpot without meatballs in Hong Kong. By saying meatballs, I mean the whole variety of them. Click open the picture on the left and you will see four different kinds of them: the white round ones are squid meatballs, the brownish ones are beef meatballs, the brownish ones with blackish dots are pork meatballs with mushroom shreds, the pyramid-shaped ones are fish meatballs with various sorts of juices at the cores. Mussels (middle photo) are great for hotpot. So are the crabs. Although not shown here, vegetables are needed for a hotpot to dilute the heavy meat recipe.
To make the hotpot dinner more satisfying, the udon noodles are usually eaten nearing the end before you are too full. For drinks, buy bottles of Chinese plum juice (Suen Mui Tong in Cantonese) and freeze them really cold in the frig before use.
Enjoy!
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