112.Chinese hot-pot! (part IV)

:)) Promise this is going to be the last Chinese hot-pot post. But you see, we really eat a lot!! Ha… Here you go, it continues from yesterday.

Vegetables:

Well, vegetables here really just refers to those green leaves, because other vegetables might take longer time to cook, and simply boiling them probably cannot give it the best taste. Here are some common green leaves cooked in hot-pot.


Lettuce:

All sorts of lettuce are good, just need to wash the lettuce, and ‘separate’ the leaves, no need to chop into small pieces.


Chinese leaves:

However, for Chinese leaves, the best part for using in hot-pot is the heart. So you can peel off the outer layers, leave them for stir-fry next time, and use the heart part for hot-pot. Again, no need to chop, just wash and separate the leaves.

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112. Chinese hot-pot (part III)

---- What can you cook and eat in the hot-pot?

It seems these posts about hot-pot are taking me quite a long time, just like actually eating it. :)) Here you go, another continued post, this time it is about what to ‘cook’ (or ‘rinse’/shuan) in the pot.

In general, most kinds of meat, seafood, and vegetables that do not require long cooking times  can be used for hot-pot. Normally, one can easily have eight or nine big plates on the table full of fresh ingredients  ready to  cook in the pot --- surprised? :)) Let’s see --- these include sliced meat, fish and seafood, tofu, green leaves, fensi, mushrooms --- but you have to remember that we can have different kinds of each of these, so we can end up having at least 2 or 3 plates per ingredient. Here you can have choices, for example, if you are vegetarian, you can leave out the meat and seafood.

Now, let’s talk about them one by one. (It is only what we normally have for hot-pot, not including Cantonese style hot-pot.)

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112.Chinese Hot-pot! (part II)

--- Making the soup base at home

So the first 5 days of the Chinese new year celebration have officially finished. Now, until the15th of January in Chinese calendar, people’s greetings are changing from ‘Happy new year’ to ‘how was your new year?’ Or for some people still haven’t wished the ‘happy new year’ yet, they would say ‘happy belated new year’. What I am saying is that the new year spirit is not fading away yet:)) 

But let's talk about food -- Chinese hot-pot from the previous post.

Chinese hot-pot is almost a signature dish in Chinese cuisine, it is especially suitable for friends or family gathering. In Chinese we always use ‘re nao’ to describe this kind of occasions, it literally means ‘hot and noisy’, so you can imagine the hot steam going up from the middle of the table, and everyone is chatting over the hot pot while busy ‘cooking’ their own food.

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112. Chinese hot-pot!! I

-- A culture note as well as a recipe

image source:http://www.tupian99.com/show-4-79-fd9e9e387fea0bb3.html

Happy (black) dragon year on the 4th day!!

The festival atmosphere seems calming down a bit already over here in Oxford, but back in China, it is still everywhere. My parents over there have been very busy with visiting relatives and friends, eating and cooking. :)) I still hear the fireworks every time I talk to them.

So let's keep on talking about festival food. :) I always think food represents culture, just like Chinese dumplings. Here is another dish -- one of the most representative of China ----- hot-pot. So these couple of posts are not only just about cooking, but also about Chinese culture.

I always thought hot-pot is the English translation for this particular Chinese dish, or say a way of eating, but after seeing some other recipes online, which are also called hot-pot, I start thinking ‘hot-pot’ is probably not a very accurate term to describe this kind of Chinese food .

The original name in Chinese for this dish is ‘Huo Guo’, as ‘fire wok’. To describe it simply: it is all about  eating while you are cooking.

In Chinese history, there is no clear record describing when this way of eating actually started, but it must have been more than 3000 years ago. When the emperors held the worship or memorial services, they used containers called ‘Ting’ to boil meat in. Some say that was the early ‘predecessor’ of ‘hot-pot’.

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