Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Look at all those veggies in the picture! Yum .....well yum if you can use chopsticks properly. Yes - should have practiced a lot more before leaving home. Hot pot is a special dish for celebrations and coming together to share. Much like a form of fondue you have though boiling hot water. Some hot pot meals are done solely with one pot in the middle of the table. Today we had individuals pots and could pick the type of food to boil. Typically you boil only a few items at a time and then eat them. No large plates we were seeing and NO NAPKINS! Instead you get these little tiny travel type size of kleenex. Oh my we were way beyond even needing regular napkins. Our first try of this process with chopsticks mind you was messy. Dropping items, sticks crossing in our fingers and sauces dripped on the table cloth began a contest as to who was the messiest. I did not rank as one of the top people but surely had a major mess going on. Our guide Maggie had a spotless table area. This is going to take some practice for sure. Well items sit on a lazy susan and you learn to be polite spinning the table clockwise for everyone to pick off items. As more is boiled then the water becomes a broth that has great flavor. Our first food culture mistake was to assume those great little items that looked like marinated olives were really olives. We dive into what we were thinking was going to be a nicely flavored olive and take one whole. Opps - raw quail egg inside. Gross - now learn to politely ask. We would prefer to choose our delicatessin choices and stay away from things that are an extreme. I also avoided all the plates to boil of fungus. Mushrooms sound so much better than fungus and yet are similar.
- comments