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Published: October 8th 2006
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Boiling Broth!
Here is our giant pot of broth, the smaller pot in the middle is my pot of mild broth. You can see by the redness of the outer bowls broth that it's quite spicy! We have just returned from dinner, and I had to write a quick entry detailing our hotpot experience.
Earlier today when we were searching for a bank (by the way, China seems to have a LOT of banks, China Bank of Construction, China Merchants Bank, Bank of China, Bank of Beijing, Agricultual Bank...the list goes on and on) we passed an interesting restaurant called "Pretty Home". At first when we saw the sign we thought it would be a housewares store, but when we looked in the windows we saw it was a hotpot restaurant! So this evening we decided to go back and be adventurous.
You pick a broth, full spicy pot, full mild pot or half spicy half mild pot. We of course selected the half spicy half mild, seeing as I don't have the tastebuds to eat very spicy things. Then you select various plates of meat and vegetables, we chose tender beef, crispy pork, ham sausage, bean sprouts (I've aquired a new love of bean sprouts while being away), bamboo shoots, lettuce, vermicelli noodles, something which we couldn't figure out what it was (we ordered it but we have no idea what it was when
Slurping Up the Goodness
Erin slurping her noodles. We love eating noodles here, because afficionados claim you get a better flavor of the broth if you slurp. It's hilarious to listen to people eating noodle soup, especially on the train, all you hear is "SLURP SLUUURP SLUUUUUUUURP"! it arrived) and fried rice. Then they bring a giant metal bowl full of the broth and place it over a burner set into the middle of the table. Our bowl had a smaller bowl in the middle which was the mild broth. The broth then starts to boil. We must have looked like we had no idea what we were doing, we first placed on piece of pork into the broth, let it boil for a few minutes, and pulled it out to taste it. Quickly a waitress came over to our table to show us how it was done. There is a smaller dipping bowl full of edible oil, into which they add garlic, some leafy green thing (cilantro? parsley? not sure) and brown sauce. You are given a small cup of extra edible oil in case you need to add more to your dipping bowl. We mistakenly (silly Westerners!) thought the cup of oil was tea so we each sipped it. Whoops. She then dumped each plate into the boiling broth (we motioned for her to put half into the spicy and half into the mild). Then you wait for it all to cook. Once it's ready
The Ladle Method
Here is Devlin demonstrating "the ladle method". Just watch out for chili peppers! she motioned that we could start eating, and you dig in with your chopsticks pulling out piles of cooked food and adding it to the dipping bowl. Wow. Was it ever DELICIOUS! We have read that the spicy broth is so spicy even some Sichuanese can't stand it.
The mild was not very spicy at all, but the spicy was indeed very spicy. Devlin was sweating buckets by the end of it, and he said his mouth was on fire! I took his word for it...In the middle of the meal Dev decided to use the ladle (which you stir the broth and veggies with) to help him scoop food into his dipping bowl. This was a great tactic, except along with the meats and veggies and noodles he also ladled a lot of the spicy broth and peppers into his dish. It was unavoidable to pick around the small bits of peppers, and he sucked back many small chunks of chili, making him cough a lot. The flavor of the chili peppers is unlike any other peppers he's tasted at home.
The combination of flavors was scrumptious, and the boiling broth and food smelled divine. We eagerly
Dipping Bowl
Here is the small dipping bowl of oil, into which they add the garlic, mystery green thing, and brown sauce. dug in and ate all the veggies and meat in the bowl. Along with 2 Cokes our bill came to 60Yuan (less than $10!).
Enjoy the pics! I'm not sure if Calgary has anything quite like this, we've tried the grill-it-at-your-table-yourself restaurants, but never anything with broth like this. I guess it would be a lot like fondue, except much spicier and you dump everything in at the start to let it cook.
We've booked another "tour" for tomorrow evening, a trip to a Chinese/Sichuan Cultural show. Here they will perform Changing Faces (very famous Sichuan art form), string puppets, and blowing fire. The pictures on display at the hostel look great and it's very different than anything we've done so far. The ticket price includes round trip transportation, admission and Chinese tea during the performance. We'll try to take some pictures for you all.
After dinner we met a young man named Jerry (that must be his "English" name) who came to the hostel after class to practice his English. He is studying to be an English tour guide (he is already a Chinese tour guide). It's great speaking to these young students, but it can
Dev's Spicy Dipping Bowl
Gee, can you tell it's Dev's by the giant mess around it?! Haha. be quite mentally draining. You have to listen so hard to understand what they are trying to say, and then really think about your answers and word them in ways that they will understand. But I'm not one to turn someone away who wants experience speaking with real Westerners! Most Chinese can speak better English than we can Chinese, that's for sure...
That's it for tonight. We are up early tomorrow morning, so we are off to bed early. It's been a long day, arriving on the train this morning at 5:30am and then trying to coordinate air tickets to Tokyo.
G'night! 😊
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AKA
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Should've read the next blog!
Ok, so maybe I jumped the gun on my last comment.... the hot pot I saw was definitely not the same!! Maybe that is why it was in a vietnamese restaurant and not a chinese one :p And it was different.. .maybe you will experience the same one I saw when you hit Vietnam. Have Fun, talk to you soon!