Macau Series (10) - Hot Pot: Homestyle

One afternoon, a co-worker threw me a random question, "where do you and your friends go when you dine out?"  Dear me... there are too many... and the place changes depending on who I am with and what we were in the mood for that night.

However, one of my friends loves hot pot.  If I am in the mood for hot pot, she would be the #1 person I would call.  Consequently, I have tried quite a few places for hot pot and I thought I would share especially since the winter is usually the perfect weather for hot pot.

Let's start with the "homestyle" or what people normally would prepare at home.

All you need to have a hot pot party is an induction cooker.  I got one for less than MOP300 recently at Fortress.  In light of the ever-increasing natural gas prices, this cooker is a great investment.  Not only it is useful for hot pots, you can use it to cook almost anything other than stir fry in my opinion.  (I prefer to cook my stir fry in a wok on a gas stove - "鑊氣".)

Next, you pick your soup bases, from just water to a elaborated spice mix or secret recipes from restaurants, the possibilities are endless.  As are the ingredients and the dipping sauces.

I was invited to my friend's house for dinner over the weekend (with my #1 hot pot friend of course) and originally we planned for a lamb pot (羊腩煲) but since it was sold out we ended up with a "glutinous rice wine bone pot" (糯米酒骨煲).

This bone pot is from the locally known "Shek Si" (石獅) where you can eat-in as well.  I actually went there with a different group of friends last year for a gathering and will write a separate blogpost later.

In addition to the bone pot, which has pork bone marrow, chicken feet, winter melon (冬瓜), dates, etc., my friend also bought beef slices*, pork neck meat slices, water cress, lettuce*, a fish ball variety pack*, daikon*, wonton (魚皮角), bamboo sticked (支竹), enoki mushroom* (金針菇), etc.  I also discovered for my first time - yuba roll (腐皮卷)!

I like the Peach Bellini more than the Lychee Bellini

* denotes hot pot staples

Let me tell you, that's a LOT of food even for 4 hungry people!!!  But that didn't stop us from desserts... it's ok, we only had a fruit cup... I didn't take a picture of that... coz I was too full to move... it's was a 16oz cup filled with fresh cut fruits like watermelon, cherries, grapes, etc. in grapefruit juice...

I ended up taking the untouched watercress and daikon home since we didn't want to waste the leftover food... if you want to know what I ended up making with them, chick here.