My dear friend Clare is staying with us at the moment. She and I went off to have hotpot the evening she arrived, despite the old chopstick technique being wobbly and her being convinced that she was unteachable. Full of optimism that my favourite hotpot place, "Little Sheep" would provide her with a fork in her hour of need, we ordered a fine feast, but were told that there were not any knives and forks. Clare is living proof now that necessity is the best teacher and here's proof of her newly acquired chopstick technique!
Hotpot is one of the joys of Beijing. There are lots of regional variations, but basically you order a big pot of broth and it is kept bubbling at your table either with a little charcoal burner, or in the case of this particular restaurant, through a magnetic induction element at the table. You then order the bits that you want to cook in it, for instance a plate of mixed vegetables. The one pictured has lotus root, black fungus, three different types of mushroom, lettuce, tofu, yam, pumpkin, greens and that well-known vegetable, crabsticks. You order a plate or two of meat, which is rolls of shaved meat. You then just put in whatever you want to eat and it cooks almost instantly. If the broth is boiling hard it's wise to hang on to your little morsel as it can be hard to find it again.
My dear friend Clare is staying with us at the moment. She and I went off to have hotpot the evening she arrived, despite the old chopstick technique being wobbly and her being convinced that she was unteachable. Full of optimism that my favourite hotpot place, "Little Sheep" would provide her with a fork in her hour of need, we ordered a fine feast, but were told that there were not any knives and forks. Clare is living proof now that necessity is the best teacher and here's proof of her newly acquired chopstick technique!
Hotpot is one of the joys of Beijing. There are lots of regional variations, but basically you order a big pot of broth and it is kept bubbling at your table either with a little charcoal burner, or in the case of this particular restaurant, through a magnetic induction element at the table. You then order the bits that you want to cook in it, for instance a plate of mixed vegetables. The one pictured has lotus root, black fungus, three different types of mushroom, lettuce, tofu, yam, pumpkin, greens and that well-known vegetable, crabsticks. You order a plate or two of meat, which is rolls of shaved meat. You then just put in whatever you want to eat and it cooks almost instantly. If the broth is boiling hard it's wise to hang on to your little morsel as it can be hard to find it again.
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