I Heart Hotpot

The weather is getting cooler, it's time to take the pot out for soup. And we love soup. You can tell from my blog's title.  It was my life back then...

With these people.  Picture taken with famous celebrity Kris Aquino when she featured the restaurant in her now defunct daily talk show.   

Hotpot restaurants are a must-go wherever we are in Asia. Sadly we haven't been to one in the Toronto area.

Giguo (Taipei). This is individual serving.  Check out the menu and nice modern interior.

Tien Hsiang (Taipei). This is communal. We picked a medicinal soup base.

Gloriamaris Hotpot (San Juan). This is communal but one pot is not enough for us =]

This is my own [bowl]. I make them pretty good. I must!  For the soup base - whole chicken (or bones), cabbage, garlic, tong chai (preserved vegetable), bonito flakes, salt & peper to taste.  Easy peasy! No secret ingredient and no flavour enhancer. And then I just throw in sliced meat, leaf vegetables, noodles, sweet corn, meatballs, crabsticks, tofu and whatnot.

I continue to use a lot of the hotpot items in our daily dishes, including Sushi's bento.

Fish Tofu with beans w/enoki, taro bread slices, fruit cup sans its juice

Crabsticks & fishballs with onigiri, grapes, apple, rice crackers

Fish-shaped fish tofu with hardboiled egg, edamame, raisin bread, Rice Krispies