Hot Pot or Fire Pot

This is Fondue Chinoise (according the French and the Swiss) or Chinese Hot Pot or Mongolian Fire Pot. A meal of small food items to be cooked in a simmering broth. The Europeans tend to use a small fork color coded to each diner. The Asians usually use small wire mesh baskets. At my house, both tend to get involved.

Traditional charcoal fired fire pot (from redcook.net) I'm a little concerned about carbon monoxide and such to use one of these in the home.

Divided hot pots (from diytrade.com) so you can have different flavors of broth, often one spicy and one milder. These look a little small for feeding more than 4 very polite diners. Maybe two serious food lovers could get along in one of these. 

I usually make a hot pot in either an electric fondue pot (the New Years Hot Pot at the end of this post) or on my induction burner (Birthday Hot Pot below) that can keep a bigger volume of liquid hot even when there are lots of baskets and forks in the pot. 

Select a mix of meats and vegetables that cook well simmered or boiled. The list of possibilities is long. As I usually make this for a celebratory meal, my examples below are heavier on the meat than you might want. 

Here's some other people's versions for you to use for ideas:

Noobcook

Wikihow

Redcook.net

AsiaDish

ChinaSichuanFood with some interesting ideas for a "dry hot pot" and an Ice hot pot. 

I tend to use a more strongly seasoned asian stock for my broth, but there are many possibilities if you look through the above links. 

Birthday Hot Pot for my son (induction burner and larger pan)

Thinly sliced pork and chicken, shrimp, tilapia filet, tofu, asparagus, spinach, zucchini.

If you're using loin chops for the pork, it helps to slice off the fat rind. lay the pork chop on edge and cut along the fat rind, with the knife horizontal to the cutting board. 

An array of baskets and forks cooking items in the broth.

When you're slowing down, the broth has reduced and concentrated, finish cooking the rest of the ingredients and ladle the resulting soup into bowls of noodles. For this batch, I used egg noodles. Alternatively, you can cook little baskets of noodles along the way.

A fresh plate would be more formal, but here, I'm enjoying my soup on top of the plate I worked from for the meal. So there's a little bit of shrimp tails and such about.

Lunar New Year Hot Pot 2014 (electric fondue pot)

Scallops, fishballs, squid, tofu, bean sprouts, pork, zucchini, spinach, small bok choy leaves.

This soup used rice noodles.

It's nice to have some different sauces for dipping the cooked items. And also the standard array of Chinese condiments for seasoning the final soup. 

I tend to favor a Black Vinegar and Ginger dip as well as a Sesame-Soy Vinaigrette. Use any of your favorites if you wish of course. 

Black Vinegar and Ginger Dip

1 teaspoon finely minced ginger

2 tablespoons black vinegar

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons sweet chile sauce

1 teaspoon dark soy sauce

Optional--a flavored oil: chili oil, chive oil, sesame oil. Don't repeat an oil you're using in another dip. Keep them different. 

Mix, and let stand at least 30 minutes for the ginger flavor to penetrate the sauce. This is also very  good with pot stickers. 

The ratios here make this sauce scale easily. 

Sesame-Soy Vinaigrette

3 tablespoons soy sauce

3 tablespoons rice vinegar

2 tablespoons sesame oil

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon dark soy

Combine and stir to dissolve the sugar. Shake or stir vigorously before using to mix in the oil.  I use this one a lot on salads and slaws.

Frittata

Frittata is a baked Italian style omelette. It shares some concepts with the Spanish Tortilla, but the fillings are often more diverse. I like the frittata as a simple way to repurpose leftovers quickly into something tasty.

The concept is simple. A 10 inch skillet. Nonstick or well seasoned cast iron or carbon steel simplifies things a lot and I strongly recommend one of those choices. It needs an oven proof handle as well, at least for the technique I prefer.

The ratio is this: 6 eggs to about 3 cups of filling. The filling usually includes something starchy like potatoes or pasta, some vegetables, often some herbs and some meat and/or cheese. For this fritatta, I'm using up some leftover linguine in a tomato sauce,  some sauteed zucchini and patty-pan squash, some cut up ham, and a mix of Romano and Parmigiano cheese.

I tend to cook on a lower heat for a longer time than many other frittata recipes you'll see. Those frittatas have a darker overcooked egg surface that is less appealing. You'll see.

Season your eggs. I chose some Goya Adobo, black pepper and a little garlic Cholula hot sauce. That's what I most often s eason my eggs with for most any savory purpose.  Then beat the eggs.

Add your filling choices. Mine were pasta, squash, ham and cheese. 

Combine those. 

Heat your pan over medium heat. Add about 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Tilt your pan to coat it evenly. I don't recommend butter. The milk solids tend to overcook and darken the surface of the fritatta and tastes a little off from the longer cooking time of this dish.  

Add your fritatta mix. It will set around the edges slowly. Lift the edges and let some egg run under and cook. Do this around the fritatta twice. 

Meanwhile, heat your broiler and position your rack about 6 inches from the heat. You can see on the right of my photo I'm down one notch on the position in my oven. Also note that I removed the cover from this pan's handle so it's safe for broiler temperatures. 

The surface will set before it's done cooking. Look for the surface to pick up some color is useful clue. When you see some color, to see how the fritatta jiggles. If it moves fairly uniformly it might be done. if the center jiggles more than the edges, it needs to cook some more. You can test it pretty simply for doneness. Poke a knife into the center and look for liquid. If you click the photo below to see it larger, you'll see the liquid shine by the blade. Some recipes say that it will finish cooking from the carryover heat outside the oven, but I've been burned by that technique. If you like your omelets with a littlye runniness in the french style, that's fine. That's just not my preference. The surface here can take a little more browning. so I let it go another 2 minutes under the broiler At that point, it had enough color but was still wetter than I liked so I turned off the broiler, and let the frittata bake in the closed and cooling oven about 5 more minutes

Compare the browning in mine to the wikipedia frittata-photographed by flagstaffotos. Their egg surface is overcooked and will have poor texture and flavor. 

Generally, recipes tell you to invert onto a plate. Plates don't give you a lot of extra rim if you're not experienced at that inverting thing. This is where the non-stick cooking surface helps out. A cutting board is easier I think than a plate and it's much easier to cut and better for the knife. 

Then slip it onto the serving plate.

Good warm or at room temperature. 

Steamed Eggs with Dried Mushrooms

This is a simple dish and most often an inexpensive one. It's a simple savory custard. I've not come across it in restaurants, but it shows up in a number of cookbooks.  You'll often see it with shrimp or ham. Dried or preserved meats are the more traditional but fresh shrimp is probably what I see the most of in modern cookbooks and websites. The toppings are usually on the salty side to accent the mild custard. It can be made in individual servings or in a single larger vessel.

This is a dish of ratios that's easy to expand or shrink as needed, and it's one reason I prefer to make it ramekins so I don't have to hunt up a dish of the right size or worry about different timing.

Per person you want to feed:

1 large egg

1/4 cup + approximately 1 tablespoon extra stock/liquid appropriate to the protein garnish. If you're using dried ingredients, you can use the leftover soaking liquid from re-hydrating them. Keep the extra amount for building the sauce.

salt to taste for the eggs/stock combination. Soy sauce can be used to, but keep in mind the final color of your custard.

white pepper or hot sauce to taste--I used black pepper in the photos for this post and it doesn't look right as you'll see.


Sauce: amounts for 1 person are so small, I left them unstated. I give the amount I used for 6 in parentheses

about 2 dried mushrooms per person
minced garlic ( 2 medium cloves)
minced ginger (1/2 inch piece peeled)
rice wine (2 tablepoons)
the extra mushroom soaking liquid, strained of grit (a bit under 1/2 cup)
soy sauce (1 tablepsoon)
oyster sauce (2 tablespoons)
corn starch slurry as needed

For the photos here, I was making this at a friend's house I brought my steamer and the basic ingredients, but was counting on my friend for basic seasonings, thus my use of black pepper. Further, I was cooking for 6 people including a seafood allergy and a vegetarian, so dried mushrooms were the proper ingredient.

Using the common dried black mushroom commonly used in Chinese cooking will work just fine. They're in the big tub on the right. But I had a few other types of dried mushrooms and thought they'd be fun to work with in a blend.

Add your mushrooms to enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, or just pour boiling water over your mushrooms. Let stand off heat 20 minutes. Reserve all liquid, but strain out any grit.

I like to wring out the mushrooms lightly in my hand so they're not soggy. Again, keep the liquid. Then chop them up.

Set up your steamer, fill with water, enough to boil for 10 minutes or so, and put on the heat. 

Combine the eggs, the amount of stock or soaking liquid and seasonings. My friend had no white pepper and while he as hot sauce, I just grabbed black pepper without thinking much about it.

Portion into the ramekins. When your water is boiling, load your steamer. I'm using a 30 cm, two level stainless steel steamer. Steam about 10 minutes. Time will vary with the shape of your ramekins and your altitude and such. I'm cooking at close to 5000 feet so your cooking time may vary. Watch closely the last few minutes so you don't overcook your custard.  The lower tier will cook faster and is more prone to bubble and froth.

You can carefully scrape the surface of the custard if it is bubbly or frothy to improve the appearance and delicacy of the dish.  Or if you're going to sauce if more heavily, it doesn't matter as much.

While the eggs are steaming, prepare your sauce.

Heat a little oil in a wok or pan. Add the mushrooms, garlic and ginger. Stir fry/saute for a minute or so for the flavor to develop. Reduce the heat and let it cook another minute, stirring frequently. Add the rice wine, mushroom liquid, soy sauce and oyster sauce.  Let it simmer for a minute or two, then adjust to your texture preference with the corn starch slurry.

Plate the individual ramekins and garnish with the mushrooms in the sauce. Here's where the black pepper choice reared its head. Notice the black specks especially along the edge of the custard. That's the pepper. Kind of messes up the look of the dish. It tastes just fine of course, but presentation counts too.

This is a versatile dish and can be served at breakfast, lunch or dinner. It can be an elegant course in a larger meal. 

V gives a good version of this with shrimp where she makes a shrimp stock from the shrimp heads and shells as well as some kombu.

Lee Kum Kee offers this shrimp version with XO sauce. I like the idea, but would have to reduce the amount of XO sauce as it's usually much hotter than I enjoy.

The ham variation is often not sauced or perhaps sauced with a simple clear michiu sauce. I see people often mix in the ham with the uncooked egg. That always settles to the bottom when I try to cook it that way. Others will add the ham in the last third of the cooking time when the custard is thick enough to support the ham.