Just a mo
(Ben tending the hot pot: Glasgow, UK)
It is becoming more and more chilly here in Glasgow, and it seems especially cold and dark since the clocks went back a few weeks ago. Now the mornings are slightly less dismal, but the afternoon light fades shortly after three o’clock. By half past four it is already dark and the temperature drops dramatically before most people have even finished work. Thankfully last night I warded off some of the November blues with a hotpot prepared by my Chinese friend Susan and her boyfriend, Ben. Here he is wearing a tiny Scotch Beef apron in an attractively feminine shade of pink.
If you’re familiar with some of the ingredients, you might be able to spot (from left to right) slices of meat, fish balls (no, no, not those kind), Chinese cabbage, lotus root, bok choi, sliced potato and knotted tofu skins. They were my favourite, along with the lotus root – even if they might not sound appetising. There are even some individually wrapped portions of ‘glass’ noodles on the left (with the red writing) but I have to concede that we didn’t manage to get that far. Considering there was just the three of us, we succeeded in wolfing down the entire table contents except for one packet of meat and those noodles. However, such a feat was only possible with the best part of three hours, plus chatting between skilled fishing with either chopsticks or a spoon. Mealtime was probably extended by the sheer heat and spiciness of this particular hotpot – it was quite a shock to my system as I’ve not eaten such an arrestingly spicy dish in months. I had to pause for deep breaths every so often, you can perhaps see the steam rising from the rice cooker in this image.
In case Chinese hotpot is new to you, it consists of a hot pot of soup in the table centre into which different uncooked foods are added in stages. The immediate result is cooked pieces of food and the end result is the delicious soup with a flavour enhanced by the previous contents. It’s one of the very best Chinese dishes in my opinion; it is such a social, proactive activity mealtime and there is no chance of becoming bored with the menu since it contains so many different things. The one drawback is finding all the goodies once they have been swimming.
Just to explain his bushy face, Ben is growing a moustache for ‘Movember’, a charity event using the nippy month of November to encourage top lip hair growth, presumably in part to keep warm but also as a sponsored action to raise money for Prostate Cancer charities. Unfortunately, I’m unable to cultivate any facial topiary of my own, but if you’d like to see how he’s getting on, have a look here.
– Today Rosie is working and going to the cinema in Glasgow, UK –
