Cookbook Lottery #2 - Chicken and Vegetable Hot Pot

Yeah, I know what you are thinking...  Chicken stew, layered on top with sliced potato, popped into the oven and then served at the table in the oven dish.  


Right?
  
Wrong!


The number generator threw 9 and 154 out at me.  Rummaging through the bookshelf, I pulled out book 9, The Complete Book of Sushi by Hideo Dekura, Bridget Treloar and Ryuicai Yoshii and as a result I was expecting sushi.  I turned to page 154 and to my surprise was faced with Chicken and Vegetable Hotpot.


I actually burst out laughing because this dish is the first dinner we had in Vietnam whilst on honeymoon.  When I told Sheila, she expressed great joy as this was one of her favourite memories of Vietnam.  It was our first night in Hanoi and we were walking through a street market, complaining about the humidity and listening to our grumbling tummy's when we happened upon a 'restaurant' set up in the middle of the street, under a marquee.  


One of the waiters must have seen the hunger etched into our faces as he immediately made a bee line for us and dragged us to a table.  Needless to say, the surroundings caused a little apprehension until a Swedish girl sitting on my left said the food is wonderful.  So we ordered a beer and the house dish... she was right!  The chicken hot pot was wonderful.  Stock as the base, to which we added chicken (on the bone), spinach, tomato, celery, spring onion, noodles, enoki mushrooms and daikon, I think...  It was accompanied by a vinegar, salt and chilli dip and a tub of spicy chilli salt.  


It was fun pulling various bits of food out of the pot, sipping on our beers and watching Hanoi night life buzz passed us on scooters.  The longer we sat there, the more the stock reduced, incorporating flavours from the overlooked ingredients still in the stock until an intensely flavourful soup remained.  We continued to slurp on this delicacy well into the evening.  Scrumptious!

So, in summary, a hot pot in Asia is basically a healthy fondue.  All the ingredients are cooked in a stock at the table and removed when cooked so that more items can be added to the stock.  A dipping sauce always accompanies the meal.  However, due to equipment limitations at home, I decided to cook the dish all in one go and serve it as a soup, albeit a chunky one.


Looking at the ingredients for the dish, I discovered a range of items I had never used before.  Dashi, Bonito flakes, daikon and tofu.  Yes, tofu...  Being South African and a confirmed meat lover, tofu has never graced my kitchen.  Yes, I have eaten it out in oriental restaurants but never cooked with it.  So, one of the goals for this challenge is working.  I am starting to use new ingredients that I otherwise would never have considered.


Shopping was a challenge too...  Once again a visit to Korea Foods was required, this time on my own as Sheila was out with friends.  Chinese cabbage - tick, spring onion - tick, carrots - tick, daikon...  daikon...    I just couldn't find daikon.  Mooli?  What's that?  Frustrated, I asked an Asian gentleman packing shelves in the veg section if they had any daikon.  He looked at me blankly until I showed him my shopping list.  In very bad English, he exclaimed, "Aaaaah, duck!" and pointed towards the freezer section.  


No joy there then.  Dejected, I left the vegetable section.  I just love strolling up and down the aisles of this store, staring in mild confusion at the array of foreign items.  The dashi took a bit of searching for, but I eventually found it.  The silken tofu was easy, plenty of choice too as a whole display fridge was totally taken over by numerous incarnations of tofu.  The bonito flakes caused a bit of consternation as all I could find was a 100g bag that was huge and it cost £9.99!  I only needed about 5g and really couldn't see what else I might use Bonito flakes for.  What on earth would I do with the other 95g?  


The rest was easy to find.  Sake, sweet soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, noodles, chicken breast, mirin, chilli and shallots...


I finally bit the bullet and in fear of being misunderstood again, decided to ask another employee for assistance.  I got clever this time and chose a lady with a clipboard.  She firstly confirmed, when asked, that it was indeed dashi in my basket and then pointed towards a 50g bag of Bonito flakes for £4.50.  45g I could possibly use up in the future, seeing as the use by date on the bag is August 2012.  She had no idea what daikon was, though.


I walked back to the veg section and stood staring, for about the fourth time, at a radish like vegetable labelled as Korean Mooli.  I know that daikon is a radish and was wondering if a mooli was the same thing? I tried to google mooli on my phone, but received error message 'DNS connection failed'. Sodding phone! 


Phone a friend?  OK then.  After trying a couple of friends and family with no answer, I eventually got lucky when my sister-in-law answered. She thankfully stated that she was close to a pc and following a quick google search for mooli, Wikipedia said, "A variety of East Asian giant radish daikon".  Result!!!


So, with shopping done in no where near record time, it was the short drive back home.

Once home, I started prepping all the ingredients:

• cabbage - 7-8 leaves - roughly sliced
• spinach - half bunch - washed and roughly chopped
• carrot - one large - peeled and sliced
• daikon/mooli/radish - 250g - peeled and sliced
• chicken - 450g - sliced thinly across the grain
• dashi - two 5g sachets dissolved in 1.5lt water
• noodles - 200g - cooked for 5 mins in salted water and drained
• tofu - 200g - cut into 2cm cubes
• spring onion - removed outer leaf, washed and the sliced diagonally into 2cm lengths
• chilli - red, small, one - de-seeded and finely chopped
• shallot - two - peeled and finely chopped

I added all the dashi to the wok and allowed this to heat up.  Grabbing a teaspoon, I took a quick taste and decided the stock had no depth.  Yes, the dashi flavour was there, but it came across insipid.  I added a good tablespoon of chicken bouillon and allowed this to dissolve into the stock.  Quick taste... much better! Once the stock was at a gentle boil, I added the chicken, carrot and daikon. 

Whilst the chicken and root vegetables were cooking, I added 75ml soy sauce, 75ml rice wine vinegar, 30ml sake, 10ml mirin and 3tbs bonito flakes to a new pot and allowed this to boil and then simmer for about 10 minutes.  I then strained the sauce (to remove the bonito flakes) into the bowl with the chopped chilli and shallots. A quick taste blew the roof of my mouth off!  I added some brown sugar to add some sweetness and my second taste proved more balanced.  I set the sauce aside to cool.

After the wok full of stock and chicken had simmered for a while, I added the cabbage and the cooked noodles. 

Another couple of minutes and in went the spinach.  A couple minutes more and the tofu and spring onion was added.  Simmer for about 5-10 mins.

Right!  Time to dish up.  I added a little of the chilli sauce to a couple of small dipping bowls and then spooned generous amounts of the hot pot into larger bowls, making sure I added a little of each element of the dish into each bowl.  Meanwhile, Sheila had popped the sake into the microwave for a couple of seconds. PING! and dinner was served.

Thoughts?


It was a tasty dish, full of interesting textures and flavours and definitely brought back pleasant memories of Hanoi.  It probably could have done with a little more chicken bouillon in the stock but the dipping sauce added yummy layers of flavour to whatever was dipped in it.  I particularly enjoyed the silky smooth tofu when dipped in the sauce.


Will I make it again? Yes, definitely.  I might even invest in the £45 hot pot on sale at Korea Foods to do it properly.  Next time though, I will beef up... umm, CHICKEN up the stock and possibly add some white wine to help develop the flavour.  I also think prawns added to the mix will liven things up quite nicely!


Anyone interested in joining us for dinner one evening?