Food

First I would like to extend my sympathies to those living in and around Japan.  I hope that all that are missing and injured are found and that they recover.

It's funny. I initially started this blog to get story ideas out of my head and now it's focus has diversified quite a bit. Today's topic food. Lots of ground to cover actually.

Let's start with the context. We had hotpot at home and in the end we had leftovers, a little bit of everything. As usual, I started to put a plan together to use up the leftovers. So I thought I'd share how I clear out hot pot left overs.

In my house we eat hot pot with rice (I know it's kind of odd), seafood, beef, lettuce, tofu and whatever else is in the fridge that would go well in hotpot. Usually we have a little bit of everything save the rice left over. The easiest way to clear out all of this is to make noodle soup. Basically, you boil the noodles, and then dump them in the hot pot broth. Instant noodle soup. Now this maybe undesirable because it's really like eating the same thing you ate the night before. Separately, it takes a bit more work.

Let's start with the sea food. I find the best option here is to make salt and pepper sea food dishes. The reason for this is that the seafood is already shelled and cut into little pieces. What you do here is you mix the seafood with a little bit of lemon juice/wine/vinegar, soy sauce, cornstarch and oil. Then you fry it in some hot oil. Take them out just before they're done and set them aside. Next fry up some sliced peppers and onions. Throw in your seafood, salt (I like five spice salt), pepper, chilli pepper to taste.

The beef and the tofu is just asking to be made into mahpoh tofu. Just stir fry with oyster sauce, soy sauce and spices and you're done. Lastly the lettuce and the hot pot broth can be a side dish used to temper the saltiness and the spiciness of the above dishes. The final thing you have left then is the dipping soy sauce. If you were smart you would have used them cooking the above dishes and you'll only have a bit left. It would be a waste to just throw it away so I usually just add it to my batch of soy sauce chicken broth/sauce.

And that's how I clear out hot pot leftovers (nothing left).