For those who don't know what hot pot is, hot pot is a pot of hot soup, you dip your raw dishes inside the soup. Hotpot is a winter treat across northern China, and I've consumed countless during a dozen years of residence in China and Hong Kong. Yet my descriptions of northern hotpot prompts much indigestion in Sichuan Province. Chinese hot pot may be different from the other countries', Sichuan hot pot is the best ever!!! Why? Because it is so freaking hot and spicy, the whole pot is covered with all kinds of peppers and chillies.I go for the half-half hotpot of both spicy stock and a milder pork and chicken broth. Next, you tick your degree of spiciness (chilli content) and "numbness" (Sichuan pepper content). Medium seems the right way forward as I seem to recall crying genuine tears of pain into the bubbling broth of my first Sichuan hotpot in Chengdu.
Next, you tick off the ingredients you want to add to your hotpot: crocodile, kangaroo, salmon head, wagyu beef, pork blood jelly, kelp, lotus root and pickled mustard, to name a few. I tick away with glee, relishing the idea of someone else doing all the trekking through Chinese butchers, peeling all the garlic and pounding the chilli.
It is possible that I overdid it slightly, because my waiter forces me to delete at least eight different ticks. ''Too much food," he says sternly. I get him up to six ingredients but it isn't easy. Then I slip in a couple of starters from the table card and he goes off, shaking his head. He's probably right. The spicy pork dumplings with chilli sauce are no more than competent and could do with a bit more firepower. The pinkly pickled Sichuan daikon radish is enough for a small crowd.
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