It seems we do about 6 Battles a year looking at things to land on our 12th session for NYE Hot Pot in our second year of Battle of Ingredients. We are definitely getting more organized, I can tell you that much. Most of the time, things don’t happen because we are busy with one thing or another with life. 2018 wrapped up in style with ourselves doing a New Year’s Eve Hot Pot session. There isn’t really much to talk about usually but here’s a little sharing on the stuff I put together and other vegetables and noodles we used.
Wines
We actually only got to drinking the J.P. Chenet Rose Sparkling Wine. It was a nice match for the meal. We mixed up some drinks for the rest of the evening with some people spiking their soda with tequila or Rum and Coke and myself, I had some Cranberry Ginger Ale spiked with Irish Whiskey or Apricot Brandy.
Hot Pot
Our division of tasks for this battle of ingredients were Phoebe with the vegetables, fruits and other things necessary like noodles and she prepared a soup base (which we didn’t end up using because of technical difficulties she is still thinking about).
She brought:
- Bok Choy
- Chinese Broccoli
- Enoki Mushrooms
- Udon Noodles
- Konnyaku Noodles
- Egg Tofu
- Apples and Oranges
I took care of meats and dessert. I forgot to take a picture of everything so forgive the incomplete bits.
- Pork Balls (Homemade with minced lean ground pork and garlic seasoned with salt and pepper)
- Dumplings (Homemade with the same as the previous and store-bought wonton wrappers)
- Sliced Chicken breast seasoned with sesame oil, salt and pepper
- Store bought Frozen fondue beef slices
- Fish Tofu (from my mom)
As for dessert, I had some dough left from the previous potluck so made some more Pumpkin Cookies.
Also bought:
- Marshmallows
- Lindt Dark Chocolate
- 70% Madagascar
- Swiss Dark
For soup bases, we had a divided pot borrowed from my mom. One side was with water and all the flavoring was from the ingredients added in while the other part was diluted Chicken Broth.
The hot pot went really well. Phoebe and I did most of the cooking and allocated food to everyone around the table. There’s always the worry of not having enough food and it all worked out. We even had leftovers. Definitely something to consider for the winter months to do as it makes it a lot simpler and actually quite nice to explore what ingredients to use and soup bases to make and such. It is an idea that we can discuss further to change things up just like how we slot in BBQ during the summer.
Tranquil Dreams 