If you’ve never had “hot pot” before, it’s a soup fondue, sort of. Hot broth instead of cheese or chocolate, which cooks, instead of coats, the things you dip into it, like meat and vegetables. The most important difference is that the broth, unlike chocolate or cheese, takes on the flavour of the things you’re cooking in it, so what you end up with is many times improved over the liquid you started out with. If you cook thin pieces of steak in the broth, you end up with a beefy broth; in the recipe here, one that is earthy with the flavours of mushrooms.
That makes it a multi-step project of the best sort. You make a quick base, then add delicious things to it, pick them out quickly and eat them, and add rice or noodles to the newly and uniquely delicious, amped up broth. You’re required to eat endlessly, and rewarded for it.
This story and the recipe that goes with it can be found in “SOUPS”, ISSUE 014 of Le Sauce Magazine! Get it here: http://www.lesauce.com/app