Good morning. Hot pot’s on docket for Saturday night: a large metal soup pot bubbling over a hearth in the center of the table, into which we’ll float slices of beef, cubes of tofu, collard greens, oyster mushrooms, rounds of sweet potato, rice cakes, cubes daikon radish and lots of it pasta to welcome it Lunar New Year.
Allison Jiang has the details at the New York Times and Naz Deravian delivered a recipe (above) this is really just an outline. Your hot pot can be incredibly spicy in the Sichuan tradition, filled with Cantonese-style seafood, made with meat or just vegetables. You can use vermicelli noodles in this. Or dried tofu leaves. I like Chili Crisp in mine, white pepper and sesame oil all over the surface of the broth. It’s fun to experiment.
Suggested recipe
Hot Pot
Our friends at Wirecutter have a nifty guide to the equipment you’ll need to become an ace at home, but it’s important to note that you can also improvise, using a slow cooker, Instant Pot or rice cooker in place of the induction or propane burner demanded by experts. You could even use a fondue set if you have one. (In Switzerland, there is a festive version of fondue called Fondue Chinoisewhich is essentially a Eurofied casserole, with rich beef broth used in place of the traditional cheese.) Hot pot for everyone.
As will the Super Bowl, which for many will take up most of Sunday’s hours: the 49ers and Chiefs square off in Las Vegas at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time, as purely an American sentence as I’ve ever typed. You could make Buffalo Chicken Dip for the game stromboli, pulled pork, turkey chili, Chex mix, garlic bread the queso.
I will go with chicken wings, ranch dressing and nachosmyself, with hot fudge for dessert. But follow your heart. I could imagine a really pleasant evening steak Dianewith the Calidore String Quartet playing Beethoven in the background, there is no football anywhere and some gin rummy to end the evening.
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Now, it’s not about pork tenderloin or blueberries, but William Boyd, in the New York Times Book Review, got me excited to read Paul Theroux’s new novel, “Sahib of Burma”, set in 1922 and imagining the life of 19-year-old Eric Blair as a policeman in the then British colony of Burma (now Myanmar), a few years before Blair became the author George Orwell.
“The Brothers Sun,” on Netflix, manages to walk the line between comedy and drama quite well, and the fight scenes are amazing — the comic panels come to life.
And Patrick Raden Keefe on the mysterious death of a London teenager, in The New Yorker? Immersive.
Finally, Paramore cover Talking Heads? Yes, actually: “Burning down the house.” Hold on tight. I’ll see you on Sunday.