CNY SG 2021: Tom yam hot pot

 

CNY SG 2021: Making hot pot at home; Tom yam soup, prawn&meat in soy sauce and tempura sauce, otah-otah, soba, and Japanese white rice - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

Hi all of you, how are you doing today? Well, well, what we have here, looks intriguing menu that I would like to share. I believe that many of you have already known, "HOT POT." One thing that I am going to share is how to make an easy hot pot at home with some infuses. In another word is in my style.

To be honest, hot pot is not a tradition or culture from my hometown where I was born and grew up.  If you are following my article then you can easily identify that the people in my village have a festive season where villagers would cook a special treat only once a year, called "opor" or simply to say chicken curry that eats with rice cake. In the past, the people in my village were farmers who worked the whole year or until toward the end of the year. Eating meat was only on a special occasion for instance festive season which meant when the festive season came they took a rest from daily work and cooked chicken curry and rice cake.

After crawled our ladder from the bottom of the sea to get a better life, we managed to live quite well. Not very often but I could say in a special event we visited a Japanese restaurant and ate shabu-shabu or you can call hot pot. It is our favorite place to taste delectable foods. Moreover, I love Japanese foods because of lots of vegetables and concern about health issues as well. That's how I met "hot pot" in my life.

Otah-otah and prawns - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

After moved to Singapore, gradually I have learned about Chinese culture including about Chinese New Year or we can call it Lunar New Year tradition. My rule is wherever I live I must learn its culture and tradition. So, today it's hot pot day! Well back then, I left my hometown since I was 16 years old to study at a university that was far away from my father's home to reach my dream. Since then, I have always been learned something new in my life and I am excited about it because for me my life is an adventure so that I can thrive and grow up to become a better person😊 Furthermore, my root was coming from mixed cultures. 

Making an easy hot pot at home is definitely possible. I have already known that everyone has their own preference that depends on their tradition or culture. I understand that. However, I would like to make it easier and tasty as well by using ingredients that I could find around me. So, definitely, my hot pot set menu is inspired mostly by Japanese by using teriyaki & tempura sauce, dashi, soba, Japanese rice. However, I added local food like otah-otah, and created another infuse that inspired by Thailand food; it was tom yam.

1. Hot Pot Soup

Basically, I would often choose "dashi" or we can call it a Japanese soup base. I like the taste because it the light and not spicy. I am not a fan of spicy foods that is the reason why I like Japanese foods. But, sometimes I want to taste something else like using tom yam paste to making hot pot soup. Even though I eventually get diarrhea after eating this kind of soup because of the spiciness, yet I dare to give it try! Ganbatte!🤨 or we can add miso paste to make this hot pot soup. And my choice was to add tom yam paste that I bought a few days ago at the hypermarket nearby. I forget, did I wrote a tom yam recipe which means makes tom yam paste from scratch? A few years ago I sometimes cooked tom yam dan made the spice from scratch.

Tom yam paste - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

Making tom yam hot pot soup:

• Pour about 1500 ml water into a pot. Add 5 tbsp tom yam paste
• Another option, if you are someone who not keen or have an issue with the spicy thing like me, then add 3 tbsp of tom yam paste and 1-2 chicken soup block into 1500 ml of water 

Vegetables:

Technically, people often use Chinese cabbage, some mushrooms, based on their tradition or preference. However, I discovered something else that we can use other vegetables to make hot pot soup vibrant for instance like in this picture I decided to assemble vegetable tom yam with these vegetables: french bean, spinach, pea sprout, bunapi mushroom, enoki mushroom, tomato, celery. Adding fried shallot will give the soup more aromatic. I love it!😋

2. Teppanyaki

Teppanyaki means grill. I often use this word rather than the grill. The meat that I choose to accompany tom yam soup is chicken breast, beef, sausage, some prawns. Dipping them into teriyaki sauce to create tasty grill meat. On the other hand, I decided to dip the prawns into tempura sauce before placing them on teppanyaki. Well, I wish I could eat crab meat, unfortunately, I have allergic, blah🙄 I even can't eat chicken and beef 😐

In this case, I wanted to add otah-otah on our hot pot set that bought along with other ingredients the other day. Otah-otah is a fish cake made of groundfish meat mixed with spices. Well, I haven't tried to make it from scratch yet. 

3. Soba and Japanese white rice

I mention many times that I like Japanese foods. So, I combined tom yam hot pot soup with soba. Or eating hot pot soup with Japanese white rice is also a wise choice😉

Tom yam hot pot soup with soba and fried shallot - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

4. Do not forget to eat fruit

This is my rule that I must eat fruit every day. Serving some fruit is also my concern when we decided to make the hot pot. My choice was orange and apple. You can choose the fruit that you want. So, basically, the fruit is my dessert. 

One thing that I almost forgot is I would like to serve berry tea while eating a hot pot set. Or just simply drinking water.

Tom yam hot pot soup with vegetables, grill prawns, chicken, and beef - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

It sounds easy to create a hot pot set menu at home, right? Especially in coronavirus year when the situation is unpredictable, it should be better to stay at home and making a hot pot in our own style. Sounds, cool, huh? And this definitely saves your money too. You know, right, that eating hot pot at a restaurant will drain your pocket, especially in Chinese New Year.

This is our Lunar New year dinner in 2021. Gong Xi Fa Cai, Happy Year of the Ox; an abundance of good health and fortune. Stay vigilant, stay safe, have a nice day!

Thank you for reading my article and see you in another article, bye for now🖐

Note:

• Written by Acik Mardhiyanti
• Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti
• Do not copy this article without permission
• Do not reuse these photographs anywhere else without permission