09 January is dad's birth anniversary. If he would be alive, he would be 69 years old today. On that day this year, the girls and I decided to spend a weekend together - going to ACE Water Spa and checking in at a hotel for some staycation. We chose to stay at Red Planet Hotels in Ortigas, and since Shangri-La Plaza Mall is just a walking distance away, we thought about eating Shabu-Shabu (or Hot Pot) because it was one of daddy's favorite food, and was something we learned about through him.
Healthy Shabu-Shabu is a popular hot pot place, my sister speaks highly of because of their food's quality and value for money. For this food trip, we decided to go for two individual sets because we seriously couldn't eat one set each. Our choice were beef striploin and prawns.
This is how one set looks like - a plate of thinly sliced beef, a plate with pechay, napa cabbage, shiitake mushroom, a carrot, a wedge of tomato, corn, tofu, crab sticks, mushroom balls, squid balls and two kinds of noodles - glass noodles and egg noodles. Also included in the set were - minced garlic, chopped chilies, chopped spring onions, sate sauce, an egg and a small bowl of brothy sauce.
As usual, we let sister lead the way in preparing the dish - letting the broth boil and placing ingredients one after another, starting with the ingredient that would cook longer. The restaurant gives free broth refill, but because we could only eat one serving, we decided to just jam all the ingredients inside the pot.
As for the sauce, what you need to do is - add half of the garlic and spring onions (plus the amount of chilis you prefer) in the small bowl of sauce, crack the egg and dip the yolk on the hot pot to cook it a little. Once it reached the soft boiled stage, add it to the sauce and mix it together. The other half of what's left, including the egg white, you place in the pot before adding the rest of ingredients.
My sister is allergic to seafood, so she ate more of the beef, mom ate more of the prawns, and I ate more of... balls. Yes, balls. Personally, I prefer the balls in hot pot, so I ordered extra squid balls and mushroom balls and ate them with gusto.
We paid 900+ for both sets. Still a good amount to pay for two hot pot of comfort and joy.
I come from a family who loves cooking and eating. I never had any formal training in cooking and that I taught myself how to cook based on the handed down recipes, but I could say that I can cook good food. In 2008, I started documenting my food trips for my