How do you like your steamboat?

Last Saturday, after the Tulip Festival, we went for dinner at a friend’s place near where we lived. That evening dinner was Steamboat for 8 persons.

On the table was an array of raw ingredients – fish fillets, chicken fillets, prawns, fish cakes, fish balls, mussels, meat balls, towfoo, 3 varieties of vegetables and vermicelli (bee hoon). The cooking pot was brought from Malaysia and was meant for Shabu Shabu and was used for this occasion.

The dinner started off slow and it was a boring dinner. This friend of mine has a particular way of cooking the raw ingredients. Normally we would put in a small quantity of different ingredients into the pot and allow it to cook. Then we scooped it out into our bowl and eat it. It is like potluck but you get a variety of the food and slowly savoured it in with the sweet and chilli sauce.

But my learned friend does not like it that way. He will only cook one ingredient at a time. Prawns go into the pot, wait for it to cook, scoop it out, and eat. Then fish fillets go into the pot, wait for it to cook, scoop it out eat. Then chicken fillets….you get the drift.

It was a slow, painful torturous dinner. It was no fun. There were no surprises and competition for the food. It is much like a slow steamboat to China.

The other guests wanted to dump all the ingredients in but my learned friend insisted his way is the right way to have steamboat. Since he is the host we all have to behave even though we disagree.

Now my readers, which is the right way to have steamboat, a mixture of the ingredients cooked together or my learned friend’s way?