Shabu-Shabu

Got invited for shabu-shabu (しゃぶしゃぶ) by Bread Parpas and Marmas over Deepavali. Shabu-shabu is a Japanese variant of hot pot where thinly sliced meat and vegetables are put into a hot pot of water, cooked and then eaten with dipping sauces e.g. ponzu sauce. As the meat are very thinly sliced, it gets cooked nearly as soon as it is dip into boiling water. The meat is dip and wash inside the boiling water in a brushing motion and then fish out, dip into one's preferred sauce and into one's mouth. Uuuuuuuuuuuuu.... oishikatta!!! It's really so yummy!! ^_^ Definitely different from our local steamboat where soup stock is usually use in place of hot water.

Before our shabu-shabu session, Bread Marmas prepared light appetizers of crackers with cheese, smoked salmon and caviar. That was really finger licking especially for ABC-Junior. *Slurp*

Appetizers

Also tried Bread Marmas's special home-made japanese pickles. Can you believe that brown tub of "mud" had followed Bread Marmas for over 40 years and never clean or change before? We ate that plate of Japanese pickles that was digged out from this tub. GROSS!! hahahaha! ON the contrary, the pickles tasted really nice. And this is a treasure box for a traditional Japanese housewife to make their own taste pickles. Each household will have their own unique pickling medium. Be it a special container, different concoctions of miso (fermented soya bean), su (Japanese vinegar), nuka (bran), sake (rice wine), shoyu (soya sauce), salt or brine. The pickling foods like diakon (Japanese radish), ume (Japanese prumes), kabu (turnip), Kyuri (Japanese cucumber), nappa (cabbage), spinach, uri, nasubi (Japanese eggplant) can be put into the tub for pickling depending on personal preference.

Home-made otsukemono (Japanese pickles)

Had rice too...healthy brown rice... cos I am on diet.

Gen-mai (brown rice)

Of course the main part is eating shabu-shabu... this is really fun. Because moi doesn't take beef, Bread Parpas and Marmas had kindly "isolated" Moi to feast a whole POT of sliced pork to myself. *Burp* Oops with a LOT of vegetables. Kekekeke! Moi was terribly FULL after that. ^^;;)

Ingredients for Shabu-Shabu

All into the cooking pot....

Nabe

The meat tasted really good even without the sauce, just a little plain. Japanese usually eat the cooked meat with ponzu sauce which is citrus flavoured dipping sauce found commonly in many Japanese dishes.

Ponzu Sauce

This is first time for me to try shabu-shabu and i pretty enjoyed the process. heehee! Will definitely be eating on this again... ANYONE want to cheoh me?