Da Been Lo

I've always described Da Been Lo as some kind of Chinese fondue. However, if you check wikipedia, it's actually described more as a hot pot. It's one of those (to me) one-of-a-dishes that I crave sometimes for which there is no other substitution.

A few years ago when I went to Hong Kong with my mother, we had da been lo at a restaurant where it was the specialty. Although we have it with water at home, you could also request different broths as the base. All of the seafood was super fresh. The shrimp that arrived at the table skewered were still twitching. That's how fresh they were!

Da been lo is really a multi-course meal similar to Peking Duck. At least the way I eat it. First, you create your sauce in your own bowl. Then you will take your own little basket -- pictured there to the bottom right of the image -- take the raw food from the prettily arranged platters, and put it into the pot to cook. Whenever you feel it's done, you take it out and put it in your bowl and repeat. As every adds their tasty morsels to cook, the flavor of the soup is enhanced. I have to say it rather reminds me of that old story about stone soup that I read about in elementary school.

The second course is to add noodles to the pot, and, when they are done, move them to your bowl to eat. We like to use cellophane noodles typically, but tonight we were out so we used udon instead. I like to texture of the cellophane noodles better, but j finds that the udon clings less. The third is to take some of the soup from the pot to your bowl to drink. All in all, a very healthy, tasty, and filling meal!

Setting up
I have a special pot just for da been lo that I bought at an Asian market. One could easily use any electric pot as long as you can regulate the heat. Boil water and then add it to the electric pot and bring it to a very low boil or a high simmer.

The platters
Although you can really have anything you want, here are the things that j and i like to have with da been lo.
- Sliced flank steak
- Shrimp, cleaned and shelled, but with the tail shell still on
- Soft tofu
- Sliced taro root
- Baby bok choy
- Sliced cod

The taro root takes a while to cook, so you should really slice it first and add it to the pot to cook while you are finishing the rest of the prep.

The sauce
- 1 raw egg
- soy sauce
- sesame sauce
- dad's pepper sauce (recipe below)

A note about raw eggs. Many people fear eating raw eggs largely in part of salmonella. Julia Child tells us that salmonella is carried only on the outside of egg shells and, when you crack eggs, you should take care to do it on a flat surface like the table and never on the edge of a pot or bowl. If you break the shell into the egg, you are getting all the bacteria on the shell into the egg.

Dad's pepper sauce
My dad's pepper sauce is a tasty Szechuan-based sauce that adds flavor to every Chinese dish. It is the the only condiment that I generally allow to be placed on the table. J adds it to most things: dumpling sauce, daikon cakes, noodles, etc. Many friends have laughed at me for not being able to eat anything spicy from various Mexican, Japanese, Indian, etc cultures, but this one pepper sauce is fiery and I can eat it without problems.

The ingredients
- a mid-size pot with 1/4" corn oil
- a few cloves of garlic, sliced or minced
- red pepper flakes
- a handful of szechuan peppercorns
- dark soy sauce

A note about szechuan peppercorns: they were not available for trade for a couple years so they are somewhat hard to find these days. However, the ban on them was lifted just this year, so they should be widely available again soon.

1. Heat the oil on high. Add 1 small clove of garlic. When the garlic is black, the oil is almost ready.
2. When the oil is hot, add all the garlic and let it cook until brown.
3. Remove pot from heat.
4. Add the szechuan peppercorns and a lot of red pepper flakes. If items are not browning enough, return it to the stove.
5. Add dark soy. Unless you have a good idea for proportions or you have had this sauce before, I admit it is pretty hard to know how much to add! Your proportion of soy sauce:oil should probably be 1:1 or 1:2 max. Note: the sauce will boil a lot when you add the soy sauce so be careful!
6. Add a little sugar

Well, that's it for me. Now that we've finished our da been lo, we are having root beer floats!