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Good Morning Chongqing
As many of my colleagues have described - working on this project has often meant working long hours. During our stay in Shanghai, it meant some of us in the production team didn't leave the hotel a whole heckuva lot.
This often meant eating dumplings from just down the street - or eating at the hotel restaurant in the interest of time.
In Chongqing however, I was able to break away for a little of the famed Sichuan Hotpot...
A big pot of oil and spices bubbles away at the table in front of us... small plates full of sundry varieties of meats, meat pieces, and veggies.
Last night marked my third hotpot experience. Tasty stuff.
The spices numb your lips and throat and sometimes make your eyes water.
The fish was wonderful, veggies delicious - and producer Brett Neely and I even mustered up the courage to try pig's brain:
Not something I recommend.
All easy stuff, folks--try biting though a nice white chunk of pig gums sometime to see how sharp your incisors are! That's the one thing I couldn't get through on my many hot pot adventures in the Chongqing area. One other recommendation--don't eat the peppers out of the hot pot!! Three of my students thought that as long as they were eating stuff immersed in the hot pot they might as well try the peppers in the hot pot themselves. It was a hot night and the guys didn't have shirts on so the effects were quite evident: immediate flushing, hyperventilating, sweating and swelling!!! I asked one of them somewhat sardonically if it was hot. He said: "No. It didn't taste hot. It went directly to pain!!". Enjoy! I miss it--we have some good Sichuan food here in Minneapolis, but no real hot pot.
