Steamboat Dinner

All members in my family love steamboat except for my hubby. Simple, steamboat is not meant for the impatient sort. So, my solace when my hubby is away from home is often an arrangement of a steamboat family dinner in his absence!

The base soup was my mom-in-law's production. I rather called it as the ' superior stock" as she would insist to put in many ingredients such as chicken carcass, turnips, carrots and celery, slow boiled for at least 2 hours. Sometimes the dried scallops were not spared either. When dried scallops are added, I can't but to rename the soup as "imperial stock" instead. In actual fact, you really need not put in too many ingredients for the soup base since it will be sweetened by the steamboat ingredients anyway.
There are many ready ingredients available for steamboat. The must-have list is as follows:-

Vegetables : Lettuce, Chinese spinach, water cress (kangkong), coriander leaves (cilantro), white cabbage and etc. In fact any green leafy vegetables are suitable for steamboat. Mushrooms are fantastic too. You can put any types of mushrooms as they will enhance the taste of the soup further. Lastly don't forget another very important vegetable: Cameron Highland Pearly corn which is my favorite.

Seafood: Floral crabs, prawns, lala(clams), fresh scallops and not forgetting abalone if cost is not a major issue. Anyway, the cheap replacement is "abalone mushrooms". Varieties of fish balls and fish meats produce are also available in any frozen food store. My mom in law will normally make her own "yong tau fu"

Meat: I don't normally like to add meat. Basically you can have some meat balls, organic chicken slices/lean pork slices or sausages.

This is really marvelous!