In celebration of Lunar New Year, the chef and cookbook author Natasha Pickowicz reflects on celebrating her favorite holiday with hot pot in an adapted excerpt from her new book, Everyone Hot Pot: Creating the Ultimate Meal for Gathering and Feasting, published by Artisan Books.
Growing up in San Diego, I counted down the days for the Lunar New Year to begin, because it meant that we would have hot pot. In the temperate climate of San Diego, the cooler months took their sweet time to roll around, and I longed for “real” weather—hot pot weather. The closest we’d get in La Jolla was the thick, wet fog that crawled towards the coast most mornings, or damp, long nights that left our front lawn sticky with dew.
When the Lunar New Year finally approached, there was one certainty in our home: the hot pot would come out. Hot pot is the ancient cookery method of rapidly poaching bite-sized morsels of fresh vegetables, meats, seafood, and tofu in a communal tableside broth. It’s the strongest tradition we have in our family, stronger than Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, and Mother’s Day combined. My love for hot pot grows exponentially every year, as I introduce new people to it. The love expands, the circle widens, the tradition shifts.
My mother, Li Huai, an artist born in Beijing, and my father, Paul Pickowicz, a New England-born Chinese film historian, fed me with their homey Chinese cooking. As a child, my mom made almost all of our meals, preparing simple, delicious things like soy sauce-braised chicken drumsticks and lap cheong fried rice; soft lobes of tomato folded into scrambled eggs and chili; whole steamed sea bass, stuffed with scallions and glossy with black bean sauce.
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Photo: Courtesy of Natasha Pickowicz
But it was hot pot that I loved the most above all others, because it meant that a party was just around the corner. As an only child, the anticipation of an impending hot pot night was thrilling. I’d sit down at our long dining room table, claiming a seat inches from a simmering pot perched over the exposed flickering flame of a small camping stove. Endless platters stretched before me: woven bundles of translucent noodles, frilly clusters of mushrooms and cabbage, tissue-thin slices of raw lamb, pork, and beef, plus my personal dipping bowl, painted with creamy, nutty white sesame sauce, as thick as a smoothie.