Hot Pot Hong Kong

"I'm trying to lead a good Christian life, so there ain't too much spicy to tell about me."

~~:Loretta Lynn

I joined all the logicians (the field coordinators that work here at DF--they are all local Cantonese) for my first hot pot experience in Mong Kok the other night. As most Asian things go, it was a very social event. Extremely crowded restaurant. Everyone sits down to this big pot heating on an iso-butane burner. There's a liquid broth in the pot. Probably chicken stock. You order a platter of food that is eventually cooked in the steaming pot. You toss whatever you want in and it boils the heck out of it. It's a smorgasbord, a virtual witches cauldron. 

The things you can order to cook range from the obscure to the mundane. Tripe (intestine, typically pig), chicken feet, chicken heads split in half, beef balls, fish balls, chicken testicles, chicken wings, pork strips, pork fat, beef strips, ground up fish, octopus tentacles, clams, bok choy, lettuce, turnips, corn...you name it. It all goes in. You can spice it to how you like and all the flavors of the food eventually mingle together as it boils. It's a glutton's heaven. Eat your heart out baby. And that is exactly what everyone does. 

Hot pots are typically held at an all you can eat buffet style restaurant. We paid $148 HK dollars a person (this is $21 US dollars), and we each were given two hours to stuff our faces. All food and drinks were at our disposal during those two hours. Once the allotted time was up, they kicked us out. 

So, everyone scoots up to the table and a hodgepodge of edible items get thrown into the pot. While they wait, they entertain one another with loud, animated conversation. Chinese style. High speed Cantonese. It's quite the experience. 

Due to the fact that I was a bit late arriving for the start of the evening, I showed up as things were already getting down to a boil. I pulled up a chair to the table. I examined the roiling pot which definitely looked like something I should have been stirring with a long stick, a witch's hat perched on my head, cackling evil spells to knock off my worst enemy. Next thing I knew, a brown, juicy looking chicken's foot was plopped into my bowl by a co-worker. Apparently this was my penance for arriving late. Eat the dreaded chicken's foot. Something I had managed to avoid so far.

A boiled, or steamed rather, chicken's foot is no big deal to an Asian. They eat everything in Hong Kong. It's a crime to waste. To a Westerner however, it's a whole different story. Some are brave, many are not. I have watched fellow Westerner's squirm at the sight of chickens' feet in a Cantonese restaurant. I, myself, have shuddered at the sight of the bony, skin covered amputated legs of some unfortunate poultry. They've never looked appetizing and I don't quite understand why they are regularly on the menu list around here. 

Now don't get me wrong, I have quite the iron stomach for the most part. I grew up on a dairy farm. I have been splattered in the face with cow manure and urine. I have ate things like squirrel pot pie (which is one of my favorite dishes back home). I've ate raccoon, deer heart and liver. Dishes that are not necessarily that common in the every day household. But, they don't quite equate to chicken's feet. 

I also grew up raising chickens. That's how I was able to get a little spending money as a kid, by selling eggs to friends and neighbors from my chickens. So, I know how dirty chickens are. 

Chickens are absolutely dirty, filthy birds. Disgusting. I grew up watching my chickens stroll through their own chicken droppings as they pecked away at insects and other treasures they found on the ground. Watched as they marched thru clumps of chicken shit (mind my french) that would stick on their feet, traces of it jammed beneath the nails that protrude from each long,bony digit. Chickens don't exactly have the ability to wash their feel like say a cat, or we do, for that matter. So that grime and build up of God knows what pretty much stays there, creating its own form of toe jam. Pretty gross right? 

So, as I sat there staring at this chicken foot in my bowl, that is the image I kept seeing in my head, playing over and over. One of my chickens raising its shit encrusted foot to scratch at a wayward itch on its head. 

How did they know they got all that shit out from beneath the chicken's nails? How much chicken shit was still ground into the minuscule creases of the skin covering the palm of the foot? That's all a chicken's foot is, skin covering cartilage and bone. No meat whatsoever. That's why I wondered why they served it in restaurants. There is no nutritional value to a chicken's foot. Except for maybe lovely chicken shit flavored broth? 

I felt my stomach do a somersault as I eyed the foot. It looked exactly like it did when attached to the bird. There was no difference, even after being boiled. It was just sans the bird. I vaguely wondered what became of the rest of the bird? Was there a one legged fowl hopping around? 

I finally shrugged. It was either now or never. I grabbed my chopsticks and took a healthy bite into that juicy spicy chicken foot.

Yum...?

And that was my first hot pot experience. 

Signing off from Taiwan