Steamboat Willie!!

Hmmm.. given this is a food obsessives blog, read (presumably) by other food obsessives, the title of this post conjures up images of Helen Mirren in The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover.

Sorry 'bout that.

Last night I got to christen my Mother's Day present. My new steamboat (Thanks, Mousie!). These things are available at most Asian grocers and come with little wire baskets for cooking/retrieving the food. Given that I recently talked to Ed from Tomatom about what I had in my kitchen, I have, in one Mother's day, gone from being a bit of a purist and only owning 2 decent pots, a heavy duty dutch oven, a single set of German cook's knives, a Le Crueset-style casserole pot and a Mull-O-Matic, I am now the proud owner of a steamboat (and accessories) and an ice-cream maker!

Alos, make sure you have a hunking great big plank of wood (we had some off-cuts of oregon under the house) to put your Steamboat Willie on. These things conduct heat like Stokowski doing the 1812*.



We sourced some local flake, the last of this season's mussels



Some frozen Aussie (SA) prawns, some local scallops , and Furry got all unnecessary about something called "Lobster Balls" (insert naughty pre-teen boy snicker)



Which turned out to be made from that nasty seafood extender that I eschew. He declared them lovely, tho.



Some fresh fillet steak cut into strips and some La Ionica chicken, done the same. Add a bowl of local mushies and some bok choi from the local greengrocers.



Into your steamboat, whack about a litre of good quality chicken stock. I was going to flavour mine with star anise and lemon grass, but then decided the whole idea of this dish is to let the ingredients flavour the stock. Food is put in the reservoir and hot coals whacked down the spout (we used heat beads, prepared to glowing over the gas ring). The ideas is that people can pick and choose what they want to cook, and for how long, and the morsels are them picked out with wire baskets, transferred to your bowl and a variety of dipping sauces are used to further flavour the goodies. This time I had a selection of Hoi Sin, terryaki, oyster sauce, and Furry's fantastic Nam Jim sauce.

2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 large green chillie, chopped
2 coriander roots
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons grated palm sugar
3 shallots (75g), chopped
¼ cup (60ml) lime juice

Combine all above ingredients and set aside

(adapted from the Women's Weekly Low Fat Cook Book)

The idea is that after all the ingredients are eaten, you add mung bean noodles to the soup, let them cook off, and then ladle the noodles and the soup into the bowls, add more sauces if you so desire, and drink the noodly broth. However, by the time we finished this lot, there was no room for slurpy noodly goodness, so we strained the broth, put aside the noodles and will have them tonight.

Every home should have a Steamboat Willie!

Obscure Classic Music Footnote: * Stokowski was the conductor that featured in Disney's "Fantasia" and was the conductor that the famous Bugs Bunny "Long Haired Hare" conductor cartoon was based on.