The spread included three different types of noodles, slices of different meats, prawns, oysters, mushrooms, leafy greens, calamari and fish balls. All nicely laid out on plates. There were two pots of chicken broth that were steaming hot.

I made my own secret sauce with a combination of hoisin sauce, sesame oil, chilli sauce, white pepper and other jars of goodies. Everyone gets to make their own special sauce which is placed in a little dish next to your setting.

Then you grab whatever ingredients you want and place them into the hot pots. When they are cooked, you fish them out with a small strainer. There is an art to this as you want to put the ingredients that take the longest to cook in first such as the cabbage an then place ingredients such as prawns and oysters in last.

With the ingredients fished out with the strainer and placed in your own bowl, you then take a bit of the sauce to flavor the meal.

We all ate until we were stuffed which is the only polite thing to do at these holiday get-togethers. To top it all off, for dessert we had my ‘I dream of lemons’ Lemon Dream Cupcakes and an Oreo cheesecake that Kristen made.

[View Slideshow]

Loni Kao Stark
Co-Founder StarkSilverCreek, Creative Director and Wine Collector

Loni is a self-professed foodie, adventure travel seeker and aspiring artist. It’s been said her laugh can be heard from San Jose all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. The former Ms. Global Petite runner-up is host of several SSC shows including WineTube TV, StarkSilverCreek Presents, Loreto Live, and the new series The Artist Diaries. Between busy travel schedules to Washington, Napa and global destinations such as Australia, the Baja and Europe, she expends the rest of her energy collecting wines, practicing “escape artist”-style cooking, and building what she hopes, one day, will be a real estate empire. She catches her breath by writing about her adventures.
Twitter: @lonikaostark More: articles bio

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