It’s getting pretty frosty here at night, so hot pot was on my mind. I invited a newly single friend of ours to join, as he seemed excited about the prospect when I brought it up a few weeks ago 
We started off the evening with dry AF martinis & Sichuan spicy peanuts.
Assorted delicacies to cook up in our Sichuan fondue: TJ’s shaved lamb, local shaved beef our buddy contributed,
Aldi’s black tiger shrimp,
baby bok choy, and the tender leaves from one head of napa cabbage,
plus quartered shiitake shrooms that had already been bathing in the broth for a while, together with the thick parts of the napa cabbage.
Broth base was the yoozh: a mix of BTB mushroom & roasted garlic, plus our favorite De Zhuang hot pot base.
I made 3 different dipping sauces for us:
— fresh ginger, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil for the shrimp (I find this one
works best with seafood & really well with salmon),
— a peanut sauce with chili crisp, rice wine vinegar, and scallions,
— a spicy kumquat-kewpie sauce with fresh ginger & Maggi sauce
— the 4th was store-brought kewpie roasted sesame sauce nobody was interested in
We ate our weight in meat, shrimp, veg & shrooms, then solved ALLLLL the problems in the world after dinner with digestifs, i.e. MOAR martinis 
