Mala Tang writes: If you wander around Chef Liu’s hometown of Chengdu, you’ll find the streets filled with diners sitting at tables gathering around bubbling hot pots, in which dozens of dried chilies bob up and down in an oily red broth. Meals notoriously last hours as locals chat, sip beer, and dip morsels of food into a simmering liquid of “hot and spicy” broth. One of the most popular dishes in Sichuan, this delicacy is eaten by rich and poor alike, whether in a fancy restaurant, or on construction sites where workers hunker down to eat it, paying a small sum for a skewer of food to plunge into the spicy broth. The hot pot itself is a saucepan that sits on a portable burner, surrounded by an array of small plates piled high with fresh ingredients. Guests select pieces of food and drop them into the soup to cook, and then dip them into a delicious mixture of seasoned sesame oil and chopped garlic. While hot pot can be found throughout China, Sichuan is famous for its ma la hot pot, which is characterized by the yin and yang effect that the sichuan pepper and the red hot chilies create when combined together
