Cookbook author Natasha Pickowicz wants everyone to get in on hot pot | Canada Voices

Natasha Pickowicz had her first hot pot before she could walk. “When I asked my mom what her first memory was of me being at the hot pot table, she was like, ‘Oh, we strapped you in when you were a baby and still in your high chair,’” Pickowicz shared, laughing.

Her mother, Beijing-born artist Li Huai, immigrated to the U.S. and settled in San Diego in the mid-1980s after marrying her father, Paul Pickowicz, an American scholar of Chinese history. “My mom told me that when she married my dad, she had no clue how to cook, so she relied on the hot pot a lot,” said Pickowicz, a four-time James Beard Foundation Award finalist and author of The New York Times bestselling cookbook More Than Cake.

The hot pot’s roots in China can be traced back hundreds of years. The Mandarin word for hot pot, huǒ guō, translates to “fire pot.” And the concept, as Pickowicz lays out in the introduction to Everyone Hot Pot: Creating the Ultimate Meal for Gathering and Feasting (Artisan), is simple: a communal meal around a metal pot of stock bubbling over a heat source, with meat and vegetables that cook as they are added to the pot.

Regional variations abound, from Yunnan’s mushroom-heavy version to Jiangsu’s chrysanthemum petal-soaked broth to the seafood-filled Cantonese style of Guangdong. Neighbouring Asian countries have their own takes on the hot pot, too, like shabu-shabu in Japan and budae-jjigae in Korea. Though the dish is an ideal antidote to cold weather, it’s not confined to the winter months (the belief that you can’t have hot soup in the summer is a Western idea Pickowicz hopes to rebut). Nor is it relegated to haute cuisine: It’s accessible and endlessly customizable depending on the ingredients you have available.

That’s the idea at the core of Pickowicz’s approach: Everyone can hot pot. Once you have the essentials – a pot (a divided or chimney hot pot is common, but a Dutch oven or stock pot works, too), a tableside heat source (like an induction cooktop) and chopsticks and soup bowls – the rest is up to you. “There are as many variations to hot pot as there are to soup itself,” Pickowicz writes in the book.

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The hot pot is a blank canvas for experimentation, one that starts with the broth. In the book, the chef shares how-tos for a ginseng and pork bone broth, a royal chrysanthemum rendition, a tingly beef option and a simple chicken stock, among others. Putting them into recipe form was harder than Pickowicz had imagined.

“The biggest challenge was actually articulating how I make broth because I don’t use recipes – it’s very much just a handful of this and that, and pulling bits and bobs from the fridge,” she said. “I often think of broth-making less as a ‘follow these exact ingredients’ and more as a framework.”

The same goes for the rest of Everyone Hot Pot. Recipes for accompaniments such as black and white shaobing and mung bean rice pilaf; sauces such as calamansi vinaigrette; crisp complements such as Asian pear, jicama and fennel slaw; and desserts such as honey tangerine granita are merely suggestions. What Pickowicz wants is for the reader to have fun with it, just as she has since she was a kid.

“You’re playing with your food in this wonderful way,” she said. “It’s this disarming kind of meal because it’s so interactive.”

It’s the communal quality of hot pot, above all else, that has always delighted Pickowicz. As a child, hot pot was a way for her to partake in celebratory rituals along with the grownups, and as an adult, it’s served as her throughline across various cities, jobs, apartments and partners. It’s an impetus for gatherings, both homespun and professional (for years, Pickowicz ran a popular hot pot pop-up at Brooklyn bar Honey’s).

As the dinner party – particularly the low-stakes kind without the fussiness of multiple courses – enjoys a renaissance in reaction to growing social isolation, the hot pot makes more sense than ever.

“People are craving moments of connection, and the hot pot, where you’re not just sharing food – you’re cooking and eating together with a communal broth – there’s something intimate about that,” Pickowicz said.

It can be a transformative experience, she added, one that she hopes the cookbook will kickstart for those who are new to the dish. “Cookbooks can show you another way of looking at or being in the world, and hopefully open you up to new ways of relating and seeing,” she said. “Hot pot is naturally expansive,” she continued. “I want everyone to jump in. This meal will meet you where you are.”