Might Be Mad

"Was she awake behind her pale lids, he wondered, her nakedness a deliberate provocation? He suspected not. There was something too artless about the way her legs were splayed, too childlike about the way her hands were tucked up against her breasts. And the final proof'? She was snoring. If this was indeed a performance, then that was a touch of genius."

It's quite a fortuitous thing, I’d say; a bout of illness has reacquainted me with the joys of a steamboat. Nothing fancy, it’s just a boiling pot of stock, into which you put an assortment of ingredients only limited by the your imagination and the diameter of your steamboat. The Swiss have fondue, we have steamboat. And into the pot, you can have anything from chicken broth (an excellent choice for weak stomachs or when you’re still suffering from stomach flu) to chilli oil Ma La soup, which is numbingly spicy and apt to give you diarrhoea unless you’re made of sterner stuff. But some people swear it’s how southern Chinese women stay svelte and shapely, as opposed the popular conception that it is the rigours of planting rice that explains their enviable BMI. But back on the subject, it sure beats eating porridge. The very idea terrifies me. But steamboat, it seems, never gets tired. I could eat it every day. For a successful steamboat, I have found the following ingredients to b...