Boston Day 4: DIY Dinner

Perhaps I haven't been clear.  Yes, I am learning stuff!  After all I'm in the city of education ... where there's Boston College, Boston University, Harvard and MIT.  I have learned:

• I am staying at the very hotel where the Parker House roll was invented.  That fact is pretty indisputable.  The Hotel is called the Parker House.
• The first publicly funded school for African-American children was in Boston.
• Oh yeah, and Oracle SOA.  Which is why I'm here.  But I won't bore you with the geeky details.

It was a soggy day in Boston, so I didn't venture far over the lunch hour.  Just down to the African American Heritage museum, just around the corner in Beacon Hill.  The museum is in the old school house, and is right next to the African Meeting House, the oldest extant African-American-built church. 

I'm a big African-American history buff, and it was really cool standing in the meeting place where they came together and discussed, organized, worshiped and stood as a community.  When the Fugitive Slave act sent bounty hunters into the city pilching people from the streets (many of whom were NOT fugitive slaves), they stood by each other here.  When soldiers went to the Massachusetts Regiment in the civil war, the community took care of their families left behind.  And the doctrine of "separate is NOT equal" was born here, over a hundred years before Brown vs. Board of Education.  I find African-American history inspiring ... I may not "get" it on some level because I haven't dealt with racism, but I get how daunting the whole task of civil rights was, and still is.  That was lunch well spent.

So let's face it.  I have been a lazy ass when it comes to dinner.  I haven't lifted a finger to grill the salmon or drizzle aoli on the plates.  So I decided to go someplace where I can share the duties of the meal a little bit ... and so I ended up at the Q Restaurant for some Mongolian Hot Pot!

I have never MHP before, but now I'm a big fan.  Here's the setup.  You sit at a table with a smooth cooktop burner in the middle.  You order broth - for mine I got a "split pot" of regular and spicy broth.  (Spicy is on the right, you can see all the peppers floating on the top.  Ouchy!)  You get your choice of thinly sliced raw meat (I picked short rib), raw noodles and raw vegetables.  You take your chopsticks or a ladle and you dunk your meat, noodles or vegetables in the broth for about two minutes until they're done.   That's all it takes!  The flavor of the broth is heavenly, full of ginger and hot pepper, garlic and spices, and it is infused throughout the food.  Everything's fresh and very hot this way.  You get sauces to throw on top.  And if you want, you have a bown to just ladle up some broth and make yourself a side bowl of soup to munch on when your other stuff is cooking. 

"This is how the Mongolians conquered the world!" goes the blurb in the menu.  I think it might've had something more to do with chopping people's heads off, but whatever.  I would've been one happy conqueror eating this every day!

This being my last real overnight in Boston, I celebrated with high-end dessert over at Finale.  Peanut Butter pie ... and just the right amount of cream, and not too much sugar to get in the way of the peanutty taste!  The plate was littered with peanut brittle on the side and chocolate ganache in front.  A work of art!  Paired with a glass of 10 year old Tawney Port, it was the end of a perfect day. 

One more to go, and I'm back on the train to New York.