Delicious Steamboat

This is an all-in-one dish that my mum usually cooks for Chinese New Year or at times when she doesn't feel like cooking so many dishes. It's versatile as any ingredients can be used, though I usually use cabbage & seafood. The amount of food can also be adjusted according to the number of persons. And you don't need to cook all ingredients, you can just prepare the raw ingredients and serve them on plates for guests to choose & cook for themselves. Of course you have to provide the necessary "tools" for them like colanders etc. I like its flexibility in variety & quantity. Fun too!

Ingredients:
- a pot of hot water or soup stock
- vegetables, suggest cabbage
- seafood, suggest fish & prawns (even abalone if it's for Chinese New Year)
- others, suggest fishballs, mushrooms, carrot, quail eggs
- 1 or 2 slices of ginger, optional, to mask "fishy" taste

Method:
- prepare vegetables beforehand, wash & cut
- cut fish into slices, marinate with salt, pepper, sesame oil & a little corn flour
- for tastier soup use whole prawns. For easy eating, remove heads & shells, then also marinate with salt, pepper, sesame oil & a little corn flour
- prepare quail eggs by separately boiling & shelling them, just like making hard boiled eggs
- prepare all other ingredients, washing, cutting etc
- put sufficient hot water or soup stock into the steamboat, wait for water to boil, add a little salt & sesame oil if desired
- add cabbage, carrot, mushrooms, fishballs
- add ginger, fish, prawns
- add fishballs, quail eggs

Tips:
- fish, prawns & abalone cook rather fast, only put them into the boiling soup when you want to eat & ladle them out immediately when done
- turn down heat when not cooking. Prepare a little more soup / hot water than you need as soup in the steamboat will dry out due to constant heating. Add when necessary
- raw fishballs are cooked if they "float" in the soup
- you can add any other ingredients that you like, for example "yong tau foo", meat balls, crabsticks, "tang hoon" (vermicelli) etc
- if you don't have a steamboat, just cook everything in a big pot and serve with rice. Tastes nice too :-)