Chè Đậu Xanh ngon nhất!

Chè Đậu Xanh, the fabulous desert presented by our group might not be able to compete with Cô Bich's pink jelly-bannana soup, at least not in terms of colours and extravagance. But despite or becuase of its simplicity, it was clearly the preferred desert of the day - in no time at all, the big bowl filled with Chè was suddenly empty, even before we could try it ourselves. The interplay of our rich and pure ingredients, the beans, water, coco nut milk and a little sugar triumphed into a experience of taste, matchless in simplicity and gentleness.

Chè Đậu Xanh - Sweet Vietnamese Mung Bean Soup

If you did not have a chance to try our soup, you might want to take down our recipe for the original Vietnamese Chè Đậu Xanh (4-6 serves):

• 225 g Skinned split mung beans, soaked in water for 3 hours and drained; (Insider Tip: Buy the bright yellow, peeled, split mung beans for this soup rather than the whole green ones.)
• 500 ml Coconut milk
• 100 g Caster (superfine) sugar

Method:

Put the soaked mung beans in a pan and pour in 500 ml water.

Bring the water to the boil, stirring constantly, then reduce the heat and simmer until all the water has been absorbed.

Press the beans through a sieve, or puree them in a blender.
In a heavy pan, heat the coconut milk with the sugar, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.

Gently stir in the pureed mung beans, making sure the soup is thoroughly mixed and heated through.

You can serve the soup warm or cold - depending on your taste. Best to try both: Eat it warm, when its fresh and keep some of the Chè cooled for the next day.

Boiling the water with the beans, watch the heat!

After a lot of simmering, squashing, mushing and sqeezing, the soup is ready to eat

For the attraction of the eye, Lian instructed us in building little swans,
big swans, big boxes and little turtles out of paper....

Các sinh viên tiếng Viêt Nam waiting for Chè Đậu Xanh
...which is standing in the middle of the table

Cô Bich trying our soup - Her face being very critical....

When the judges reached for our dish however, our confidence vanished for a short time. Being the first to try the soup, Cô Bich carefully tried one of our prepared samples, but instead of breaking into a fury of excitement, her facial expression winced for a moment - was is that horrible? A "tốt qua" from her mouth then reliefed us.... And as she passed on one of our little bowls to the friendly neighbour woman, who had taken photos of us with everyone's camera, we knew that it couldn't be that bad after all....

The image of the day was clearly the huge tabel filled with all the food... Mmhh it looked all so good! Well then, chào các bạn, chào các cô! Ăn ngon!

Lian, Rachel, Halimah, Dennis