Miss Hot-Lips Gỏi Gà!

Before the actual day, we spent thứ năm purchasing ingredients for our gỏi gà. This food project was indeed a great challenge for the 4 of us as we không nấu ở nhà. So a try-out session was necessary to prevent us from making a terrible mess on the day itself. Being inexperienced, we took a while to locate and buy our basic ingredients. But we managed and after making our purchases, we finally made our way to ký túc xá Ridge View Residence (where Pei Kun stays) to make our gỏi gà! The condition of the kitchen freaked us out a little but fortunately, it was still bearable and we were able to go on with our “testing session”. Haha. (Pei Kun: Xin lỗi các bạn!) And so we started off our little cooking adventure and followed our recipe as closely as we possibly could. However, we soon met our first speed-bump – the salad dressing! We had no idea on how to marinate the gà, so after much deliberation, we decided to improvise by using the sauces and ingredients that had distinctive tastes. We hoped that these would bring out a “lively” taste and awaken taste buds. And that was what we did! The fish sauce, chili and lime were eventually used in making the dressing to marinate gà. However, due to time limitation, the gà was only marinated for 5 minutes before going down into the hot frying pan. To our surprise, the gà taste turned out well! We invited bạn của Pei Kun who is a Vietnamese to try out the salad we prepared and she said it tasted okay, acceptable and most importantly edible, just that it was not salty enough. We then realized that Vietnamese like strongly flavoured food while Singaporeans like their food a little more plain. Nevertheless, we felt satisfied with our first attempt. We even found the salad rather delicious! But, that could have been due to our hunger as it was nearly 10 and we had yet to eat dinner. Haha. After our successful attempt, we felt excited and confident, and were looking forward to thứ bảy.

On thứ bảy, we gathered at 930a.m. at the Orchard MRT station with our full gear on that was our ingredients and utensils. And off we were to Cô Bích house! However, we were soon met by our second speed-bump – confusing directions to Co Bich’s house! As you have probably guessed, we got lost halfway after missing a turn. But after giving a call to our helpline- Cô Bích’s number- we finally found our way there. Upon reaching, we got our things ready as soon as we could and got started not long after. Thanh was in charge of frying gà, and with Miss Bibi’s help, the gà was cooked successfully.

The preparation process was rather fast since we had tried it out hôm kia. The decoration, on the other hand, was rather tedious as we tried to incorporate everything that we had left into the “not-so-big” bowl: cherry tomatoes, purple lettuce, Japanese cucumber, onions, eggs, chili, orchids and shallots. During the process, our dear Cindy accidentally “shredded” her finger along with the carrots. Chàn quá! Càc bạn ơi phải chú ý while handling the knive và shredder! And after a while, we finally came up with our end product: Miss Hot-Lips Gỏi Gà! The lips were actually added in by Cô Bich. Cô Bich rất sáng tạo!

However, Miss Hot-Lips Gỏi Gà waited quite a while for the other groups to get ready and after some time, her companion, the tub of salad that was used to feed các cô, got a little soggy. Oh no!
(Tips for future gỏi gà groups: Try not to toss in the sauce until everyone is ready. We’d advise you to set aside some veggy and toss it in when your turn is coming, so that your gỏi gà will not be soggy.) Though slighty soggy, our gỏi gà was still safe for comsumption!

The verdict from our teachers: Tasty sauce! The salad was not sliced to coleslaw-size which was probably why our teachers thought they were pretty difficult pick and chew on.
We, on the other hand, liked it BIG and crunchy!

Here came the eating time! Yeah! Chúng em rất đoi từ sang đến trưa. We had a wonderful time cooking and tasting all kinds of Vietnamese food. Thức ăn việt ngon quá! Cám ơn các cô và các bạn rất nhiều! Một ngày chúng ta đi nhà của cô Bich nấu ăn lần nữa nhé!

(look at the wide array of food!)

All in all we found the project to be both culturally engaging and personally satisfying. Culturally, we got to taste and make traditional Vietnamese dishes which to our delight (and to our surprise!), were found to be delicious by our peers and teachers. Besides that, we redeemed ourselves! Being girls who seldom cooked, we proved to ourselves that we have the prowess of chefs in the making, producing good, edible, tasty chicken salad!

(the group members: Cindy, Hai Bee, Pei Kun and Rachel)