Chè chuối (Banana Soup)

Chào các cô, thầy và các bạn!

Chúng em la Amelia, Joi (Ngọc), Yu Song (Hài) và Joel (Vinh). Chúng em để nấu ăn chè chuối. Chúng em rất vui vì đây là chúng em thư nhật nấu ăn Việt.

Once we knew we were going to cook banana soup for our cooking project, we soon found the recipe and checked it with the teachers to see whether it was acceptable before we tried it out in the kitchen ourselves.

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What You Need:
2 cups of water
1/2 cup of sugar (less, if the bananas are very ripe)
1-(14 ounce) can of light coconut milk
2 large ripe bananas, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1/2 teaspoon of salt
 
What to Do:
STEP 1) Bring the water and coconut milk to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the sugar, salt, and tapioca. Reduce the heat to medium-low; let it cook for about 30 minutes, stirring frequently.

 
STEP 2) Stir in the bananas, remove from the heat and let stand for 15 minutes.
*Note: after you add the bananas, don't stir too much, it'll break up the fruit. Serve hot, or chill for 3-4 hours and then serve.

 
STEP 3) Enjoy!
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After which, we went ahead to try the recipe out yourselves before the actual day! All seemed well and we proceeded to think about decorations. We brainstormed and after exhausting all our creative juices, we eventually decided to use coconut husks as bowls and the lotus (Vietnam's national flower) as decoration. Special thanks to Joi for preparing the coconut husks and the ingredients the day before the big day! We also had intentions to cut out the map of Vietnam using the leftover banana skin after we had prepared the banana soup, but we decided not to use it as the banana skin turned black too quickly! So we decided to use mini maps of Vietnam instead as decorations instead of the banana skins. It pays to prepare your decorations beforehand as well!

Our Decoration for our banana soup!

On the day itself, we were the first group to arrive, and unlike all the other groups, we had the whole kitchen to ourselves :D But that only lasted 15 minutes cause the other group came soon after.

Preparing the banana soup!

The soup is done!

Decorations and soup together :)

Of course being the 1st group meant we had to wait a long time before everybody was done with their dishes, but we found ourselves helping other groups with their dishes and it was overall a very pleasant time being food-critics for the other groups as they asked for our opinions on their dishes! "Too bland? Too salty?"

And after all the wait was over, our banana soup went on display!

Looking back, this was probably the most enjoyable project we've ever had in NUS. Maybe we were a little worried that the final product wouldn't be fantastic, but it was a lot less stressful then mugging for papers! Through this project, we experienced just a little more of what life is like in Vietnam, so now we can say that we have spoken the language and tasted the goodness of Vietnamese food! We just want to say a big thank you to everyone who helped us in one way or another!