GỎI GÀ 101

Chúng em là Hà, Phương, Đông và Công. Thứ sáu tuần trước, chúng em nấu gỏi gà ở nhà thầy Minh. Chúng em cũng học nhiều thứ về việc nấu món ăn Việt Nam.

There are a million gỏi gà recipes out there, so whichever you decide to choose in the end, here are some utterly important things to remember if you wanna make gỏi gà that tastes like the REAL thing.

1.     BẮP CẢI / CABBAGE To shred the CABBAGE which is the main component of the salad, use a peeler (the thing that you use to peel carrots). Don’t use a shredder or a mandolin cos it takes a lot more effort!

2.     GÀ / CHICKEN Make sure you peel your cooked CHICKEN into shreds. The texture isn’t nice if you pluck them into small pieces.

3.     HERBS Throw in plenty of herbs with your cabbage for a light and fresh tasting dish. Be generous! We used THAI BASIL (this is different from Italian Basil), CORIANDER and MINT. Avoid the herb stems and use the leaves only.

4.     CARROT & CUCUMBER These 2 are completely optional. Add a little of each if you really want them in your gỏi gà. If you add too much cucumber, your gỏi gà will end up too wet and tasting too sour.

5.     DRESSING VINEGAR + SUGAR + FISH SAUCE / NƯỚC MẮM. Some people substitute the vinegar with LIME JUICE, which was what we did on Saturday but we think the vinegar dressing tastes more Vietnamese though. Some people even skip the NƯỚC MẮM altogether, but the combination above is a safe bet.

At the end of the day, this is what one of our group members had to say...

Phương: The cooking project was a really nice experience for me as I had never really gotten the chance to eat Vietnamese food before. At first, I had thought that the process was easy, considering that we were just going to make a salad. ‘How hard could it get?’ How wrong was I to claim that. Making the sauce for the salad was difficult. With nothing in mind of how the sauce was supposed to taste like, we just started mixing the ingredients. First try, hmm, the sauce was sour. Luckily, our Vietnamese friends Thơ and Liên helped us a lot. Besides being our food testers, they also helped us cut our watermelon. Thanks to them, we had plenty of watermelon to share with everyone. We even managed to give Cô Qùynh a cup of watermelon juice which she enjoyed. 
At the end of it, I was quite full not because of our gỏi gà, but it was more of the slices of watermelon that the group members were forced to eat. But, I have to admit our gỏi gà tasted good thanks to the effort of our fellow members and Vietnamese friends! It was really a fun experience that helps us to understand an aspect of Vietnamese culture.