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

IRON CHEF VIETNAM!

The Iron Chefs Of Vietnam presents to U, gỏi cuốn!

It was surprising that all the ingredients are readily available in Singapore supermarket. The marketing part was rather smooth but the actual process was not as easy as we thought! Starting from the making of the sauce we learnt that crushed peanuts will be the last ingredient to add in and we have to learn to balance between the use of lime and fish sauce so there will be a great mixture of salty and sour taste.

As for the cooking of the raw ingredients, we have to cook it longer to ensure that its cooked thoroughly inside out. As for the prawns, we do not wash the prawns after cooking as it will wash off the sweetness.

As for the wrapping of Vietnamese Spring Rolls, it was rather challenging as we need to estimate the amount of ingredients to add in so that it would not be overloaded or too thin. We also have trials and error with the positioning of the prawns so that the overall presentation would be good. There were many failed attempts due to the rice papers as we were not careful enough.

This cooking experience made us learnt about the essential ingredients used in Vietnamese food such as mint leaves. We also realised that the Vietnamese food uses more of the natural ingredients than flavouring them with spices. This “Vietnamese Food Festival” allowed us to taste food from the North to the South, experiencing all the great FOOD!

Now, let us share our SECRET RECIPE!

Spring Roll Ingredients

Lettuce
Sliced Carrots
Slices of chicken
Prawns
Parsley
Mint Leaves
Bean Sprouts
Rice Papers

Sauce Ingredients

Crushed Peanuts
Fish Sauce
Lime
Red Chilli Padi
Plain Water
Sugar

Garnishes Ingredients

Raisins
Carrots
Parsley
Green Pepper

Pictures Galore of our Vietnamese Cooking ADVENTURE! :D

Spring rolllllllll.

Oh we love it. The fun of preparing, cooking, learning, tasting and laughing.

And if you had been observant towards our group, you would have noticed the three of us hogging like happy piglets by the table at Cô Bích’s place!!

The truth is we have never seen such wonderfully crafted (and of course tasty!!) traditional Vietnamese dishes!! And to be made by the group of us, being “newbies” and some of us first-timers, it was just jaw-dropping. It was without a doubt an impressive attempt at the process. Just look at the final spread and you know what we mean… it arrested.

But as you know and we know,

the actual process of cooking is some hardship. It involves so many procedures and calls for patience and skills. Like in the process of making our Vietnamese spring roll, or gỏi cuốn,We realized how tough it was as we were readying the ingredients, to whip up a perfectly-shaped and heavenly tasting spring roll. Yes, it might seem easy… with the recipe on hand, following the procedures and then squeezing the ingredients inside the rice paper in randomness because no one sees it... But there was to be so many things in mind to take note of. For instance, the making of the peanut sauce would take time and endless rounds of trials and errors in order to achieve perfection, or the wrapping of an adequate quantity within the skin has to ensure quality presentation and size consistency; and also not forgetting, in the process of cooking, there had to be time management, kitchen orientation and dish presentation.

Nevertheless, the three of us enjoyed ourselves and were happy with our result. Might we also add: “the entire experience was one helluva blast!!”

It was an eye-opener, truly.

Here’s a poem that we wrote for our spring roll. Enjoy.

The characters gathered.
Their colours meshed up.
Beautiful and contrasting.
The delicate skin wrapped.
The layers compressed.
A pity it concealed.
But the mystery diluted.
Its translucency to blame.
The concealed became revealed.
Then tempting beyond the olfactory,And visual, our teeth sank in.
For the moment of savory to begin.

Chúng tôi rất thích nấu ăn!!

Cooking Project: The Chicken Salad Experience

Our colourful salad(Picture taken using camera phone)

It was really a great experience to me. Despite that we never try Vietnamese food in our life, we managed to come out something which is not very authentic but edible. [claps*]
Although there are only 4 steps in the recipe, but it also took us several hours in preparation. We all went to NTUC to purchase ingredients, wash and cut them. Luckily teamwork did work in our group! All of us divided the jobs and helped each other along the way. =)

On the actual day itself, we also encountered some difficulties in decoration and food tasting. Fortunately, our lecturers are very helpful and friendly. Not only giving us advice on the taste of the food but also teaching us how to decorate our dish! Thousand thanks for all of them. As our team is a ‘Malaysian’ team (all of us come from Malaysia), it was really headache for us when making the salad sauce. Maybe we are more used to the ‘spicy’ in our home country, our product seemed like too ‘hot’ and ‘spicy’ to some people. Anyway, I really felt that it taste nice! Maybe I can only taste the sweetness of our effort.

Overall, it was really a great learning opportunities for every of us! Not only learnt more about Vietnamese cultural but also build bonding among us. I enjoyed this Vietnamese food festival very much.

Pictures taken on the day:

OMG!!!Florence acting shy.

Look out.There's a strong gust of wind blowing

Pre-preparation of our ingredient

Not forgetting the peanuts.

Some of our ingredient; Peanuts, carrot, bean sprout

4 very serious looking worker preparing the food

Now left 2 very serious workers.Where's the other 2???

Here is one.Happily eating the food

And another 1 enjoying in co bich house.But where's is Florence???

Our final product.Look a bit like chinese food though.

Judgement Day.The food tasting time. Looking at both of them, it seems like all the food are quite tasty and edible.

Nấu Chè Chuối ở Nhà Cô Bích

This is the tradition Chè Chuối found in Việt Nam.

Co Bich : " Aiyah! Very nice to eat lah!"

Chào các em! Hôm nay các em nấu ăn gì?
Chè Chuối ?!? Thế hả?
We caught Phuk secretly eating our bananas...

While waiting for our Che Chuoi to cool down, our friend Hien decides to try out our desert...and her comments are...

...and Hien said," Oh my! This is good! I shall have more!...Maybe Co Bich's Che Chuoi tastes nice too...!" . After her first mouthful of Che Chuoi, she continues to scoop more of it.

In the meantime, Phuk is having a fun time cooking his first banana-licious dish.

Empty coconut shells ... waiting to be filled :)

And we waited.... and waited..til...

Til Hai fell asleep...haha...

YES!!! OUR FIRST VIETNAMESE DISH IS DONE!!!
Rất đẹp, phải Không?

Here are some of our talented Vietnamese cooks :)

Hanh is doing an insepction ...

" I think it's not sweet enough, let's add more sugar!"

Tadaa!!!

Our group members:
Michaela Bygrave ( Hanh)
Toh Chun Hoe ( Phuk)

Wu Huimin( Minh)

Chu Yiu Tak ( Hai)

Deenise Yang (Hương)

Vật Liệu( Recipe)

Here are the ingredients we used for the famous delicious banana soup!

Serves 10
20 x Small Ripe Bananas (Chuối )
900ml x Water
400ml x Coconut milk
2 x stalks pandan leaves
100g x sugar (more if you like it sweeter)
100g x Tapioca Pearls (mini)

Crushed Peanuts



Step 1:
Peel off 15 bananas and cut the bananas into small chopped slices

Step 2:
Bring water to boil and put in all the pandan leaves.Pandan leaves are added to give it a stronger aroma and taste.

Step 3:
After 10 minutes when the water is brought to boil, add in the chopped bananas.

Step 4:
Once the bananas begin to soften,slowly stir in all the coconut milk and sugar. Stir constantly to mix evenly.

Step 5:
Lastly,Add in all the tapioca sago pearls. We used the mini ones so it cooks really quickly*.

Step 6:
Simmer for 10 minutes and remove from heat.

Step 7:
Place the cooked Chè Chuối in bowls. One more step and it's ready to be served!

Step 8:
Slice the remaining 5 bananas into bite-size and place on top of the served dessert. Sprinkle some crushed peanuts over.

Step 8:
Dessert may be serve warm or cold. Allow the dessert to be cooled before placing in the refrigerator.

Step 9:
Wash up and keep the kitchen clean and tidy! ( Especially so if its someone else's kitchen - e.g. your teachers ^^ )

Isn't it simple? You could try it at home!


Look at how much effort Hai is putting in...those sweat streaming over he's face ...

*Note: Do not soak the tapioca sago pearls prior to adding. This is because of the small size and can be cooked easily in the boiling soup. The pearls should be separated from one another. If your pearls end up something as shown in the following picture, it's wise to try again. Practice makes perfect. Of course, do not waste food. Offer the not so ideal ingredients to an enthusiastic friend who is willing to eat it all up.

Remember, no matter how dirty the job is, always keep the kitchen neat and dry :)

Thank you note:

We would also like to thank Co Bich for her tapioca pearls! When we first started out cooking the pearls, it didn't turn out the way we had expected.Luckily,Co Bich had some tapiocal pearls...without those pearls, our desert wouldn't have tasted that fantastic. We would also like to thank Co Le ,Co Quynh , Co Bich and Thay Minh for organizing such a wonderful Vietnamese cooking session for us!Besides learning Vietnamese, we get to understand the Vietnamese history and culture.It is truly and enriching experience!

On top of that, we would like to thank Co Bich's maid for assisting all of us.She must had lots of cleaning-up work to do!

Our Presentation


As for our presentation, this is IT! (above)

We came up of the idea of using coconuts instead of bowls for the presentation, to up the 'special exotica' feeling to it. In front are a row of orchids and at the back, (partially hidden) are lotus flowers. Lotus flower is the national flower of Vietnam so we thought we should include it in our presentation. Incidentally, the orchids represent Singapore as well though it's not the same variety (The Vanda Miss Joaquim is the right one). The flowers were bought from the wet market at Clementi. The Vietnamese flags (made by Deenise)are added to the coconuts to emulate the 'cocktail drink' image and the local tropical setting as well as a clear representation of Vietnam. The bananas and the leaf (plucked from the garden at Co Bich's Condominium)(underneath the coconuts and flowers) remind any observers the main part of our dish, namely the banana fruit, contributing to the overall tropical image as well.

After learning how to cook this dish, we had all decided that we should visit Vietnam and try the real traditional Che Chuoi. The desert served there actually uses charcoal to roast the bananas to that the bananas taste soft and nice inside.The coconut milk used is also much creamier and tastier.Are you salivating now? yum...yum...