Gỏi Cuồn (Vietnamese spring rolls)

Chào các bạn!

Nhóm của chúng em có bốn người. Chúng em tên là: Bình Hòang, Binh Tai, Bích Ngọc và Bích Ánh. Chúng em đi thầy Minh's nhà vào sáng thứ bảy cho cooking project. Chúng em did gỏi cuốn cho cooking project.
This is the recipe we used:

Ingredients:

Medium shrimps (sliced into halves)
Pork belly (cut into strips)
Vermicelli rice noodles
Lettuce
Cucumber, carrot (cut into thin strips)
Bean sprouts
Chives
Basil leaves
Vietnamese rice paper
Fish sauce

Steps to making Gỏi Cuốn:
1. Dip the rice paper into the warm water to soften it.
2. Place the rice paper flat on the round rack Cô Bích brought for us.
3. Top each piece with lettuce, cucumber, bean sprouts, rice noodles, pork belly, basil leaves and shrimps.
4. Roll up firmly.
5. Serve with fish sauce as a dip.
Note: Do not put too much ingredients. The rice paper tears very easily!

Bình Hòang buying ingredients

Preparing for cooking project(:

When we reached thay Minh's house at 10plus, it was so crowded! All of them were already preparing their dishes. We finally managed to find a small but cozy area and were all ready to start making our gỏi cuồn!

slicing shrimps into halves

veggies and MINT LEAVES

Busy preparing..

Bích Ngọc và Bình Hòang tried making the gỏi cuồn before the actual day of cooking. After a few tries, it began to take shape, no tearing, no sticking, beautiful! "Hmm but why cannot see the prawns?" Then they tried to be clever by putting the prawns faced down first. But somehow it still did not look like what they had seen in the pictures. WHY?! Their question was finally answered when Cô Bích taught us the correct way to roll the gỏi cuồn. Cô Bích also taught us how to crave roses, baskets and boats using tomatoes and cucumbers!

Cô Bích's gỏi cuồn

The beautiful rose Cô Bích made!

Busy decorating..

Our group's gỏi cuồn!

After a few hours of preparation, it's time for the tasting/judging session!  

When preparing the spring rolls, our main aim is to satisfy Cô Bích's taste buds because she is the judge!

"Cô Bích doesn't like hard carrots!" So we cut the carrots finer.
"Cô Bích prefers pork belly to chicken!" So we added in pork belly to our recipe.
Unfortunately, we missed out an important factor! Cô Bích likes MINT LEAVES!!! And there we are, putting only 2 or 3 small pieces of mint leaves.. 

Anyway, Cô Bích did say that our gỏi cuồn are nice, though it's not the best. We should have put more mint leaves and used her own made sauce! We'll always remember her expression when she ate the first mouth of gỏi cuồn dipped into our totally authentic made-in-vietnam fish sauce!

Group photo with Cô Bích and Cô Lê

Personal Reflections:

"I enjoyed the whole afternoon preparing and tasting such wonderful Vietnamese delicacies. Having been to Vietnam twice, I have never had the chance to try out so many variety of Vietnamese cuisine. Thankfully through this Vietnamese cooking project I could taste many of them just by being HERE, in Singapore!

This project together with many other activities are what that make Vietnamese Language in NUS so different, so vibrant and so FUN!!" - Bình Hòang

"This is the first ever cooking project that I encountered in my study life,and I have to admit it was really fun and enriching! I believe all of us had fun trying to wrap the goi cuon and I myself personally learned a lot from this project (especially the carving skills which I still fail to master up to now >.<). In addition to that, I am also honoured to have the chance to see the different kinds of tasty Vietnamese food which I never did before. However I have to admit that the banana dessert is the most AWESOME of all! Thanks to everyone involved and hope to have such project again soon! An advice for future students making Goi Cuon: Put in more Vietnamese herbs and leaves! You will know why very soon. xD" - Bình Tai

"Cooking project--one of the reasons I am taking Vietnamese 1! Where else in NUS’ modules do we ever get to go to our teacher’s house and cook? As expected, it was really a fun and different experience, from the shopping to preparing, to the actual rolls making, and of cause the feasting part! Before the project, i always thought making spring rolls is an easy bit of job (just anyhow roll it like “popiah” lah), who knows, my first goi cuon looked like “wan tan” instead. Well at least now my rolls looks like those sold outside and I can make for my parents already! :) One thing I still don’t get, HOW TO PEEL THE TOMATOES AND MAKE IT INTO A ROSE?! It breaks every time halfway through! But at least, I learnt how to make baskets and boats and fans, and flowers. Truly, a very different memory in my mugging school life." - Bích Ngọc

"In my three years of uni life, this is definitely the most awesome project I have done! No reports. No presentation. I have been looking forward to this day when I knew there's cooking project during the introductory lecture. Cooking project is really fun! We get to cook, decorate our dishes, taste a variety of Vietnamese cuisine and learn their culture through food! I am sooo glad that I took viet1(: It is really an unforgettable experience and I am sure all of us enjoyed it as much as I do!" - Bích Ánh