Chào các cô! Chào các bạn!
Chúng em -Bích Nga, Bích Tiên và Bình Tiến là sinh viên mối. For the tiếng Việt một cooking project, we have chosen the chicken salad as our dish. The recipe is shown below:
Preparation Time: 60 minutes
Cooking Time: 10 minutes
Ingredients:
Chicken Salad
200g chicken breast fillets
½ cup prawns
1 cup bean sprouts
1 cup Vietnamese mint leaves
1 cup Asian basil leaves
4 cups Chinese cabbages, finely shredded
1 cup carrot, peeled and finely julienned
Salad Dressing
60 ml lime juice
80 ml fish sauce
5 tablespoon caster sugar
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped (optional)
3 red Asian shallots, finely sliced
2 red chilli, finely chopped
White or black pepper
Method:
Chicken Salad
· Boil chicken breast fillets in water until they are cooked.
· Drain the chicken and leave it to cool.
· Meanwhile, boil the prawn in water. Remove the prawns from heat when they curl and turn red.
· De-shell the prawn when it is cool.
· Use forks to shred the chicken breast fillets into floss.
· Add all the salad dressing ingredients into a mixing bowl and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
· Place all ingredients into the same mixing bowl and mix thoroughly.
HELPFUL HINT:
Thai lime is preferred as it gives a sweet scent to the dish and do add more sugar if you have a sweet tooth!
We have purchased all the ingredients two days before the project, so that we would have more time to choose the better ingredients. Also we have cut all the ingredients such as cucumber, onion, carrot and cabbage beforehand and loaded them into several plastic containers. Cutting the ingredients was not easy, as we cut them into very thin and small slices for better texture. Photos are missing here as we were all very very sleeping at that time. FYI we woke up at 6.30am in the morning to prepare them!
The cooking project was held at Thầy Minh's house, which is at Bukit Panjang. The venue is awesome as we didn't spend a lot of much finding the place. Fortunately we were the first group to reach there and got to use their dining table!
The left process for us was just to mix all the ingredients together with lime juice, sugar and a special Vietnamese sauce: fish sauce. However we all agreed that this is the most crucial part, balancing the sour and sweet taste is most challenging part! Luckily we had a sensitive tongue: Bích Nga to do the job.
 |
| Mixing chicken salad |
1 hour later, we have reached the fun part of the day. Cô Bích taught us how to decorate the food with some vegetables. The decorations she made were the tomato rose, cucumber basket, boat and a lot more. Our final product was as below, the three faces at upper right corner represented us.
 |
| Chicken salad with decorations |
It came to the last part of the day, grading and eating the foods. Cô Bích was our judge and she graded the food very carefully.
 |
| She has a sensitive tongue |
We were luckily enough to be the best chicken salad of the day. Thanks to Bích Nga. The foods there, chicken salad, pomelo rice, spring roll, banana sago and the others were of course super awesome.
At the end of the day, we took a group photo to call it a day.
 |
| Our team effort |
Here are some personal reflections:
Having been spent three years of undergraduate life in NUS, this is my first ever participation in a cooking project organized under a module. What an unforgettable experience! It was so much fun and I believe everyone had enjoyed the cooking project as much as I did.
Speaking of Vietnamese cuisine, I had the chance to savour authentic Vietnamese dishes in Ho Chi Minh City when I last visited the bustling city with my family during December last year. After spending four days there, my impression of Vietnamese cuisine is none other than it is suitable for people with sweet tooth and it always comes with a lot of vegetables, especially mint, bean sprouts and basils, which I did not really get used to. However, the cooking project has totally changed my perspective of Vietnamese food. I especially love the banana dessert, chicken stew (Sharon told me Co Bich made nicer chicken stew) and fish.
Not only had I enjoyed the food prepared by teachers and us, the LAV1201 juniors and seniors, I also find the cooking project has successfully forged a closed bond between the students and teachers. This is especially true when I see everyone was having fun in the process of preparing the food. The biggest takeaways I have from the cooking project are the creativity in turning tomatoes and cucumbers into flowers, baskets, boats, etc., new friends, a heart overloaded with fun and last but not least, a bloated stomach with all the finger-licking food and desserts!
By,
Sheau Shiuh aka Bích Nga
We chose to prepare Gỏi Gà . At first, I thought that the process was easy, thinking that “how hard could it be to prepare a chicken salad?” Well, after trying, I would say that the most difficult step is making the sauce. My group mates and I had never eaten Vietnamese chicken salad before. We have no idea how the sauce was supposed to taste like and we just follow the recipe printed from website. After first few tries, the sauce was very sour and later we decided to follow our taste buds instead of the recipe. We added sugar and adjusted the taste. Yup, our taste buds were trustworthy, we managed to create the best Gỏi Gà amongst other groups (according to cô Bích J). Even though it did not taste like authentic Vietnamese chicken salad, I think it tasted quite good.
My family and I went to Hà Nội before and we did not have good impression on Vietnamese food because most of them taste pretty weird to us. However, on cooking project day, there were banana dessert, chè chuối prepared by cô Lê and chicken stew, gà kho prepared by Vietnamese 2 students which I love! I will definitely learn to cook it for my family and impress them.
By
Wan Ting a.k.a Bích Tiên
I had no idea of how Vietnamese cuisine tastes like before this cooking project. After all I found it quite unsuitable for me, but that doesn't stop me from appreciating the Vietnamese cuisine. The Vietnamese put a lot of effort to decorate their dishes, which is one of the things I have learnt today. The cooking project has enhanced the content of this module, piqued the students' interest to discover more about Vietnam. Last but not least, thank you all the teachers for hosting this wonderful event! Cảm ơn các Cô!
By
Khai Chern a.k.a Bình Tiến
No comments:
Post a Comment