Gỏi bưởi tôm 2

Chào các Cô! Chào Thầy! Chào các em! We are from Gỏi bưởi tôm 2. Nhóm của Bích Thao, Binh Hai, Bích Đào, Bích Lan và Bình Lâm.

The Ingredients

  

Recipe

Gỏi Bưởi Tôm – Pomelo Salad with Prawns

Serves 4

1 large pomelo

400g prawns, cooked, peeled, deveined, with tails intact

1/2 small carrot, grated

1/2 cup sliced herbs leaves (Vietnamese coriander, perilla leaves and Vietnamese mint)

2 tablespoons fried red Asian shallot

2 tablespoons roughly chopped peanuts

3 tablespoons of fish sauce dressing

Method

Peel the pomelo and remove the flesh from each of the segments. Break the flesh into bite size pieces and place in a large bowl. Add the cooked prawns, grated carrot, herbs and fish sauce dressing and gently toss to mix well.

Transfer to a serving platter and sprinkle with peanuts and fried shallots.

Basic Dipping Sauce (Nuoc Cham)

Makes ¾ cup

3 tablespoons lime juice (1 fat, thin skin lime)

2 tablespoons sugar

½ cup water

2 ½ tablespoons fish sauce

Optional additions:

1 small garlic clove, finely minced

1 or 2 Thai chilis, thinly sliced or 1 teaspoon homemade chili garlic sauce or store bought (tuong ot toi)

1. Make limeade. Combine the lime juice, sugar and water, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Taste and as yourself this question: Does this limeade taste good? Adjust the flavors to balance out the sweet and sour.

2. Finish with fish sauce. Add the fish sauce and any of the optional ingredients. Taste again and adjust the flavors to your liking, balancing out the sour, sweet, salty and spicy. Aim for a bold, forward finish -- perhaps a little stronger than what you'd normally like. This sauce is likely to be used to add final flavor to foods wrapped in lettuce or herbs, which are not salted and therefore need a little lift to heighten the overall eating experience. My mother looks for color to gauge her dipping sauce. When it's a light honey or amber, she knows she's close.

Notes

Advance Preparation - This sauce may be prepared early in the day and left to sit at room temperature.

Variation - Use half lime juice and half Japanese rice vinegar for a less assertive sauce. Some delicately flavored dishes require this.

Reflection

Cooking Vietnamese food for the first time is FUN! The ingredients used are very few, simple and easy to get as compared to Malay food which uses lots of spices. The taste of fish sauce was not nice at all initially as it tastes too salty! But after adding and adding and adding more sugar to the lime and sauce, finally it tastes just nice :D It requires lots of patience making the perfect sauce as we have only tasted but never tried doing it ourselves. To me, its hard to taste what is considered 'nice' as I have never tasted Vietnamese food in my life :) It was an unforgettable experience and I also realised that Viet food are realy colourful and decorative! Cucumbers that are usually cut in circles can be designed into baskets and fan. Tomatoes can be made into flowers and carrots too can be cut into beautiful shapes!

If given another chance, I would love to learn how to make Viet desserts! :))

-Bích Thao (Amalina)-

This is my first-ever cooking project in university life. It is awesome and enriching. Besides learning how to cook, we are taught to decorate our dishes too! Before that, I don't know that so many other things can be done to cucumbers and tomatoes. >.<

In this project, we have the opportunities to taste many delicious Vietnamese dishes! Yummy! Other than the food, we had a lot of fun too! Viet 1 is a must-take module! ^^

-Binh Hai (Zhenghao)-

I have never eaten Vietnamese food before and all along I thought that Thai food and Vietnamese food are the same. The cooking project was a really fun way of learning about the Vietnamese culture. My group members and I prepared the cutting and cooking of prawns and chicken at home. When we reached Thầy Minh’s house, we were left with the fish sauce and presentation to do. It was our first time making Gỏi Bưởi Tôm and so we did not know how it would turn out. Since none of my group members actually tasted Gỏi Bưởi Tôm we did not know how the fish sauce should taste like. With the help from Cô Quỳnh as our taster, we adjusted the proportion of fish sauce, sugar and lime. I got to try other types of Vietnamese dishes as well. I really enjoyed myself that afternoon:)

-Bích Đào-

Making Gỏi bưởi (Prawn Pomelo Salad) was both an enjoyable and memorable experience. The most memorable part of the cooking project to me was the mixing of the condiments to make the salad’s dipping sauce! I had fun trying to mix and match with the ingredients to get the right taste for the sauce! Something I learnt from the cooking project was not to add too much lime juice to the sauce even if one were to follows strictly to the recipe because the recipe does not always suit everyone’s taste!

Nevertheless, I’ve learnt some “cooking” (although it was just making salad) skills and carving skills from Cô Bích! It was an eye opener for me to be able to learn to carve out beautiful carvings out of plain looking vegetables and to see how the rest of the groups whip up wonderful dishes! I also love the banana dessert and the interesting basil seed drink made by Các cô. I hope to learn how to make my favourite Vietnamese dish ‘BÚN THỊT NƯỚNG’ (Barbeque Pork Noodles) which I last ate at Danang the next time round!

-Bích Lan(Evelyn)-

This is my first ever cooking project in NUS.  It was a totally new and enriching experience for me.  Having tasted a few Vietnamese signature dishes in different parts of Vietnam, I came to realise that the food eaten by the Vietnamese not only reflects their culture and way of life but also their history and attitudes towards life.  Hence that was my motivation in learning how to cook a Vietnamese dish.  Although my project only focused on making the Pomelo Salad, it was not as easy as it seems to be.  The ‘true’ challenge of the Pomelo Salad lies in its dressing sauce.  The key to ‘perfecting’ it, I realised, does not only depend on the ingredients and procedures.  Merely following the recipe does not necessarily lead to good dressing sauce, only through experience (which we have gotten our guidance from Cô Bích).  Overall, I enjoyed myself for this cooking project :)

-Bình Lâm (Soon Xiang Long)-