The project introduces different cultures to our service users through their cuisines and information sharing. We deliver these workshops in collaboration with 5 organisations, representing 5 different cultures such as (Chinese, Vietnamese, Caribbean, Indian, and Albanian). The project aims to make sure our service users learn about how others live, eat, and experience life.
We have so far delivered 4 workshops such as Chinese, Caribbean, Albanian and Vietnamese food and cultures. Once a month a representative of an organisation came to our centre and demonstrated how to cook signature dishes from their cuisine, introduced the most commonly used ingredients, herbs, spices, and sauces and sharing cultural information.
How the workshops are delivered and what we learn about cultures:
A community representative / chef explains what we will cook on the session and showing what ingredients be used and we start preparing food together. Some of members help with peeling, chopping vegetables and other stuff. When food preparation finishes we move to our kitchen and chef / representative starts cooking with few members helping them.
After foods are cooked they are served in the hall and eaten together. We then move on to learning about the cultures by listening representative’s presentation about their cultures; that includes a brief information of their culture, social life, language and showing their country’s location on the world map. They then teach us a few words in their language and we practice saying them; such as: Hello, how are you? What is your name? Thank you. This is one of the best part of workshops; everyone enjoys it; of course tasting delicious food from different cultures is the other enjoyable part that could be remembered by the most.
Feedback from workshop participants: Some of members said that they never tasted food in that culture before. Most our members were ready to taste food and finished it off.
We also learn about body language; good and offensive gestures of cultures to avoid making innocent mistakes in the society. We finish the session by listening one or two songs.
Within this project our members learnt about cultures and tasted food from the various cultures we worked with.
We tasted those dishes of Chinese: Prawn in lettuce wrap as (starter): prawn, fresh beans, and carrots with oyster sauce. Sweet and sour chicken dish as the (main).
Caribbean Food: “Stewed Chicken, Fried Fish, Seasoned Roast Potatoes, Pumpkin, Sweet Potatoes, Christophine (Chow chow/chayote), Rice with Black Eyed Peas, Fruit Salad, Cake and Custard.”
Albanian Food: Elbasan Tava (lamb casserole with yogurt) and Börek – Hand rolled pastry with seasonal vegetables; potatoes, aubergine, green and red bell peppers.
Vietnamese Food: Vietnamese chicken rice noodle salad and Tapioca pearl sweet soup. Practiced using chopsticks and saw their flag and their traditional wedding dresses.
This project is funded by Awards for All.
Project Coordinator: Gulnur Salih.
Project Officer: Papatya Alkan Genca
Vietnamese Food & Culture Workshop in collaboration with An Viet Foundation c/o HCCS
The 4 representatives came from the Hackney Chinese Community Services to run the Vietnamese Food and Culture workshop. Yan Ma, Jennie Lon, Wing Kong Fung, Mei Ou from Hackney Chinese Community Services introduced 2 dishes from the Vietnamese cuisine to our members. Vietnamese chicken rice noodle salad and Tapioca pearl sweet soup - made with coconut milk and palm sugar.
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Albanian Food
Elbasan Tava (lamb casserole with yogurt) and Börek - Hand rolled pastry with seasonal vegetables; potatoes, aubergine, green and red bell peppers. This project is funded by the Awards for All.
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Caribbean Food
Stewed Chicken, Fried Fish, Seasoned Roast Potatoes, Pumpkin, Sweet Potatoes, Christophine (Chow chow/chayote), Rice with Black Eyed Peas, Fruit Salad, Cake and Custard.
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Vietnamese Food & Culture Workshop in collaboration with An Viet Foundation c/o HCCS
- by Gulnur Salih
Albanian Food
- by Gulnur Salih
Caribbean Food
- by Gulnur Salih
