Food and Cultures Project, Past Events

Vietnamese Food & Culture Workshop in collaboration with An Viet Foundation c/o HCCS

 

This workshop is delivered at our centre.
Date of Workshop: 13 April 2023

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.

They cooked the food and desert on the gas stove in the hall so everyone had the opportunity seeing the stages of cooking, how it is done and which ingredients are added while demonstrated.

Chicken was marinated with chopped garlic, lemongrass, soya sauce, five spice white powder and fish sauce.

We saw tapioca pearl first time and how it transforms into transparent jelly balls from white small balls. We learnt the importance of soaking rice noodles into the cold water first and making special red sauce for the chicken and rice noodle.

Even though Vietnam and Turkey are completely different cultures, it was interesting and nice to see that we have commonalities when it comes to how we deal with food (one funny instance was when the chef was getting rid of the “bitterness” of the cucumber, almost all service members exclaimed “oh, we have the same trick to do that”.

Testimonials

“I think it is such a good activity; it is very good for us to learn about other cultures around us. We buy them when we go out, but it is good to see that they are cooked and explained to us. Eating them knowing the ingredients is good. Some people are not open to other cultures but seeing it first-hand would help them eliminate any prejudice or anxiety.”
Ayten Savurur
“I am honoured to be part of this project; it is great to learn other cultures in our own language. We are a visual culture, so it is good to visually understand how things are prepared. I am grateful to be there.”
Bedriye Arslan
“TCCA has contributed a lot to us; we are so grateful and happy to be part of this community. I would like to thank TCCA and its staff for all the good work they have done for us.”
Sevgi Yuksel

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