IH Food Fair

Last Saturday was the International House Food Fair, and it's basically this grand event where residents have the chance to cook up their country's cuisine for everyone else to try. So after lunch, a whole bunch of us (the Malaysian stall) went over to one of our friend's maze unit to spend the entire afternoon cooking Malaysian delicacies. What did we cook? We had nasi lemak with all the condiments (sliced egg, fried peanuts, fried anchovies, and sambal), and roti canai and curry chicken and teh tarik and honeydew sago and bubur cha cha and sea coconut longan. We more or less made everything from scratch, with the exception of the roti canai (it came ready-to-cook in batches from the local supermarket I think). So the following are some pictures of the Malaysian residents (and some whose Malaysian-ness can be questioned) in the process of food preparation:

The event itself was held at the dining hall, and we decorated our stall with some pieces of batik and sarong, and the whole while you could see other countries setting up their stalls as well... All very noisy, chaotic and jovial, I must say!

The people came swarming in at about 6.30 pm. Apparently the event was open to non-residents as well, and some "VIPs" like alumni came and there were even judges to taste the various food and all. I'm afraid to say Malaysia didn't win any awards (we didn't even get any honourable mentions), but I sure had plenty of fun! At the very beginning I went around collecting and tasting food from the other countries: I ate stir-fried lamb and fried rice with beef and vegetables (China/Taiwan), weiswurst (Bavarian sausages) from the Germanic Europe stall, fried instant noodles with XO sauce and luncheon meat (Hong Kong), okonomiyaki (some sort of pancake/omelette thingy) and onigiri (some sort of sushi?) from Japan, bibimbab (rice with mixed veg) and kimchi pancake from Korea, laksa and ondeh ondeh (a green kueh with gula Melaka and dried coconut) from Singapore, pecan pie (USA), and of course I had to try our very own nasi lemak and roti canai and curry chicken and teh tarik and honeydew sago!

Team Australia:

Team Singapore:

Team South Africa:

Team Korea:

Team Germany:

Team Thailand:

Team Philippines/Indonesia:

Team Hong Kong:

Team China/Taiwan:

Team Russia/Ukraine:

After that it was the dreaded part of the evening - cleaning up! But it went pretty quickly, and we all trooped back to our friend's maze unit and ended up watching Hitch and eating up leftovers and throwing away stuff that would spoil.

And that's it for the IH Food Fair. My only regret is that we won't be having another next semester (I think it's an annual event). Sigh. It was so much fun, and looking back, I kinda am disappointed that I didn't get to taste even half of the different kinds of dishes available (I think I prolly only tasted a quarter, maybe less). What great fun! Cheers, y'all!