Sanguinity

Channel U's Ladies Night Cooking Workshop

Are you an avid fan of Channel U? Have you heard of this recent show on air titled "Ladies Night(女人聚乐部)"? Ladies' Nite is an all-new ladies’ magazine program. Hosted by both Michelle Chong and Vivian Lai, this program is broken down into 3 main segments: Cooking, Trends and Wellness. I was pretty honoured to be invited to cover this Channel U's event last Saturday. The entire event was a cooking workshop and shortlisted bloggers were able to bring along three friends to the event. We had the opportunities to learn how to cook from the two pretty celebrity hosts and on top of that enjoy an intimate high tea session with them. How wonderful could that be! I was on cloud nine then upon receiving the invitation from upromo.

The cooking workshop was held at Cookyn Inc, somewhere around Queenstown.

We arrived slightly ahead of some of the bloggers and so, started to take photos with the event signboard just outside the Cookyn Inc Block O before the workshop commences.

The celebrity hosts, Michelle Chong and Vivian Lai arrived at 2pm and the cooking workshop commenced thereafter. Before the cooking OFFICIALLY started, the hosts were mingling around with the bloggers and friends. They asked whether we've watched "Ladies Night" and also which other celebrities would we like to see in the cooking segment of the show. As we all know that male stars like "Dai Yang Tian", "Elvin Ng" etc are currently on high popularity, their names were mentioned. I was the one who mentioned "黄俊雄(Elvin Ng)" and straight after that, a little secret is let out of the bag from Michelle. We came to realize that Elvin can't cook!

Well, 厨房是女人的天下嘛! 会煮菜的女人是很有魅力的! We shall now check out how the two celebrity hosts teach us the two respective dishes during the workshop.

Before that, let's have a shot of Michelle and Vivien! We're all ready to learn from them!

Michelle started out first as the preparation for her dish is much longer than Vivian's one. She taught us how to go about making this "Steam-Baked Fish Roll".

Firstly, she chop the onions, garlic and mushrooms into smaller pieces. Soon after that, the next step is to heat some oil in a fry pan and saute the onions, garlic and mushrooms. (The pan took some time to turn hot as the whole cooking place is air-conditioned.) Following next is to make the roll. Michelle first laid out cabbage at the bottom, add the ham and then the mushrooms. Before putting in the dory fish, she actually wiped the dory fish with paper serviettes to dry it. On top of that, you can only add some corriander leaves to enhance the taste.

And NOW the fun part, Michelle gonna' start to ROLL it. I feel that the rolling part is a challenge because if it's not rolled properly, the whole fillings inside will come out and the dish won't turn out nice. This requires some skills, huh?
(Note: It is also important to roll them as tightly as you can.)

Soon after the successful roll, Michelle placed the whole roll inside the aluminium tray and added in ginger, wine, water and chicken powder to further enhance the taste. Up till this step, the preparation is near to completion and it's time to bake this healthy dish in oven after covering the lid with foil. (Note: Keep the shiny side of aluminium foil down.)

Till this step of demonstration, we proceeded back to our own table to start preparing the dish. Before our dish preparation, let's have a shot!

It's HANDS ON TIME! The Bloggers and friends' turn to prepare the first dish!

In the midst of our preparations, the hosts also went around to see how we were coping with the first dish. Michelle kindly offered us another mushroom when she saw that ours was insufficient.

(p.s. i wasn't able to capture any photos during our cooking process as we were all busy preparing the dishes and you know, our hands were all uncleaned. Credits to Channel U for some of the photos taken during our dish preparation.)
Meanwhile waiting for the fish roll to be baked for 20-30 minutes' after we're done with its preparation, we proceeded on to learn the second dish from Vivian, known as "Cold Rice Salad with Prawns". Check out Vivian's cooking process below.

Firstly, Vivian cut the french beans, tomatoes into smaller cubes as well. She told us to remove the seed areas inside the tomatoes as the water will actually cause the rice to be wet. This cold rice salad with prawns is easily prepared as one will just have to mix the rice, prawns, diced french beans and tomatoes, corns, olive oil, corriander and even squeezed orange juice together, simply just stir to combine all these mixed ingredients. As easy as that! On top of that, you can also add salt and pepper to enhance the taste. Vivian mentioned that the sweetness from the orange when squeezed out into orange juice will enhance the cold rice salad's taste by giving it a slight sweet taste.
Lastly, is to chill the whole rice salad in fridge. This whole cold rice salad will appeal to young children 'for the appearance is colourful. This is yet another healthy dish.

Same thing after her demonstration, we're back to our respective tables to prepare the second dish. Cooking is seriously fun. Assisting is one thing, but being one of the main "cooking chefs" is really fun. On top of that, having the opportunity to learn how to cook from the two celebrity hosts is an interesting one.

NOOO! i didn't finish the whole bowl! haha.

Friends, look here! SMILE:D

I guess at this point of time, you guys must be excited to see how both our final dishes turn out to be. Before that, let's check out Michelle Chong's and Vivian Lai's one!

Check out Michelle's masterpiece.

Now, check out Vivian's masterpiece.

*Applause* to both the hosts' masterpiece. Nice right?:)
Check out ours now!

Not bad also right?! tsktsk. Drooling at the sight of it?
(Others thought ours looks more like a piping hot fried rice dish, but in fact, that's a cold rice salad served! Does it appeal to you?:D)

On top of that, there was actually a competition among the different groups. We're supposed to decorate our dishes and even come up with our own names for them. Coloured papers, pencils, crayons were provided for us to design on the papers.

i drew out this design and sok thought of a unique dish name. Meanwhile, deb was helping to snap the process of us designing our final piece.

Presenting to you, our final piece -翡翠鱼卷

Photo is DEFINITELY a must take!

This was our final presentation!
And GUESS what? Our group emerged as the top winner of the competition and we were awarded with Fann Wong's designed tee. Saturated with happiness. All smiles.
Congratulations to our team!:D

Apart from this competition, there was also a "Q & A" session whereby 5 lucky winners will walk away with some prizes. To top if off, my friend and i were the two winners out of the five. We were asked questions like "Who are the two celebrity hosts in this ladies night show?" and "How many segments are there in this show?" (we did our homework hor! Lol.)

Refreshments were also served and we had an intimate high tea session with the two celebrity hosts. How wonderful it is to not only learn cooking tips from the hosts, but also to indulge in nice pastries specially prepared by the chef!

After the refreshments, there was a video interview going around and the two celebrity hosts went from tables to tables to interview some of the people. i was interviewed but not too sure whether it will be aired on tv, lol. Our big group was also asked to say out a slogan along with Michelle and Vivian!

This was how the slogan went: 女人聚乐部，欢迎你加入! YEAH!

Do catch Ladies' Night(女人聚乐部) hosted specially by our two celebrities- Michelle Chong & Vivian Lai every Tuesday, 8pm on Channel U.

That's for now.