World Music Night 2010: St. Ebbes Sanctuary

So yesterday was World Music Night 2010, an annual event organized by the church of St. Ebbes to bless the student community at Oxford with fellowship, music and food for a token fee of £4. So like I mentioned before, I brought Debayan and Jed along with me last night for a time of fellowship - it was an answered prayer because I did ask God to help me to get to know them more for who they are, and it's my first step towards understanding them as friends. :)

So at about 5 pm last evening, I went down to St. Ebbes to help with the cooking like I said I would - plus I think it's good to help serve in the church community and since I'm not sure how I can serve in the foreground (i.e. music ministry) I figured I would help out first in the kitchen in terms of manpower. :) I popped down to help Franz Hong with his Pearl Coco Yam (珍珠芋头) dessert, but I managed to catch the rest of the kitchen in action as well.

Let's talk about Franz's masterpiece first:

Boiling Sago

Essentially, what you do first is to simply set a big pot of water to the boil and throw in your sago (yes, the ones you have in the watermelon sago dessert at NUS), and you just keep stirring it so that it won't burnt or stick or clump up. This took quite a while and my arms kind of hurt after stirring, haha.

Franz Hong

So Franz and I took turns stirring for like about close to 1.5 hours, and he was mighty cheery about it, haha. Just look at him! And of course, while you're boiling the sago, you can throw in the yam pieces to boil until they grow really soft and furry as well:

Boiling the Yam

And once it's soft and furry enough, you can then just cut in up in the pot with a knife or something:

Cutting the Yam

And if you do these concurrently, you should realize that the sago's about done. And how do you tell? Well, it should look something like this:

Cooked Sago

Well, in my opinion, I think we overcooked it! But it's really hard to cook a pot of sago for 60 people and the fire's really hard to control, so well I guess we did our best! And once the sago is done, you can turn down the heat and add the coconut cream or milk, stirring it as you go:

Adding the Coconut Cream

And while you're at it, you can get your friend (we got Sam) to help blend or mash up the yam:

Mashing the Yam

So the idea here is to get the yam into a fine paste, somewhat like 芋泥, the dish they serve at wedding dinners or traditional chinese dinners. And of course, you keep adding coconut cream until you get something that is creamy white:

Creamed Sago

And here we have Sam mashing the yam and Franz trying to help him with something:

Sam the Yam Masher (left) and Franz the Helper (right)

So I guess he's Samwise Gamgee huh? :) And once you're done mashing up the yam, it's real easy - you just pour in the yam paste and stir over low heat:

Stirring in the Yam Paste

Well, keep stirring until it's all homogeneously mixed in - the colour should be pale:

Almost Finished Product

But after you add sugar and heat it somemore and let it stand for a while, voila! It got a pretty yam-like colour (or maybe it's the lighting, haha!):

Finished Product

I looked around the kitchen and there were many things cooking at the same time; there was Japanese food on the stove:

Bi Min's Teriyaki Chicken

It did smell pretty good and it went quite well with the rice I must say, the sweet sauce. :) And there were people busy preparing the salads:

Greek Salad Crew

And wow, there were also red rubies! It's really easy to make - you just cut up the water chestnuts, dust them in red food colouring, sprinkle on some white glutinous rice flour, toss it, and you're ready to cook it in boiling water:

Pre-cooked Red Rubies

And here's a fellow Singaporean, Gerald (Year 1 Undergraduate, Law) taking out the feta cheese:

Feta Cheese Expert Gerald

Feta cheese is usually used in Greek Salad, although it pretty much goes with a lot of things; and you just dice it and add it to the whole salad:

Slice and Dice

And here's what goes into the salad; you have olives, cucumbers, feta cheese, onions, tomatoes and lettuce:

The Greek and Their Salad

I think some balsamic vinegar would've been nice! :) And here's Rob instructing the young Gerald in the ways of the kitchen:

Gerald (left) and Rob (right)

And here's another part of the salad crew at work:

Salad Crew

And here's the lady boss, Wong Bi Min; you know, she was really tired last night - I presume she had a long day at school with all her lectures and tutorials and everything, and she was really on the verge of collapsing in frustration. But she hung in there and exclaimed: "But I know I'm doing this unto the glory of the Lord!" and that absolutely resonated within me. What a godly person I've found! :)

Wong Bi Min

And so she set off to boil the red rubies:

Boiling Rubies

And here's Rob looking macho or something:

Macho Rob

And once the red rubies are cooked, you quench them in cold water - it's that easy:

Quenching the Rubies

And well, that's part of the Greek Salad:

Greek Salad

And of course, there's cous-cous, a kind of substitute for rice, tossed with tomatoes, onions, cucumbers and some spice:

Cous-cous

I stopped for a while and went to pick Debayan and Jed up - and look what a huge dog I found:

Big Dog

I wonder if it was feeling cold? Oh well, I was! So after they came, we hurried down to church and found ourselves in a nice cosy setting; that's Franz with his friends:

Franz and Friends

Chris (Year 4, Theoretical Physics DPhil) managed to chat Debayan up pretty quickly:

Debayan (left) and Chris (right)

Chris is my cell group leader in case you've forgotten! He's married too! Lots of people get married even before they finish their DPhil here in Oxford! Cool! :) And then there were lots of flags around as well, but I didn't catch the Singaporean flag:

Flags of the World

And here's Jed and Debayan toasting each other with apple juice:

'Toast'masters Debayan (left) and Jed (right)

The turnup was rather pleasant, and we got quite a lot of people:

Large Crowd

And here's my glass of apple juice - and no, I didn't drink wine:

My Apple Juice

So what else did we have? Well, we had mock Sharks-fin soup:

Mock Sharks-fin Soup

Which was essentially chicken stock with a dash of seafood seasoning with egg swirls. :) And then there was the Sayur Lodeh (from Singapore!) and the Shepherd's Pie (well, they said it was British, so okay I'll take that):

Sayur Lodeh (left) and Shepherd's Pie (right)

There was also nasi lemak, in the lemak sense because we had coconut rice last night to go with the dishes:

Nasi Lemak

And Lottie, who's always in the kitchen serving food, was all smiles last night:

Lottie!

And of course there was the teriyaki chicken:

Teriyaki Chicken

With the Greek Salad:

Greek Salad (Again!)

And the cous-cous:

Cous-cous

And for those who don't like Greek Salad, just plain old salad:

Plain Old Salad

And so they just piled everything onto our plates like this:

Our Dinner

And when dessert came, I had a go at the red rubies:

Red Rubies in all Glory

And after dinner, Debayan wanted to take a photo with the Indian national flag - he was so enthusiastic, in fact, he took two:

Debayan and His Indian Flag

Touching India

And of course, how could I miss out the music? Well there were about six or seven performances throughout the night but I only recorded three (because I was lazy and I wanted to enjoy the music too!). I missed out a wonderful acapella by Ali! Oh dear me, but Ali's a great singer, organ player and keyboard maestro! Amazing! You can refer back to old posts to know who's Ali, haha!

So the first performance I did record was this piano performance on the keyboard by this music student from Oxford, in Exeter College; and I forgot the name of the song (although you will find it really familiar):

Then as you might already know from the last post, there was the Singaporean Band, Fantasy, playing Retreat (退后) by Jay Chou. The one on the violin is Caleb, a fellow MOE scholar doing Physics, in his final third year. The one on the bass guitar is Jun Yong, an A*Star scholar in his final year, Engineering. I'm not so sure about the rest, but you can just listen to them again:

Oh yes and finally, there was the Irish and Gaellic Whistle performance, which I thought was quite a nice finale to the night:

And whee! That was last night! Jed and Debayan even took a copy of the Gospel home to read! Praise the Lord!

That's all folks, toodles! :)