Our new committee member in charge of activities for 2016 is Jenny Cheah. We are looking to enliven our activities programme for the latter half of 2016, with new and different activities for both members as well as non-members of the public.
Our new programme was kicked off with a members-only tea entitled "A Serai Affair" at the Outreach office premises on the first of June.
Our new programme was kicked off with a members-only tea entitled "A Serai Affair" at the Outreach office premises on the first of June.
Since lemongrass or serai is normally regarded as a curry ingredient, the theme of our tea-party was to use serai creatively, making puddings, kuih, jelly and other dessert items with it. The tea party also served as a try-out for Jenny and the other Activities members to develop it into an activity that can be offered to the public in general.
Our president, Tengku Idaura, Jenny and the volunteer members outdid themselves preparing a variety of snacks using serai as the main ingredient. Tengku Idaura's serai-based serunding was a real hit. We tried eating it with bread, roti jala and rice and it was great every time! We even made two different kinds of lemongrass drinks - a warm, aromatic serai tea that was equally good cold and a refreshing iced and diced lemongrass jelly beverage. Comments, suggestions and critiques were most welcome and we received a lot of useful feedback on how to make out puddings tastier, as well as other desserts we could try making in future.
Of course, we shall be starting a collection of more serai recipes after this. And the more serai desserts we can come up with the merrier! We all seem to have a sweet tooth for lemony cakes, puddings and jellies.
A Serai Affair was certainly a fun morning for everyone who turned up, with Miss Tan Chia Wen making beautifully fragrant pandan roses for everyone. In fact, all the people who turned up were so generous with their food contributions to the event that those who wanted them could take little bags of extra food home!
With the experience gained from A Serai Affair, we can now start looking at how to make this tea-party activity into part of a larger programme, like combining it with either a similar cookery activity involving another local herb or fruit or handicraft demonstrations and lessons using local plants, origami with coconut leaves, for example.
*For our friends from other countries, here's a short glossary of the Malaysian food mentioned in this post.
kuih - Malay word for cakes, puddings and deserts.
serunding - a dry-fried mixture of coconut, aromatic herbs and either finely pounded dried meat, fish or prawns.
roti jala - lacy Indian crepes made by drizzling a local crepe mixture on a flat, hot pan.
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