cook: san francisco vietnamese american garlic noodles and lemongrass shrimp

Today is my husband's birthday, but we celebrated yesterday by hosting his mother and sister for lunch, meaning I cooked. I wanted to re-create in some way the birthday meal we ate at Gao Viet Kitchen, but instead of lobster I grilled shrimp and to the garlic noodles I added blanched bok choi. This recipe I found online I thought approximated the sticky and unctuous sauce that was on the grilled shellfish at my new favorite Vietnamese fusion restaurant.

 

I used grapeseed oil instead of peanut oil and rather than bash and macerate lemongrass growing in my neighbor's garden, I resorted to a tube of lemongrass paste. 

I also wanted to make a caramel sauce to add to my arsenal of Vietnamese sauces from a recipe I saw in the library book below. 

  

I happened to have palm sugar which I tried to melt in my Turkish coffee pot.

 

However, the palm sugar was NOT melting into a caramel like white sugar does, and so I hastened the liquification by adding fish sauce. In the meantime, while the caramel sauce was coming to a very low simmer, I worked on my grill paste. I spent most of the morning assembling the mise en place chopping and mincing.

 

To the heating lemongrass oil, I added lots of ground garlic and thinly sliced shallots.

Lastly, I added thinly sliced red and green chilies and a couple teaspoons of red chili flakes. Grill paste done.

And then it was go time and a blur of laying shrimp into my cast iron grill pan and slathering them with the lemongrass sate before grilling for 7 minutes under a low broil; slicing and de-seeding cucumbers and dressing them in Chinkiang vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, and minced garlic, and then putting sliced cucumbers and sauce in the fridge until serving time; 

boiling baby bok choi and fresh noodles and heating in a separate pan, garlic and butter before adding fish sauce, oyster sauce, Golden Mountain seasoning sauce, sugar and then heating and tossing noodles and vegetable with sprinklings of Parmesan and chopped scallions.

I had intended to make Imperial rolls, which needed to be started the day before, but that changed to me calling a nearby Pho restaurant to order Imperial rolls to nope, just go with garlic butter noodles, bok choi, cucumber and grilled shrimp. And it was just enough to feed four plus a little bowl of leftovers. I MUST cook the garlic butter noodles again though to go with the canned crab still in my fridge. And I've still a little jar of the lemongrass sate too. Shrimp again? Or calamari perhaps?