Last week I made the Bún Trộn Tôm (Vietnamese Shrimp and Rice Noodles Salad) with Citrus and Herbs recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. It’s another cold noodle dish.

The recipe doesn’t call for any unusual ingredients, but benefits from some prep ahead of time. It calls for nước chấm, fried shallots, and, optionally, đồ chua. I intended to get some of these done earlier in the week, but I just never had the time.

Kenji calls for poaching the shrimp, a technique he says helps keep the exteriors from overcooking. He directs to heat shrimp in water until it starts to simmer, then cut off the heat and let sit for about two minutes until barely cooked through. After their cooked, you run them under cold water to halt the cooking and peel them.

Rice vermicelli is then cooked in the shrimp water until it’s done, then also rinsed under cold water to stop the cooking.

Kenji calls for assembling everything in a big bowl, but we did individual bowls as the kids would eat some of the ingredients. Shredded lettuce goes on the bottom, then the noodles. Matchstick carrots (or, optionally, đồ chua), matchstick cucumber, mung bean sprouts, mint leaves (I subbed basil because Megan is not a big mint fan), chopped cilantro leaves, the shrimp, and grapefruit chunks are arranged on top. All that gets drizzled with the nước chấm, then sprinkled with fried peanuts and fried shallots.

Kenji directs to toss everything together at the table. We did it individually, since our bowls were assembled individually.

I thought it was good. Megan said it was “interesting”. It has a lot of ingredients in it, which Megan likes, and it’s flavor is similar to other dishes we enjoy. It was kind of like eating Vietnamese spring rolls (a dish the whole family enjoys), but in a bowl.

I look forward to making this one again, but will probably simplify the ingredients if I can’t find the time to make them ahead of time.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.