tom rim
Just like momma used to make! No but really, how often do I get to say that? Not really that often — my mom’s more of a moneymaker than a homemaker. Tom rim is one of maybe two dishes I can remember her cooking for us on a regular basis when I was growing up. The things she made she made well — and since her cooking was such a rare treat, I really thought it would be special to ask her for a recipe, her recipe, for a dish unique to my culture and heritage, that I actually grew up eating. Seeing as how my life has always been pretty well-populated with white people, white people food and white people culture, I guess I jump at the chance to feel (authentically) asiany every once in a while. Anyway, I don’t know what it was that reminded me of this recipe, but I guess it always starts with a craving and an oh hey! haven’t had that in a while. I looked up tom rim recipes online only to find that the english translation is “caramel shrimp.” Now I knew that brown sugar went into the sauce but it never occurred to me that it was meant to be the headliner of this dish. The recipes I found online really seemed to be aiming for a sticky (rather than saucey) sort of final product — like the honey shrimp at PF Chang’s! That’s when I realized what a dum dum I was being, consulting the internet before my own mother! So here’s my mom’s recipe, and here’s how it went down.
Not like I need to sing the praises of Koreana Plaza more than I already have, but they have frozen, deveined shrimp for $4.50 a pound! The shells came right off! This meal can be very cheap if you have a good asian supermarket to go to.
So once the shrimp was all peeled and deveined I tossed them together with some chopped green onion, black pepper, fish sauce, crushed garlic and red pepper flakes. I marinated this mixture in the fridge for a while (my mom says ~45 minutes).
That ain’t salsa.
Meanwhile, I made the nuoc mam. This is actually my stepmom’s recipe for nuoc mam, as relayed to my mom. It’s basically three parts water, one part white vinegar, crushed garlic, one part sugar and one part fish sauce. The vinegar is supposed to be somewhat interchangeable with fresh lime juice but I added fresh lime juice in addition to the ingredients listed above because it sounded like a good idea at the time. Vietnamese chili garlic paste would’ve been really good in this too but I didn’t have it on hand at the time.
Now would also be a good time to start making some jasmine rice (oops I didn’t use jasmine), hard boil some eggs and steam some cabbage. (I hope you are lucky enough to have a small Korean helper as I was.)
Once cooked and cooled, the hard-boiled eggs are meant to be quartered and soaked in nuoc mam for a while.
Okay, now it’s time to saute the shrimp in a bit of neutral oil (and all it’s marinade juices of course) until the shrimp are just cooked. Turn off the heat and set them aside. To make the caramel sauce, heat some brown sugar in a pan, whisking often as it melts.
Once it’s completely melted, turn the heat down to low. Then add a little bit of water. Stir constantly as you add it. This part confused me — when I added water the whole pan started steaming A LOT and I was worried that I burned the sugar because it smelled, well, kind of burnt, so I threw that batch out and tried again. But the second time around, when I was extremely careful about turning down the heat and stirring constantly and what not, it happened again. I then realized that the caramel sauce wasn’t really burned — it changed color a bit when I added the water but it tasted just fine so I think that might be how it’s supposed to look/smell. So basically don’t freak out even if it looks like this, because I think it’s supposed to:
Now put the shrimp back on the heat and add some of the caramel sauce to it, little by little, and simmer it for a little while so the sauce reduces and the shrimp turns brownish. Keep adding caramel sauce and fish sauce until it tastes right. I ended up not having to add any additional fish sauce at all, but I think the brand of fish sauce that we have at home might be saltier than most.
I was pretty cautious when adding the caramel sauce (because nothing could ruin a meal more for me than accidentally making it too sweet) but I actually would’ve added more caramel sauce to the shrimp while it was simmering in retrospect. The end result wasn’t as saucey as I wanted (or as I remember my mom’s being). Don’t get me wrong — it was still delicious in it’s own right. I guess I just have this habit of being disappointed when things don’t turn out exactly as I expect them to (in the kitchen).
Serve like so — with the shrimp over rice and the eggs soaked in nuoc mam poured over the steamed cabbage. Put more nuoc mam on the table so everyone can douse as they desire. 
Not quite like momma used to make. Next time we’ll make this together, so that I can reap the benefits of learning-by-doing!
