Julia Child Night #9

Another Julia Child Night is in the books! This annual event is so much fun and I love that it gives me an opportunity to see my extended family on my mom's side of the family as we no longer gather with them for holidays.

I'll let the pictures (mostly) do the talking!

My aunt, uncle, parents, and brother gathered on Friday to start the preparations but I had to miss this as I couldn't take another day off of work after missing so much work due to my RA flares in August. They were very understanding, though! We got to work around 11 on Saturday morning and pretty much worked straight through until the guests started to arrive around 4 pm. Asian food requires A LOT of knife work/prep work. 

My aunt and brother prepping the rice noodles. They made 3 different kinds for the various courses!

I think my uncle spent nearly 2 hours cleaning and preparing the Thai basil for the spring rolls and pho

In the mid-afternoon, the youngest participants of Julia Child Night helped me set the tables. They looked so festive thanks to all the decorations my aunt and uncle found on Amazon!

My uncle folded these beautiful paper cranes as centerpieces for the tables!

There was an appetizer course in the basement and a signature cocktail (a lynchee lemongrass cocktail) but I was too busy at this point to remember to take a photo. We had a big family toast where we toasted to the recent birth of my aunt and uncle's grandchild (he was a premie, so my cousin and her husband were unable to attend since the baby can't be around big groups of people), the recent engagement of my aunt and uncle's son to his awesome girlfriend, and the news that Phil and I were expecting!

Then it was time to make the first course: fresh shrimp spring rolls. We had to make 30 of them so we set up 3 stations with 2-3 people at each station.

Plating the spring rolls

The finished product was beautiful and delicious!

The second course was a classic Vietnamese dish: Pho with filet mignon. The broth was made from scratch and had so much flavor.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the 3rd course, which was my Asian vegetable salad. but here's a picture of from the practice night in August. We got a lot of compliments about how light and fresh the salad was.

Next up was the 3rd course: Beef short-rib lettuce wraps and pork and shrimp fried rice. We were cooking for about 30 people, so we had to double the fried rice recipe. My mom and I cooked side by side and my sister read the directions out loud to us. It was kind of intense as fried rice comes together so fast and the wok is so hot so you need to have all your ingredients ready. Abby probably did not love the job of reading to us. We made her repeat so many parts of the directions, sometimes 2-3 times! Sorry, Abby. You were a trooper to deal with us!

The beef short-ribs were served on butter lettuce on top of a layer of homemade kimchi, made by my aunt with the fried rice on the side.

The next course was a signature dish of my brother's: shrimp Thai pasta. This was so delicious!! The pasta was a wide rice noodle. 

I actually forgot to take a picture of the dessert which was a green tea ice cream, made by my sister-in-law, with almond cookies that my mom made. My mom made one of the batches of almond cookies gluten free and sent the extras home with me! Score!

And of course, at the end of the night we had to take our annual apron photo. As you can see, the number of attendees has grown and nearly everyone wears an apron!

It was a wonderful night with family. Everyone was very complimentary of the food, and as usual, went home with a full stomach and full heart!