The Mighty Pho

The last few days I have been talking with my friend Barbara Nowak about cooking.  She lives in an area of Georgia that is not known for its Asian cuisine, and we were looking for a restaurant with a Vietnamese pho soup on the menu.  That made me start thinking about making the soup from scratch.  It’s a lot of work and cooking down animal carcass is not my favorite thing to do, but I wanted to see if I could duplicate the taste of my favorite pho restaurant.  So when I woke up Monday morning, the first thing I had on my mind was to go buy some beef leg and knuckle bones.  I figured Publix was as good a place as any to look.

But first I had to run up to the Asian market and buy some more nam prik pao, which is chili paste in soy bean oil  I like the Mae Sri brand when I can find it.  I also bought more Por Kwan brand tom yum  paste, $1.79 in your oriental market.  You can make a flavorful quick soup by mixing a tablespoon of tom yum paste into some light chicken or vegetable broth. Throw in a few mushrooms and some sliced spinach and scallions, and it’s a meal.  I also buy the big bags of bean sprouts and Thai basil, which is also called holy basil.  Sweet basil will not do for the Asian recipes.  In the store, I saw the wife who owns my favorite pho restaurant, and I told her I was cheating on her, trying to discover the secret to her pho by home cooking.  She laughed.  She knew something.

So I went to Publix on my way home and looked around in the meat department to find my leg and knuckle bones.  I saw neck bones and ox tails, but no legs and knuckles.  I asked my favorite seafood dude and he took me to the frozen bins where they had what he called the marrow bones.  I bought my two pounds and came home to make the homemade Vietnamese pho beef broth.

It was a little labor intensive, since I was roasting the vegetables and pre-boiling the bones.  I got the bones to the proper simmer stage so I could add the spices and leave them to cook for 3 hours, after which all the flavor is extracted from the marrow. I’m not used to working with carcass anymore so I perceive it as a messy job.

The hardest part, for me, was the constant clean up between stages so I didn’t have remnants of animal flesh lying around anywhere.  I have to admit it kind of grossed me out.  Years ago when I was a daily beef and pork eater, I didn’t mind it, because I didn’t perceive it that way.  So this put a new spin on the experience for me, and it was not a good one.  But learning the secret to the broth would be worth it!  Or would it?

After 3 hours, I strained the soup into a clean pot and placed in the refrigerator so the fat could rise to the surface to be removed.  Then I decided to write the recipe down and to make the website for it.  Then I did the Facebook post that I was making the broth.

The only thing I notice after the fact is that the recipe called for no salt, so I added none; I figured the fish sauce at the end would make up for it.  I did not roast the bones ahead of time, and I kept the pot lids on during the simmer.

The result?  Well, it was a fun process. It taught me to add star anise and ginger and fennel to my soup broth in the future for extra flavors. It also taught me that if I want a good pho, I’ll go to my favorite restaurant.  Mine was lacking in flavor.  Perhaps that could have been remedied by leaving the pot lids off and letting the broth cook down and concentrate, but I did not do that.

WAS IT A WASTE OF MY TIME?  I don’t think so.  Had I not tried it, I would always be wondering how it would have turned out.  I do that with other projects as well.  I get excited about something and throw my time into it and all too often I’m ready to move on to something new without finishing up what I’ve started.  It’s not a problem, I start lots of projects other people are happy to finish. But when I take a project to completion, even if the outcome is not what I wanted, it’s always a success.  Sometimes the success comes in having learned something new, crashing old beliefs and theories by attracting a different result.  It all gets added to the bank of my life experience.

SO DID I RECREATE A DELICIOUS PHO BEEF BROTH AT HOME?  No.

WAS MY HALF DAY OF TIME WASTED?  No.  I learned that I don’t always know what I think I know.  In this case, what particular flavors would taste like together.  I was reminded that how I feel about the ingredients (the carcass) affects my perception of the final product.

It also taught me that if I want a delicious and authentic pho, I’ll go to my favorite pho restaurant,