Pho for your birthday? Sounds right to me.
This all started with a the idea that we needed to learn how to make Pho, a Vietnamese soup that Peyton and her family had come to love at the late, great Asian Express. I'm not up on my Viatnamese, so I won't offer a primer on all of the different names for the different ways pho is made, but I know what we made, with rare beef and noodles, is called Pho Tai. The process of making the soup is long, but not terribly difficult if you know what you're doing. I won't claim that we did, but we had a general idea.
Our day began at the International Market over on Broadway. It's not a big store - 4 aisles, a seafood case in the back that is only stocked intermittently, and one cash register up front by the door - but it is a treasure trove for foodies in Bowling Green. Hidden in those aisles I've found big packages of agar agar, little bottles of biryani, all manner of exotic spices, and a small and ever-changing array of fruits I didn't know existed. It is my go-to place for soy sauce, sesame oil, dried mushrooms and tea, and not just because the selection is better, but the prices are unreal. Plus, sometimes I just need an excuse to go spend an hour looking at random stuff.
To be honest, we probably didn't need to go to the International Market for the stuff we needed, but Peyton had never been and I was a willing tour guide. We started in the spice section, picking up enough cardamom and anise for twenty pots of pho, then headed over to find a suitable fish sauce for our soup. Fresh ginger, some rice noodles and some Thai basil and we were done. I grabbed a couple of fresh samosas* for lunch, and we were done. A quick maiden voyage, but enough to get her a taste of what culinary wonders are available in our backyard.
* I don't know who makes the samosas or when to expect them to be there, but anytime I go in the market and see them by the cash register I buy a couple. They are hard to find around here and simply delicious. I may have to learn to make them soon.
After a quick trip to Kroger (the International Market doesn't sell beef), we were ready to start our pho. The basic broth is made with bones, ginger, onions, and a Vietnamese version of a bouquet garni. We used a mix of oxtails and pork hocks - not traditional, but a little extra pork never hurts. The recipe we were using said to char the onion and ginger then peel and add to the stock. Further reading has shown that you should cut each into large pieces, char those and add them to the stock. Adding charred onion for flavor makes sense, though I didn't really notice anything missing when we the soup was done.
What makes pho different than regular meat broth is the seasoning. Cloves, cardamom, coriander, anise and garlic make up the "bouquet garni" (which Peyton cleverly improvised out of kitchen twine and a coffee filter), and along with a touch of sugar and a generous portion of fish sauce. After a couple hours of simmering and skimming, we had our broth. In the meantime, we set to work on making our egg rolls and dumplings, but I'll save that for part two of this post.
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