Rice, Rice, Baby! Sprouted brown rice

This post is for my friends Kyung Jin & Tina who inspired me to explain in the first place.  A picture is worth a thousand words, and a blog post is worth a thousand more and you know I can talk your ear off, so this is efficiency at work for ya!  Nary a klingon reference to be had.  And its free!  (Gotta love the new knowledge economy, unless of course one is an unpaid blogger... sigh.)

Organic brown rice (L to R) dried rice grain; soaked overnight; soaked and sprouted

RICE, RICE BABY

Rice is one of the fundamental staples of Asian diets from mythological times.  Paleoethnobotanists consider Southeast Asia to be the cradle of rice cultivation back when "continents known as Pangaea and Gondwanaland still existed."

I grew up on bowls and bowls of fragrant white jasmine rice.  White rice is machine milled removing the bran and the germ (rice DNA repository), and has recently been vilified as being stripped and nutritionally empty, spiking the blood sugar with empty carbohydrates.  

Even more recently, all grain has become a fairly new nutritional controversy.  By eating the low-saturated fat Standard American Diet (SAD), American folks are eating more carbohydrates and refined grains in particular to compensate for the calories.  The issue is that refined carbs (white flour, white rice, white sugar, well all sugar really) are a quick source of energy and quickly convert to sugar (glucose) in our bloodstream.  Too much sugar is the devil (okay, not the devil but can be the root cause of a lot of chronic diseases).  

Gluten-free diets don't escape from this problem entirely either.  The major mistake most folks make when switching from SAD to gluten-free is to swap out one highly refined grain-based carb (wheat) for another highly refined grain-based carb (rice, etc).  Highly refined, high carbohydrate diets will (eventually) kill you no matter which kind of grain.  Gluten-free works best when it is whole food, real food based.

Xena is HANGRY!
My kid calls her Xena the Lawyer Princess

One of the major differences between the Paleo/Primal diets and Weston Price (WAPF) is grain (the other differences as far as I can tell are saturated fat and dairy).  Paleo diet excludes grain and WAPF promotes soaked and sprouted grains.  As I've stated before, I'm not very interested in branding myself as an adherent to xyz nutritional diet and the territorial posturing that comes with it.  I'm interested in what works for my body and for my family's health.  On this issue, while I share a certain affinity with the Paleo/Primal diet, I do still eat grains (and saturated fat) though we eat fairly low grain.  I did an anti-inflammatory elimination diet for a year or so and then tried grain-free/paleo, but it exacerbated my blood sugar.  When one is waking 2-3 times a night hungry (and not-pregnant) and spending one's waking hours being very hangry, that is one's body sending a very clear message.  So on the issue of grain, I personally lean towards WAPF and my ancestral roots.

At the turn of the 20th century, Dentist Weston Price conducted a global exploration of the impact of processed foods on dental health (malnutrition, cavities, dental & jaw malformation) and concluded that nutrition and health are intrinsically linked; dental issues are symptomatic of systemic health.  Now, it's important to note he was looking at refined grains (white rice, bleached wheat, white sugar) of the industrial era vs traditional native foods (whole foods, whole grains/starches).

GOT RICE?

Previously I've mentioned, I believe the universalizing generalization of the "ancestral" nutritional diets ignores cultural/regional biome specificity & context.  Not all cavemen/natives are alike.  Biological anthropologists/archeologists/paleobotanists (i.e. people who actually research paleothic human societies as a full-time living) indicate that  plant-based foods--including grains/starches--comprise the majority of the calories in a hunter/gatherer ("starchivore") diet because the women (gatherers) are more consistently successful.  Being an anthropologist by training if not by profession/trade, I decided to look into the archeology of the ancestral Viet diet (in the Red River Delta).

• 16,000-20,000BP  (Hoabinh era) Hunter & Gatherer; limestone cave dwellers.  Diet consists of mollusks, fish, nuts, berries, roots, fungi, vegetables, wild grains, mammals.  The major protein snails, fruits or nuts were the source of daily nutrition needs of Hoabinhian food strategy.
• 6000 to 3000 BP (DaBut era) Transitional Hunter & Gatherer wood settlements on alluvial plains.  Diet consists of bivalve shellfish, nuts, fruit; first evidence for domestication of dog, pig and water buffalo (which are used for rice cultivation)
• 4000 years ago Agrarian--transition to primarily rice cultivation 
• Pre-industrialization.  I haven't sourced records of this from Viet Nam yet, but Thailand is an interesting comparable case study.  Thailand wasn't colonized by the West and rural areas did not experience the industrial exploitation that we see in VN. Modern machine mills producing polished white rice were not introduced until the 1950s and available mostly to the wealthy.  Poor folks ate the more nutritious hand-milled rice which did not remove the bran or germ in its entirety.

If one looks at the actual archeological research of the prehistoric era in Southeast Asia, rice does not lead to dental caries/cavities in the same way that maize does.  (I don't know when when hand-milling was introduced, suffice to presume that this is unrefined or at the most, partially milled rice). 

The agricultural period has long been recognized to have been a very important period in human prehistory.  Its timing and consequences, including the effects on human health, have been extensively researched.  In recent decades, this has included the idea that there is a universal positive correlation between the adoption of agriculture based on a carbohydrate staple crop and dental caries prevalences.  This is mainly based on evidence from America, where maize was the staple crop.  On the basis of evidence from prehistoric skeletal samples from a  series of prehistoric sites in Southeast Asia, this correlation does not appear to apply in areas of the world where the stale crop is rice.  Although we have looked only at dental caries, we suggest caution be applied in the drawing of inferences about substance changes from dental health.  Patterns reflecting the adoption of one starchy staple are not necessarily applicable to all such crops. (Source)

I personally don't condone the B-word.

So brown rice is not the same beast as wheat or corn.  That said, I don't presume to know whether brown rice is going to work for your body and health.  You have to figure that out and you do you.  For me and mine, organic brown rice is firmly entrenched in our ancestral and modern tradition.

I've mentioned in my Ancestral Foodways post the changes in my personal rice eating history:

I went from eating white jasmine rice every day 1-2 times a day to eating brown rice, then organic brown rice every day to now eating organic brown rice maybe 2-3 times a week and soaking and sprouting the rice...

Me and my beloved started eating brown rice maybe 7+ years ago to be healthier, but since brown rice still has the bran (and therefore all the fiber and nutrients), it is a lot denser, chewier, and frankly, not as tasty to eat.  A few years back my husband who was primary cook when my daughter was a baby through toddlerhood noted that soaking the brown rice made a big difference in the taste, texture, edibility.  So we started incorporating that into our cooking when we could remember.   Rice is after all dried for storage as a part of its harvest production, so soaking reconstitutes the grain and this should be considered a minimal step in the consumption of brown rice.

In the last few months, I've learned about sprouting grains & nuts and applied sprouting practices to rice:

soaking and sprouting ... 2-3 days to reduce the anti-nutrients like phytic acid which are inherent in all seeds and to leach out the arsenic from soil contamination that is endemic to all arable land all over the world; seeds contain all the genetic information for new life, so they have innate self-defense in the form of anti-nutrients like phytic acid.  Sprouting changes the rice from a seed to a plant and releasing its nutritional value. (Ancestral Foodways)

Since texture is a part of taste, this means sprouted brown rice (aka germinated brown rice, GABA brown rice--for the amino acid GABA that is released by sprouting, or hatsuga genmai) tastes better, with a softer bite.  Sprouted rice needs less water to cook than unsprouted rice.  

Sprouted rice is not as convenient as white rice.  It takes planning and forethought, not something I can always spare.  It is however hands down way more nutritious and definitely tastier than unsoaked, unsprouted brown rice.  So a couple of weeks ago, I realized I can make a mega-batch and freeze it so I will always have sprouted rice on hand.  (DUH!)  Theoretically I suppose sprouted rice can be dehydrated (I have seen this being sold as a highly marked up product), but you'd have to soak the rice again to reconstitute the grain and I'm sure that takes several hours/overnight.  You should probably save the sprouted rice in smaller portions.  For us, a family of three, I make ~3 cups which lasts us a several days.  This method below therefore yields 3 batches of slightly more than 3 cups (because the rice expands).

I use Lundberg Farms organic short grain brown rice which is about $1.14/lb from Costco. I love and prefer jasmine rice but it is too costly when organic.  One can also find partially milled brown rice at many Asian markets, but despite the lessened production time, it costs way more than polished white rice!  I know there's some backwards Smith-ian economic term to explain this.  (BTW Lundberg organic rice has lower arsenic content.  I take zeolite and eat seaweed to help reduce the heavy metal build up. 

Binchō-tan

*Also I just had an aha!-synapses-firing moment, you can add binchō-tan--Japanese carbonized wood--while soaking and cooking the rice.  The carbon in the binchō-tan helps to filter chemicals and heavy metals, including arsenic, that can effect the taste.  I was recommended to use binchō-tan while cooking rice a few years back--possibly the Dae Jang Geum effect (full episode)--and I'm thinking the chemistry of why has to do with heavy metals.  (Thanks to my friend Miho for introducing me to the use of binchō-tan in rice cooking a few years back.)  Do not substitute American charcoal; it is not the same thing.  Binchō-tan can be obtained on the internet.  I finally can use that kilo of binchō-tan I bought randomly at a now closed organic Chinese store in Milpitas and now I know what to ask for as a souvenir when friends go to Japan.

I use the traditional Asian method (ancient Oriental secret) of water measurement for rice cooking--knuckles.  Knuckles are great because well, they allow our fingers to bend and be prehensile.  Almost everyone has one.  And, it doesn't cost any money.  With white rice, it's typically 1 knuckle of water above the rice; with unsprouted brown rice it's typically one and a half knuckles because the bran absorbs so much water; with partially milled rice, it's close to white rice; sprouted brown rice is less than half a knuckle.  There is an element of guesstimation on this because everyone likes their rice texture different so you have to figure out what is your optimal texture/water.  My mom likes it on the dry side; I take after my dad and like it on the mushy side.  My husband likes it on the dry side, my daughter likes it on the soft, but not mushy side.  Unlike Dae Jaeng Geum's mentor Lady Han (full episode), I haven't bothered to figure out how to make one pot of rice magically suit everyone.  (Though I do notice with the VitaClay, the to layer  is drier and the bottom mushier.)

One thing we noticed when eating real food, is that we need less because we are getting more nutrients from each bite.  Serving size is approximately 1/2 cup per adult.  I can get away with eating rice only once a day as long as one of my meals substitutes sweet potato/starchy tuber in its place (for whatever reason, organic potatoes don't work for me.  They leave me hungry overnight).

Organic brown rice grains, note opaque germ on the left of each grain (L to R) dried rice grain; soaked overnight; soaked and sprouted.  You can't see scale so much (I think the soaked had started to dry out after being in the colander all day), but the soaked grain is 1/3rd larger than the dried grain.

SOAKED & SPROUTED BROWN RICE

Ingredients:

• 9 cups of organic, short grain brown rice
• A lot of water

Day 1 SOAK

Soak 9 cups of organic brown rice in a container with plenty of filtered water overnight.  The rice will absorb water so add enough to cover plus 4-6 cups.  Leave on the counter in a warm spot, covered with a towel (to keep out light, dust and in my case, opportunist thirsty cat).

Day 2 rice grains reconstituted
note the opaque germ

Day 2 SPROUT

Drain the grains in a colander and rinse it with filtered water.  You should notice that each grain is now expanded to a third bigger and there is an opaque area at one apex.  This is the germ, where the genetic material of the seed is stored.  Leave this on your kitchen counter for a day under a damp towel (I like flour sack cloth).  Sometimes, by the end of the day, the rice will have already sprouted which is visible as a notch  on the opaque end of the grain (germ).  You can cook or freeze it at this point or allow it to sprout more.

Day 3 Zee GERM-ans have sprouted!

Day 3 RICE & ROLL

Rinse the grains with filtered water.  You should notice a little notch or a tail where the germ is.  Your rice is now ready to cook or store in the freezer!

Rice that has been sprouted needs less water when cooking.   Add rice to the pot and cover up to a half a knuckle of water above the rice line depending on your preference.  You can also add a chunk of binchō-tan (Japanese carbonized wood) while cooking to filter heavy metals including arsenic from the water. 

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

Sprouted rice in our VitaClay ready to cook.  
This is a little too much water.

Cooked, sprouted brown rice (a little on the mushy side)

Pasta Carbonara (GF/DF)

I improv'd this meal at 4 o'clock when faced with dinner time and no real plan and diminishing food stock in fridge.  I happened to have a half pound of Trader Joe's uncured, nitrate-free bacon ends & pieces from a while back that still smelled edible and a frozen brick of sustainably-raised ground beef as my base along with chopped kale that I had cooked for the morning's green smoothie.  I set the beef chub to defrost in a tub of water then pulled out my trusty America's Test Kitchen for the recipe instructions.  Pretty much only the ATK cookbooks (and the Asian ones) survived the GF/DF purge a few years back because they are hands down the best cookbooks ever.

I still had leftover raw macadamias in the pantry from when I made nut cheese for GF pizza and Faux Cheezy-cake. This recipe uses the faux cheese method that I discovered in The Dairy-Free & Gluten Free Kitchen.

Other ingredients that I sourced from TJ's besides the bacon: the pre-chopped organic kale, organic brown rice-quinoa pasta.  I abhor brown rice pasta, but the addition of quinoa makes it a lot more palatable.  TruRoots also makes a good brown rice-quinoa pasta that I've found at Costco.

Since the TJ's bacon is rather random pieces and a lot of fat, I added water as it was cooking to help render the fat without burning the bacon.  I started off with 1 cup of water, then as it evaporated added more water until the fat was more rendered into edible sized pieces, then I allowed it to brown on both sides.  This process left a lot to yummy bacon lard and a nice golden brown glaze on my All Clad skillet that I deglazed with balsamic vinegar since we didn't have any white wine on hand.

The timing on this matters.  The macadamia-egg mix should be tossed on to the hot pan (heat off) when you are ready to serve.  T & kid were on a walk visiting the neighboring mule & goats so I had to cover the pan at the third to last step and wait for them to get home.  I had the pan back on low heat with just the pasta, kale & beef, and when they got home, I tossed the macadamia nut mix on.

This is best served fresh.  This recipe serves 4-6.

Ingredients

• 1/2 lb+ of uncured bacon
• 1 lb of ground beef (anti-biotic free)
• balsamic vinegar (in lieu of white wine)
• grey sea salt (aka Celtic salt)
• fresh ground organic grains of paradise (or black pepper)
• 1/2 cup raw organic macadamias
• 3 organic eggs
• 1/2 tsp organic onion flakes or powder
• 1/2 tsp organic minced garlic powder
• 16 oz chopped cooked organic kale (steamed or boiled)
• 1/2 package organic brown rice & quinoa pasta
• optional organic chipotle powder

Soak the raw macadamias in enough water to cover.

Cook the kale by boiling or steaming it until cooked through for 10-15 minutes.

Make the pasta according to instructions.  Approx 8-10 minutes.  Drain and rinse with hot water.

Turn oven to 150 degrees and set your oven-proof serving bowl in the oven to warm.  Since I had a nice handmade Tunisian bowl that I was afraid of breaking, I left it at the lowest temperature setting and put the bowl in while the oven was still cold.  Once it heated to 150, I turned the oven off and led the door closed to retain heat.

Drain the macadamias of most of the water leaving around 1/4 cup of water.  Puree the macadamias with the eggs, garlic and onion and a spoonful of sea salt.

Fry the bacon in a skillet until browned.  Remove bacon and add ground beef, sea salt, pepper.  Brown it until cooked through.   Deglaze the pan with balsamic vinegar.  Cover with a lid and turn off the heat to retain the heat.

Add pasta and kale to the skillet.  Pour the macadamia mixture over and toss until well coated.  Cover with the lid.  

Using a towel or potholders, remove the bowl from the oven.  Pour the pasta into the bowl.  Top with crispy bacon and more pepper.  Toss and serve immediately.

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

xôi gạo nếp lứt nảy mầm | sprouted sticky brown rice

Xôi (aka sweet rice, sticky rice, glutinous rice) is typically a dish for special occasions and breakfast.  It can be eaten sweet or savory or sometimes both.  There are many, many variations.  For this recipe I will be giving two variations Xôi | sweet-salty with coconut milk and Xôi Cúc | sweet-savory with mung beans.

I choose to sprout the grains & beans because doings so unlocks the anti-nutrients; grains & beans are after all seeds that contain all the genetic potential of the plant.  Seeds have inherent self-defense in the form of anti-nutrients such as physic acid.  Sprouting germinate the transformation from seed to plant and makes it more digestible.  Start sprouting two days prior to the day you plan to  cook.  Soaking the whole grain/legume in water helps to reconstitute the grain and reduces cooking time.
I discard any water used with the rice because of the issues with inorganic arsenic contamination.  I also use organic rice which has lower levels.

Using an unhulled or brown rice changes the texture of the xoi.  There is a slight crunchiness and integrity to the grain that one doesn't get with unhulled rice.  Xôi Cúc translates as chrysanthemum rice because if the bright yellow color of the hulled mung.  Leaving the hull on will change the color to a yellow-green.

Ingredients:

XÔI 

• 2 cups brown glutinous rice
• 1 cup coconut milk
• coconut palm sugar
• grey sea salt

XÔI CÚC

• 2 cups organic brown glutinous rice
• 2 cups unhulled organic mung beans
• 2 cups water
• 3 cloves garlic
• 4 shallots
• coconut oil or pasture-raised lard
• black pepper
• grey sea salt

Equipment:
Bowls for soaking/sprouting, immersion blender, skillet, steamer pot.

SPROUTING THE SEEDS 

TWO DAYS PRIOR
REGULAR XÔI 
Rinse the rice and then soak the rice in filtered water overnight in a dark place or covered with a dish towel.

XÔI CÚC
Rinse mung bean.  In a separate bowl, soak the mung beans in filtered water overnight in a dark place.

DAY BEFORE
REGULAR XÔI 
Drain the rice and discard the water.  Do not reuse the water .  Rinse and drain.  Leave in a dark place.

XÔI CÚC
Drain the mung beans (water can be composted).  Rinse and drain.  Leave in a dark place or covered with a  dish towel.  Once it sprouts a tail, move them into the fridge.

COOKING THE RICE & BEANS
REGULAR XÔI 
Put the rice in the steamer.  If your steamer has big holes, cover the pot with parchment paper or banana leaves with small holes poked into it to allow the steam to circulate.  Steam for 20 minutes then add coconut milk mixing well.  Steam for an additional 10 minutes until the brown rice grain has a slightly al dente texture with a soft interior.  Transfer to a serving bowl, add salt and sugar and mix well.

XÔI CÚC
Cook the mung beans and water in a regular pot for 5 min until just cooked. Drain them.

Fry the garlic and shallots in lard or oil for a few seconds until fragrant, then add the mung beans.  Add pepper and salt to taste.

Mix together the rice and mung beans and put them in the steamer.  If your steamer has big holes, cover the pot with parchment paper or banana leaves with small holes poked into it so the steam can circulate.  Steam for 30 minutes until until the brown rice grain has a slightly al dente texture with a soft interior.  

Sticky brown rice mochi recipe testing

mo·chi

/ˈmōCHē/

a short-grained, sweet, glutinous rice cake with a high starch content, used in Japanese cooking. 

While mochi appears to have been been mainstreamed as a delectable pastel ice cream treat to be had at a sushi restaurant, as a foodway it is actually widespread in Asia with different vocabulary natch, as a sweet morsel filled with beans or seeds and usually connected with traditional celebrations.  Mochi is made from glutinous or sticky rice and symbolizes "good times" in a nutshell.  My MIL makes chè trôi nước--a sweet mung bean stuffed mochi served in ginger syrup for birthdays.  That's party mochi; I have in mind a plain, everyday, savory mochi.

One of my all-time favorite snacks is bánh dầy chả lụa--little rice cakes shaped as the sky according to Viet legend brushed in oil and sandwiched around steamed silky pork sausage and wrapped in banana leaves.  Whenever we were near a Viet deli/bakery, I always grabbed 1-2 for the road.  Since I've stopped eating MSG, I've stopped eating at Vietnamese food places, because inevitably there is MSG in everything especially chả lụa.  I haven't taken my MIL's offer up to teach me how to make chả lụa yet.  Though with a quarter hog in my freezer, I think I ought to calendar that in.

So I was a kid's birthday party this weekend that had the traditional Korean tteok | mochi which was made with brown sticky rice and coated with brown rice powder, some with a sweet sesame seed center.  And I happily ate like a half-dozen after reading the ingredients and making an allowance for sugar (in any case, this was tuned to Asian tastebuds and was not very sweet at all).  My daughter VL got a few too since she couldn't partake of birthday cake.  We took some of the leftovers home and it struck me that it would make a great lunch for VL for school especially since she starts extended kindergarten hours next week.  I scoured the internet which had lots of white sticky rice recipes. lots of traditionally-made-by-pounding recipes, and surprisingly, a lot of microwave recipes.  I finally found this wholesome, macrobiotic brown rice mochi recipe by Jill Ettinger (Organic Authority) which is food processed, steamed, and baked.

So, embarking on my maiden voyage into mochi making.  Here are my testing notes & tweaks. 

Soak the dry rice in water for several hours or overnight. Drain off excess water.

Captain's log.  Stardate 22.10.2013.  I soaked the organic sweet brown rice that I sourced from Azure Standard overnight in my sprout jar.  I think I'll try sprouting the sticky rice grains at some point to maximize the nutrient content (remove phytic acid & arsenic contamination), but this requires planning 2-3 days in advance...

In a strong food processor or blender, process the rice until it makes a smooth, creamy paste.

Mochi dough

Maybe my Kitchenaid is not high powered enough or I drained the rice of too much water or the recipe forgot water.  All I got was crumbly.  So I slowly added 2 tbs of water and it promptly balled up and was more doughlike than paste.  Then I had to take a break and go pick up my daughter from school.  When I came back, I remembered the salt (which is a forgotten step on the recipe) and added it and it all crumbled apart again (probably the water was absorbed into the rice and it dried out).  So I added another 2 tbs of water to get it to ball up.  I suppose I could have added more water to get it to paste consistency, but I liked the easier removal and clean up of the dough.  Sticky rice paste on blades is a P.I.T.A.  But thick dough means a denser mochi so I may try more water next time to achieve a looser consistency and allow the dough time to rest and soak up the moisture.  I'll have to experiment more and see...

Pour the mixture into a bowl or small pot you can steam with in a double boiler (you can also use a pressure cooker for about ten minutes). The rice should steam about 30 minutes or until the mixture gets glutinous and sticky. It should also appear somewhat glossy.

Steamed mochi dough

I started the water boiling in my pressure cooker with the rack and steamer tray inside while I scraped (not poured) the dough and crumbs into a round pyrex container powder-coated with generous amounts of tapioca starch.  To smooth it out, I lightly dusted my hands and the dough with starch to prevent sticking. The starching is where Jill's mochi recipe departs from bánh giầy which is formed into balls, oiled, and steamed on little individual squares of oiled banana leaves.

I set the pyrex in the pressure cooker which was boiling by this time and steamed for 10 minutes.  When the timer went off, I released the steam and voila.  I love my pressure cooker!  Mochi in 20 minutes from grinding to steaming.  The mochi is ready to eat at this point IMO with powdering or oiling.

On a tray dusted with the starch, pour the hot mochi mixture as evenly as possible, about ½ inch in thickness. Let cool before putting in the refrigerator for at least two hours. If you want to make round mochi, you'll need to work with the very sticky dough to form the balls, which is time consuming and worth mentioning again: very sticky.

Mochi ready to bake

This is an extra step compared to bánh giầy, but I decided to give it a go and see what happens.  I heated up my oven and since there was a pizza stone inside it from our recent pizza night with Pamela's GF mix (found at a steal $2 at GrocOut), I decided to bake on it with parchment paper rather then swap out.  I moved the dough over to a powdered 7.5 x 5.5 " pyrex container.  It's an extra step and extra dish to wash, but the round pyrex ends up moistened from the steam and not useful for this next task since I wanted even squares.  I  coated a butter knife with starch to make the cutting easier.  Then lifted the squares out and baked them on the aforementioned pizza stone & parchment paper

Puffed up baked mochi!

Mochi "beignet"!

The extra application of dry heat makes the mochi puff up and the outside crisp.  They resembled nothing so much as mochi beignets though the taste is gooey rice goodness!

We didn't have anything but deli roast beef on hand so that's how we did.  We found the mochi a bit too plain so I'm tweaked my amounts to up the gray sea salt (since it is milder than table salt).

I'll work on a  modified bánh dầy recipe forthcoming...

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

Baked mochi ready to eat

This little piggy had baked mochi & roast beef.  Nyum!

Confessions of a Phở-natic

Blasted blogger somehow overwrote my newer version with a draft so now I have to reconstruct.  Other recent blogs on the topic of Phở
Genealogy of Phở
Real Phở Bo Recipe

Real Phở Ga Recipe

So my foodie friend over at Streatery called my out on my claim to be "not zealous" and the lengths I am willing to go to acquire quality meat--organic, pasture-raised if possible, humanely butchered.

Yes, I have sourced sustainably-raised Sonoma Liberty duck legs to make bún măng vịt|duck bamboo soup (post forthcoming) after 3 months/attempts (and I'm not too proud to say I did it through a raw pet feed coop;  I've volunteer schlepped thousands of pounds of raw meat for two months to make good on this).

Yes, I have been an itinerant meat dealer slinging cryovac'ed cuts from a organic heritage hog (red wattle!), hustlin' all up in east Oakland.  Holla! (or if you're in Fruitvale ¡Hola!)

Meat Man
Head of State — MOVIECLIPS.com

Mangalista yummy!

And I have braved the mega-hipster crowd and hours long line at Pork Prom just to eat crumbs of the curly haired Hungarian Mangalitsa.

And I have divvied up 120 lbs of delicious organic hog and offal as it defrosted blood all over my floor.

But, I am not zealous.  I am enthusiastic.  I just like good food and good health at a reasonable cost.

So here are some confessions of a Phở-natic:

• My recipe is my own.  Of course I didn't invent it.  Over the years of trying to phở-ness (oh yes, I will portmanteau phở into every conceivable iteration) with advice from my mom, my oldest aunty, I cross-referred to existing recipes from cookbooks and internet for quantity because you know "add as much as you like to taste, I don't know how you like it" is not a valid measurement and rice bowls and soup spoons are not reliable measurements.  And although I did acquire a digital scale to ride this new foodie trend of weighing food, I still don't think in metric.  Sorry, American born.
• I don't eat beef.  I stopped eating it in on a regular basis in 2003 after noticing I was not digesting it very well and what's more, would develop boils after eating conventionally produced beef.  Eww! TMI I know.  I make beef phở on infrequent occasions and try to use only the highest quality beef, so boils are no longer a problem and I take enzymes to help me digest.  I make chicken phở far more frequently.  I gave up on restaurant phở last year not just because the broth was mediocre and masked by liberal use of nước mắm to cover up the lack of hours long bone extracting simmering, but also because the excessive amounts of MSG gave me severe intestinal cramps and prompted a bad metabolic crash.  And that's without slurping the broth.  I may make exceptions for Turtle Tower (SF) and Pho Nguyen Hue (OC) but probably only if I am carrying my supplements that buffer me from chemicals that my body finds toxic.  Otherwise I will violate the cardinal rule of eating at a phở specialty restaurant by ordering from the non-phở menu.  Can't go wrong with a grilled meat rice plate.  Cross my fingers.  Now that we are sourcing grass-fed/-finished, pasture-raised, sustainable beef, I've increased my beef intake with minimal repurcussions.  I like tripe in my phở but I've yet to source organic, non-chemically processed tripe and we're not ready to buy half a cow.
  
• When I am on a budget or cannot find time to source local organic, grass-fed beef or organic pasture-raised chicken--which is most of the time--I buy halal, that is, beef/chicken that is grown in accordance with spiritual strictures tastes better than meat grown for greed & environmental destruction.  And that is not just the Bay Area smug talking.  I'll post again about my local meat sources, but currently, I go to Indian Market and get their organic, halal Petaluma Poultry chicken for $2.29/lb.  It's really a marked taste improvement over supermarket chicken.  I had pasture raised chicken for the first time a few months ago and was really astounded by the flavor which blew my now-ordinary seeming organic halal chicken out of the farmyard.
• I put leafy greens in my phở.  No, I'm not talking about ngò gai, basil, and cilantro.  I'm talking raw baby power greens--chard, baby kale and baby spinach are my current faves.  What da phở?  Weo, I never claimed to be a purist about phở (ok, maybe I did).  I love my people's food, but here in the US, it consists of too much refined whites and too much meat.  I need greens with every meal to feel nourished.  I make sure they are cooked to reduce the oxalic acid in raw greens to which I am very sensitive.
• I don't like onions.  Although I faithfully follow my grandmother's method of carmelizing a whole onion, I've been allergic to onions ever since I can remember (yes, this is a real thing.  I would get rashes and have respiratory issues.) and rarely used it in the last two decades of my cooking experience.  However, my chiropractor recently cured me of this allergy (not just for backs, yo!) and now onions are back in my pantry.  Perhaps, this is the missing ingredient to make my phở taste like my grandmother's.  And indeed, it does make a difference to the color of the broth.
• Making my own brown rice phở noodles or substituting another kind of brown rice noodle is on my list of to-do's to try to make phở even more nutritious.  I am lucky enough to have a mother-in-law who grew up in a rural hamlet in the delta making everything from scratch so I pick her brain a lot and there's also my bro and Streatery's genius.  I had an epic first attempt fail with brown rice bánh xèo (a future blog post one day) but I'm not giving up just yet.  So until I master brown rice flour, I have been known to eat phở with brown rice; that's the actual rice grains.  It's... interesting.
• On the noodle tip, I prefer even-wider-than-fettucine-XL-sized bánh phở|noodles which seems to be a northern thing.  I've only ever seen wide noodles at the northern style restaurant Turtle Tower in the Tenderloin because they make their own noodles by hand.  So this means I choose the dried, made overseas noodles over the "fresh" regional-/California-made noodles which typically comes in narrower widths.  I also choose the dried kind because they don't use wheat/gluten or preservatives unlike the fresh ones.  But if I am willing to pay the discomfort with chemical preservatives and do choose fresh, I go for the wider hủ tiếu|rice noodles.
• Besides leafy greens, I garnish my phở with basil, cilantro, ngò gai (when I have it), occasionally blanched mung bean sprouts, Red Boat nước mắm
  ắm nhi
  ắm nhi
  , and lime/lemon juice.  Other than RB which is a recent artisanal product, that's how I've eaten it since I was a child and how I came to appreciate the nuances of broth unpolluted by condiments.  I still lift my bowl to slurp the last of the broth which btw is entirely polite in Việt etiquette.
• I have been known to substitute dried Italian basil when I don't have have Thai basil on hand.  What can I say, our herb garden didn't over-winter last year and I can't get to the Asian store that often.  Our garden this year had African basil and chocolate basil, not Thai basil, so that is what went in the phở.
• As I indicated as much in my flagship blog post, I am not attached to any "real food" celebrity or branded dietary program.  I finally watched Food, Inc for the first time a few months ago.  And I've yet to finish reading The Omnivore's Dilemma.  When I volunteered to table for my HMN chapter at the Wise Traditions WAPF conference last year, I had no clue who Sally Fallon is or why our chapter leader mom was so excited she punched me when she saw her; I was there to see if I could get discounted organic stuff in the vendor section (not so much).  I've only been to one foodie convening and really it was just something to do with my bro & his girlfriend when they were in town.  So I'm not really a convert to anything, just appreciate real food.
• I cheat time--though not nutritional value--with a pressure cooker.  I have a vintage Fissler Vitavit Royal that I inherited from my grandmother before she passed.  It must be rather fancy because replacing the aged gasket & valve set me back $30.  I can only cook family sized amounts in this one because the bones take up so much volume.  The provenance of this special pressure cooker was probably my gourmand fashion designer uncle turned gourmand friar-priest uncle when he entered the monastery.  He is probably also why my grandmother who couldn't read english was also in possession of Craig Clairborne's NY Times Cookbook which I inherited as well, though I donated/recycled it last year.  (Gasp!  What can I say, America's Test Kitchen is my go-to cookbook.)  This takes me from 5 hours with my cauldron to 1-1.5 hours with my pressure cooker.  An indication for me as to the quality is if the broth is gelatinous overnight in the fridge from the rendered collagen.
• I re-use the bones and that gets me maximum nutrient extraction and value for my dollar (or use-per-eat to paraphrase my girlfriend Tuyen's theory of economic consumer rationalization).  I make batches and freeze the broth because I am too lazy to can though I admire the efficiency and smarts of making shelf-stable canned broth.  I defrost weekly or thereabouts and everyone in the family sips a cup of broth on the daily for the mineral content immune boost.  Note that bones can be made for 2-3 re-uses but after that, it diminishes in beefy flavor so you'll have to add meat cuts.  The bones can then continue to be used for bone broth/hunter's tea.
• I met a Hawai'i-kine custom surfboard maker in Santa Barbara back in January.  He told me how he's been blackballed at the local phở joint for trying to mod his phở too many times trying to make it more like the saimin he missed (itself a fusion of local ethnic groups).  Maybe 5 years ago this might have prompted an one-sided traditionalist argument on my part (though I don't know that I'd even argue, if it wasn't for people mod'ing, bánh mỳ ổ|Vietnamese sandwich may have never come into existence and the world would be a sadder place for it), but I just shrugged and told him how to make his own phở and mod it however he wanted.  Some folks add carrots or daikon to the pho to sweeten it.  Others add pork bones.  I like my phở with kale and brown rice.  Who am I to judge?

 So there you have it.  Keepin' it phở real.

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!