Dijon Vinaigrette Coleslaw & Jamaican Jerk ribs

I have never particularly liked coleslaw growing up. I really despised the one that we'd often get at KFC.  I think it was the creamy-sweetness that turned me off. Maybe this is because Viet coleslaws are not creamy. At any rate, this all changed back in my wheat eating days when my good friend Tuyen introduced me to Bakesale Betty's unholy fried chicken sandwich which was made with a vinaigrette-based coleslaw. It's damn good. I'd pick out all the onions because I was allergic to raw onions back then (the sulfur).  But it opened up my culinary world to non-Viet, non-creamy coleslaws.

It's grilling weather so I picked up some nice country ribs (butt) from Whole Foods; this is a flavorful fatty cut from sustainably raised pork and in the bulk pack (3 lbs+) it's a reasonably priced $4.99/lb comparable to what one would get buying direct from the farmer.  I used a Jamaican Jerk recipe from Bruce Aidell's Complete Book of Pork; I make it mild because my kid doesn't like spicy and we serve with organic habanero sauce on the side.

My favorite coleslaw recipe hands down is Jeremy Fox's Apple Savoy Cabbage which I make with organic fuji apples; for whatever reason, organic apples have been hard to come by this year.  So sans apples, I had to do something different.  I threw this coleslaw together because I happened to have a savoy cabbage in the fridge from a few weeks back.  The coleslaw perfectly complemented the Jamaican Jerk ribs.  

I like savoy cabbage because it is thinner leaves which soften quicker meaning that you can eat it sooner, more digestible.  I toss the shredded cabbage with grey sea salt similar to how one would prepare cabbage for fermenting (sauerkraut or kimchi).  The salt begins to break down the tough cellulose in the cabbage, making it more digestible.  I use the America's Test Kitchen method of shredding (see which ensures you don't end up with large sections of rib.

I recently started using estate grown organic certified olive oil direct from the farmer, because I boycott the mafia (also why I never ate at Phở Hoà chain even before I stopped eating at phở restaurants).  The 2013 Moonshadow Grove Mission Olive Oil is very spicy so when my daughter is eating, I use mild tasting avocado oil.


Two recipes below--Jerk ribs and dijon vinaigrette coleslaw.

Jerk Marinated Ribs 

(adapted from Bruce Aidell's Complete Book of Pork)

• 1 dried ancho chile, deseeded
• 1 sweet onion, quartered
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 tbs ground allspice
• 1 tsp Chinese five spice powder
• 2 tbs organic coconut palm sugar
• 2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1/4 cup lime juice
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp fennel
• 1 tsp celtic sea salt

Combine all the ingredients in a food processor and blend to form a paste. Slather it on the rubs. In the best case scenario, you would marinade this the night before. In my usual, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants scenario, I grill it when the grill is ready. ("I" being the royal "I" here as you see my husband is doing the actual grilling wearing the new apron I waxed for him for Father's Day.)

Dijon Vinaigrette Coleslaw

4 servings

Ingredients:

• 1/2 head of savoy cabbage (approx 1.5 lbs)
• 1/2 tbs of grey sea salt
• 1/4 cup olive oil or avocado oil
• 3 tbs of organic raw apple cider vinegar (Trader Joe's, Azure Standard, or Bragg's are all excellent sources)
• 1 tbs of whole grain Dijon mustard (Trader Joe's has a nice one)
• freshly ground grains of paradise or black pepper
• pinch of grey sea salt

Quarter the head of cabbage.  Cut and discard the core.  Thinly slice the cabbage perpendicular to the center rib.  Toss in a bowl with 1/2 tbs of grey sea salt.  

Mix together the remaining ingredients and toss over the shredded cabbage.  Let sit at least 10-15 minutes prior to serving.

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

Bánh Chưng | Earth cake for Lunar New Year

Bánh Chưng is a traditional Việt dish for Tết | the Lunar New Year.  Back in the nascent days of Việt Nam's tribal past, legend has it that after defeating the Shang dynasty incursion, the 6th Hùng Vương king (ca. 2300 BC) decided to choose his successor among his sons by a cooking contest; yes, a prehistoric Top Chef competition with the winner being crowned king.  Primogeniture had no valency in pre-Sinic Van Lang; patrilineal confucianism came later.  The winningest son who was 18th in birth order and poor to boot was visited by a nữ tiên | a goddess who advised him to use the simple ingredients of the people, wrap it in banana leaves and boil it.  So he chose gạo nếp | glutinous rice, đậu xanh | mung beans, and pork, shaped it vuông vuông | square creating Bánh Chưng which in ancient Việt cosmology represents the earth.  He also made bánh dày | mochi in the round to represent Heaven.  I know that seems puzzling to imagine the earth as square and Heaven round.

Flying over north VN

Bear with me here as I diverge through my anti-halcyon grad school years.  I took a seminar on the Sacred Feminine in Southeast Asia with Dr. Ashley Thompson who kept emphasizing that there were Indic yonis & lingam all over Southeast Asia including VN which utterly befuddled me at the time (how is a square pedestal a yoni?).  And I finally puzzled out the connection between cosmic geometry and everyday objects; on the geographic level, a rice paddy is roughly square in shape when on level land, a metonymic connection to earth; on the symbolic/metaphoric level, a square set on its corner, is a diamond or rhombus, the universal symbol of the yoni.  Now, thanks to Ashley and the Sacred Feminine (sounds like a great band name) my secret sixth sense to wit is: (sigh) I. See. Yonis. Everywhere. (I'm talking about you, Crystal Vulva Cathedral) which is a damn sight better than seeing lingam everywhere let me tell you.

Linga-Yoni at the Cát Tiên sanctuary,
Lâm Đồng province, Vietnam

To the indigenous Việt cosmology, the vault of heaven is encircles the earth.  Hence  bánh dày | mochi in the round.  (I said, "She was more like a beauty queen from a movie screen.  Dont mind but what do you mean I am the one Who will dance on the floor in the round?")

Aside: bánh tét is a related dish which was purportedly derived during the Nam tiến | the Southern expansion period (17th C VN's version of Manifest Destiny conquest).  It can have the same savory ingredients as Bánh Chưng or alternately contain a sweet mixture of sticky rice & banana.  Significantly enough the Southern region in VN retains more Indic cultural influence via the conquest of Cham & Khmer kingdoms (and more Sinic influence via the Ming dynasty refugees who settled the area).  It is unsurprising that the cylindrical shape should therefore represent the linga, completing the cosmic dialectic.  (Oh, and thanks internet for showing me that I am not the only one to make this connection so you can stop looking at me like I am prurient, all you Việt Kiều.)

biggest Linga and Yoni in Southeast Asia

During my childhood, Ông Bà Ngoại |my maternal grandparents and Ông ngoai in particular would make dozens and dozens of Bánh Chưng the week before Tết.  Ông Ngoại would set the banana leaves in a frame and skillfully wrap dozens of Bánh Chưng (Ohio St, Auburn Dr, 54th).  Then he'd light a small bonfire in the backyard and boil them in a clean galvanized steel trash can.  The cooked Bánh Chưng would be distributed among the Phamily and the community.

I have been wanting to make Bánh Chưng ever since I became a mother to continue the tradition; and once my grandparents' passed, as a part of their legacy, but life got in the way and I was daunted.  This year with my ascending energy, I gave it a go though it was a few weeks after Tết.  I kinda winged it, loosely referring to some instructions I wrote down from my mom and Bach Ngo's cookbook, using what ingredients I had: pork belly instead of shoulder (too fatty, not enough meat), no shallots (hard to source organic ones).  I didn't hull the mung beans because it just seemed like a lot of work and anyway it's just more fiber; I didn't precook them either because of the time and not wanting to cook all the nutrients out.  I struggled with wrapping (darn banana leaves kept splitting when I was wrapping it and my corners were not tight so there was some water that got in).  Then I posted my results on Facebook and got lots of feedback from my aunty Len and my mama (who I let weigh in this post with her advice).  I suggest looking up youtube tutorials on wrapping as I haven't mastered this.  The one drawback is the ones from Việt Nam use fresh banana leaves that have a different texture & length than the ones we can source here.  Frozen banana leaves can be found in an Asian or Latino market (especially the Caribbean ones) and occasionally I've seen fresh banana leaves.

Bánh Chưng

makes three 9x9 inch "cakes"

• 10 cups of organic, sprouted glutinous brown rice (alternately called sticky rice, sweet rice, mochi rice)
• 1 lb organic sprouted mung beans
• banana leaves washed & dried and then blanched
• optional 8 shallots
• 1/4 c. Red Boat fish sauce
• Celtic or grey salt
• 1/5 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2-1/2 lbs of sustainably raised pork shoulder or ham, cut into 2 inch cubes
• coconut palm sugar
• optional coconut milk (full fat kind, not the dairy alternative kind)
• cotton kitchen twine
• 24 qt stockpot or pressure cooker
• Bragg's amino acids or Coconut secret amino acids
• lard or coconut oil

RICE RICE BABY 

Soak rice & mung beans separately overnight in filtered water.  Drain the water separately (can be composted).  You may proceed with the recipe from this step or to boost the nutritional value, sprout the grains by  and rinse 1-2 times a day for 2-3 days until the germ sprouts a little tail.

Pulverize shallots, fish sauce, salt & pepper in a food processor, mortar & pestle or with a hand blender.  Add to the pork and marinade for several hours or overnight.

If you do plan on cooking the mung beans, boil them for 10 minutes.

Mama Says: 

cook bean , add salt while cook, add sugar after cook, smashed the cooked bean, add little coconut milk, form to the same size of banh chung, 1" thick, if you want savory, add fried onion, pepper. 

cook sweet rice halfway in batch with salt, this way easy to roll. 

I didn't bother seasoning the beans or parboiling the rice.  Extra steps but my result was plainer so I'd add shallots, more fish sauce & salt next time.

REFUGEE EDUCATION #1 Ba-Na-Na

Wash and dry banana leaves.  The frozen kind are softer than the fresh kind.  According to my mama: "Deep [dip] banana leave in the boiled water To soften it and also sterile the leave, dry the leave both side with paper towel." [2/1/2015 note: Mom also says use banana leaves from Thailand, not the Philippines and to cut off the rib for pliability.]

A traditional khuôn | mold for Bánh Chưng is a square frame with a an interior box like a springform pan.  You can use a 9x9 baking dish as the mold as I did, make a wood one, or DIY one from cardboard as my mama does.  

Mama says: 

use the cardboard cut a long strip and make it to square box, tape it at the one corner to make the mold,1st layer one piece of leave 15" long, 2nd layer 4 pieces of leave center overlap on top the 1st layer, the outside of leave it outside . put the square box on top of the leave not straight side (xeo xeo) tear two strips of banana leave, the width same size of one side of the box, put banana strip crisscross inside the square box, put cooked rice on top the banana strip, pat the rice to make it solid at the base, put cooked bean & meat or what ever!!!,top with another layer of cooked rice pat it down. fold the banana strips to make the square, pull the cardboard out now you already have one small square banh chung, now just fold the outside banana leave, just like gift wrap. tight with string. cook with boiled water for 2.5 hrs it done.

I boiled in a pressure cooker for 3 hours since brown glutinous rice takes longer to cook than white glutinous rice.  Since my pressure cooker is small, I could only fit 1 Bánh Chưng at a time so this was a 3 day cooking process!  (Still not as bad as the time I decided to make a 10-course dinner for my 30th birthday which entailed a 5 page workplan, a week of prep, 10 lbs of pork, and 3 or 4 days of cooking and borrowing a friend's oven for the second roast.  Oh and kalua pork juices charred in the ovens, the nước mấm spilled all over my then-boyfriend, now husband's car causing him to ban kalua pork and fish sauce for a while.  I of course got drunk in relief and exhaustion at the party and ate not much of it.  I don't do such crazy things no more.)

To serve, unwrap the banana leaves.  Slice into wedges if eating so fresh and so warm warm.  The days after, it's customary to fry it so you'll want to slice them for even coverage.  I use a little lard or coconut oil and fry in my All Clad skillet or my enamel coated cast iron.  My aunty Len uses her panini griddle to make the perfectly toasted Bánh Chưng with wedges.

Fried.  Obviously too hungry to do pretty staging & lighting.

It is traditionally eaten with pickled leeks and soy sauce (there's a memory in there somewhere about pickled leeks, Jacqui and Auburn Dr.).  I use Bragg's or when I'm really avoiding soy, coconut aminos or celtic salt.  The Southern way of eating it is with a little sugar.  My stepdad and husband who both hail from the Mekong delta do this and I could never really get into it.

Cooked Bánh Chưng can be frozen and resteamed. Leave it in its banana glory and slip into a freezer bag.  

Tutorials on wrapping and molds:

• Gói bánh chưng bằng khuôn thông minh
• khuôn bánh chưng | earth cake frame tutorial here

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

Hủ Tiếu Bà Năm Sa Đéc | Mrs. Five's Noodle Dish from Sa Dec Recipe

Pork Hủ Tiếu Bà Năm Sà Đẹc no broth

This noodle dish is one of my favorite dishes which harkens from vùng Cửu Long the land of the 9 dragons (aka Mekong Delta) of Hokkien-Khmer origin.  It is a specialty attributed to Bà Năm Sa Đéc|Mrs. Five of Sa Dec.  Who this mythical Bà Năm|Mrs. Five  is, I don't know; it's very common in the South to call people by their birth order rather than their personal/intimate name and when they're married by their spouse's birth order depending on which one you are related to or know (VN is a relational language so the pronouns are not fixed but based on one's relationship).

When I was in my first trimester with my daughter and nothing appealed to me, my parents made Hủ Tiếu Bà Năm Sà Đẹc and my appetite restored.  My stepdad is from the Mekong and was raised in a Buddhist monastery where he learned to cook as a trade.  This is the recipe my parents taught me.  The glass noodles are served with ground pork in a tomato paste base with shrimp and served with a side of pork broth, though chicken or beef broth could be substituted. This is my quickie version without the battered shrimp cakes.  I made two versions in the last few months, one with chicken legs since I was out of my organic hog share and one when I picked up my organic, pasture raised hog share for the year.  I added zucchini to one because we just harvested it from the garden and I'm always looking to boost the veggie content.  Also, my lifelong allergy to onions was recently cured (!!!) by my chiropractor (not just for bad backs, yo!), so onions are back in my pantry for the first time since I moved away from home and started cooking for myself (almost two decades).

Hủ Tiếu Bà Năm Sa Đéc

Ingredients

• 1 lb of sustainably-raised ground pork or 3 chicken leg quarters, deboned & ground
• 1/2 cup of dried shrimp soaked in hot water for 20 minutes and minced in food processor
• 3 tbs of tomato paste
• 1 shallot, minced (or substitute with 1/2 sweet onion)
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• Black pepper
• Red Boat fish sauce
• Organic greens of choice
• Zucchini, julienned (optionally added to stir fry or to broth)
• Tiger shrimp, squid or other seafood (frozen without preservatives)
• Korean sweet potato noodles (dang myun)
• pork broth (can substitute chicken or beef broth) served as a side
• chopped green onions for garnish

Directions

Boil water and make noodles according to directions.  Usually about 10 minutes.  Warm up your broth of choice.

Blend ground meat and shrimp in a food processor until just mixed.

Stir fry ground meat & shrimp mixture, add shallots & garlic, several dashes of fish sauce and pepper.  Cook for until the meat starts to brown but is still pink.  Add tomato paste and saute for a few minutes until cooked.  Remove from heat.

If you wanted additional seafood, poach them in the broth at this time.

Serve the glass noodles with the pork-tomato paste, any seafood, and greens and a side of broth garnished with chopped green onions.  The broth can be used to moisten the noodles to taste/consistency you prefer and/or sipped during the meal.

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

The Source

There's a new sheriff in town (yes, the Whole Foods* mecca is now open in Fremont) so I thought I'd update this list...
 
That old folk wisdom adage "you are what you eat" holds true.  Nowadays we've grown up with industrially produced meat & produce and have no idea what real food tastes like.  Organic foods not only taste better, though not prettier, and are less likely to pollute your body & the earth with carcinogenic toxins or feed into the impending zombie apocalypse.

I get a little more into why eating organic, sustainably-raised food is important to our family here.

Overall, though in our family we eat chicken & fish far more frequently, I prefer pork which I only eat if I can source sustainably-raised/organic at the very least, pasture-raised and corn-free at the best.  Here's my go to's:

PRODUCE

• Our garden!
• Ramirez Pesticide-Free Farm (Cherry-Guardino--Fremont) Pesticide free produce, small selection of staples like kale, cilantro, squashes.
• Perry's Organic Farm (Ardenwood--Fremont) Organic, great selection
  
• Newark Farmer's Market (New Park Mall) Stress-free parking and pesticide-free Asian vegetables
• Whole Foods Market (Fremont) I was pleased to see they carry Perry Farm's produce and it is so beautiful inside.
• Sprouts Market
• Trader Joes
• Costco

CHICKEN

• Indian Market (Central Fremont) organic, halal chicken (whole, breast, quarters, livers)
• Maiwand Market (Centerville--Fremont) organic, halal chicken (whole, breast, quarters, livers) 
• Holistic Moms Network Tri-City Chapter buying coop for organic, grain-free, pasture-raised chickens & eggs from Early Bird Ranch (Pescadero, CA)
• Whole Foods Market (Fremont)
• Sprouts Market
• Trader Joes
• Costco 

EGGS

• Azure Standard has organic, pasture-raised eggs for a great price
• Local Farmers market
• GoodEggs.com
• RealFoodBayArea.com

DUCK

• Fremont BARF Coop (Northgate--Fremont) Sustainably raised duck leg quarters, hearts & livers & fat from Sonoma County Poultry Liberty Ducks
• Whole Foods Market (Fremont) 

FISH

• Fremont BARF Coop (Northgate--Fremont)Sustainably caught whole fish (seasonal) from EcoPawz
• Holistic Moms Network Tri-City Chapter Sustainably caught seafood from Lummis Island
• Whole Foods Market (Fremont) 
• Marina Poultry & Seafood (San Leandro/Newark) Sustainable seafood!  Locally caught!  Technically the physical storefront is not in the Tri-City area, however rumor is they have a booth at the Newark New Park Mall Farmers Market on Sundays.  HMN TC recently did a Chinook salmon buy through them and it was excellent!
  
  
• Costco 
• Trader Joes

PORK

• Heritage Foods USA Food hub.  organic heritage hogs--red wattle is the most succulent
• Clark Summit Farm organic heritage hogs, offal & fat
• Holistic Moms Network Tri-City Chapter buying coop for organic, mostly grain-free, forest-raised/forage-fed hogs from Early Bird Ranch (Pescadero, CA)

BEEF

• Pampero Ranch raises free range, grass fed longhorn steer (might not be organic).  Their headquarters are based in Sunol.  The steer are raised in Modesto. 

• Backyard CSA sources organic, pasture-raised beef soup bones, liver & shanks from Mendocino County with delivery in the Tri-City area.
• Whole Foods Market (Fremont)
• Sprouts Market
• Maiwand Market has a full service butcher stall with halal, grain-fed lamb & beef.

ORGANIC COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AGRICULTURE (CSA) & GREEN BUYING COOPS

• Holistic Moms Network Tri-City Chapter Buying coops for organic/green products from Azure Standard, Frontier Wholesale, Red Boat Fish Sauce (me), among other things...
• Dig Deep Farms CSA this is a locally grown, affordable social enterprise of the Alameda County Deputy Sheriff's Activities League
• Azure Standard this Oregon based farm & buying coop is a fantastic source for organic grains, and many many other consumer goods at wholesale prices.  They have drop points all over the West Coast with drops in Newark and one in Warm Springs/Fremont.
• Frontier Coop a great organic wholesale buying coop.  I have access through HMN but you could set up your own local coop.

RANDOM ORGANIC PRODUCTS

• Grocery Outlet Bargain Market (Newark, Fremont & Milpitas) In our household, we call it GrocOut.  They have organic eggs, and random assortment of grocery items ranging from organic olive oil, salad mix, soy milk, etc.

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

*Full disclosure: I am a Whole Foods Fremont Foodie Ambassador.  What does that mean? I have no idea.  This is a new unpaid pilot program that was launched to tie into the Fremont opening.  WF gathered a select group of foodies who represent the diversity in Fremont as well as diverse dietary needs.  We got to have a nice little wine & gnosh get together & swag before the grand opening in exchange for social media promotion.  But nothing has happened since.  Don't expect this to go to my head.

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!