Nước Mấm Pha|Fish sauce dip recipe

This is the fourth of four recipes that feature my favorite fish sauce Red Boat.

Nước Mấm Pha|Fish sauce dip

In the Viet restaurants, they shortcut Nước Mấm Pha by using CoCo Rico (a Riqueño coconut soda) if you are lucky and 7-Up/generic equivalent if you are not.  Yeah.  I go very old-school, pre-colonial on this and use coconut palm sugar & fresh young coconut juice instead of water.  Fresh young coconuts can be obtained at most Asian markets.

(Note: unrefined sugars like coconut palm sugar or raw honey will darken dishes unlike the whitewashed dishes we are used to.  Use your tastebuds, not your eyes to determine quality/flavor.)

• 1/2 cup fish sauce
• 2-4 tbs đường thốt nốt | palm sugar or coconut palm sugar (or dried fruit syrup)*
• 1-2 fresh thai bird chiles or homemade garlic chile paste
• 1 lime
• 1-2 minced garlic
• unsweetened juice from a young coconut (Vita Coco is a decent substitute, also water)

Mix together the ingredients to taste. Let sit for 10 minutes for flavors to blend.  Optional to discard the garlic at this point.  Add coconut juice to dilute to desired taste & consistency.

*I've recently watched Dr. Robert Lustig's TED talk where he lists the 56 names of sugar.  While coconut palm sugar was not one of the named and has a lower glycemic index, it still is a refined sugar.

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

Gỏi xoài/đu đủ/bấp cải|Vietnamese Slaw recipe

This is the second of four recipes that feature my favorite fish sauce Red Boat.

Gỏi xoài/đu đủ/bấp cải|Vietnamese Slaw

Below I have a green mango slaw recipe, but another traditional (and my personal favorite) way to eat green mangoes is to dip it in fish sauce mixed with đường thốt nhốt|palm sugar (optional fresh chiles).  When me and siblings were kids, we'd steal all the green mangoes off the tree in our front yard in Makiki District of Honolulu and eat them this way (albeit with white sugar) which exasperated our parents who wanted the mangoes to ripen.  Random trivia: I love my siblings, green mangoes and nước mấm so much I included this as a major motif in the screenplay for the experimental feature film KIỀU.

• 2 firm unripe large mangoes (Kent is a good variety) or 1 unripe papaya (can be found in Asian or Mexican stores) or 1/2 head of cabbage, shredded
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh coriander
• sliced onions or shallots (optional)
• raw apple cider vinegar
• 1/3 cup fresh mint
• 1/3 cup of thai basil and/or rau ram|Vietnamese coriander (optional)
• Chopped nuts to garnish (almonds, macadamia, walnuts, etc)
• Optional protein: grilled/fried tofu cut into strips, blanched shrimp, shredded chicken or pork (plainly cooked) or Viet beef jerky (traditionally eaten with gỏi đu đủ|green papaya salad)

Dressing

• 3 tbs Red Boat fish sauce
• 2 tbs đường thốt nốt| palm sugar or coconut palm sugar (or raw honey)* or fruit syrup
• 1-2 fresh thai bird chiles
• 1 tbs oil
• 1/2 lime
• 1 minced garlic
• Handful of cashews, macadamias, or almonds roughly chopped or sliced (optional use raw or sprouted nuts)

In a separate bowl, mix together the dressing ingredients incl garlic and set aside. Slice onion or shallots very thinly and soak in raw apple cider vinegar. Julienne or shred unripe mangoes, green papaya or cabbage. (If you want a less watery slaw, salt the cabbage or papaya and let sit for 30 to 60 min. Discard the water.)  Toss together with herbs and drained onions/shallots. Add protein. Pour the dressing on the slaw and toss. Let sit for 20 mins for flavors to absorb. Garnish with sprigs of cilantro and chopped nuts before serving

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

*3/1/2014 I've recently watched Dr. Robert Lustig's TED talk where he lists the 56 names of sugar.  While coconut palm sugar was not one of the named, it still is a refined sugar.  

Anchovy Salad Dressing

This is one of four recipes that feature my favorite fish sauce Red Boat.

Anchovy Salad Dressing

While this goes well with a classic Caesar dressing, my foodie brother taught me a nice salad dressing which I've tweaked a wee.  It's a light salad Asian dressing that pairs well with watercress or other assertive greens (fennel, endives or baby kale, chard & spinach for examples), avocados, and chicken salads. 

• nước mấm 
• lime juice
• sesame oil
• split garlic rubbed on the serving bowl or minced and soaked in the sauce & discarded before serving (more refined that way, meaning less gas)
• optional organic đường thốt nốt | sago palm sugar or coconut palm sugar or raw honey. 

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

Red Boat Nước Mấm Rocks!

Being Việt , I don't have a fear of fish sauce.  I use nước mấm with a lot of things besides Vietnamese food--eggs, bone broth, any soup or stew, salad dressing, meat marinade, quinoa, thai food, cambodian food, laotian food, adobo chicken/pork, pasta puttanesca or pasta sauce, kimchi, kimchi jigae, miyuk gook, and an experimental dessert (in progress)--typically in place of or to enhance sea salt.  Because fish sauce is fermented and nutritionally dense, I add it at the end of cooking after the stove is turned off when possible.  No sense in cooking off those nutrients, amino acids, vitamins, etc.

I only use locally-headquartered Red Boat Fish Sauce (Milpitas, CA).  Red Boat is a nutritionally dense, fermented sacred food meaning it is a nutrient-dense food vital to a cultural foodway prepared according to a centuries if not millenia-old method with whole ingredients.

I don't know about "The Best in The World" business, I mean in Việt Nam most families worth their salt make their own nước mấm.  And every family knows their homemade nước mấm is The Best.  For those who've relocated to urban areas and no longer make their own, they will go to great lengths to return to the mother's family home and bring home batches and batches of nước mấm.  (Aside: I actually have a funny somewhat related anecdote about flying in-country with mấm and mít|jackfruit when my husband, siblings and I went to VN together in 2007, but I'll save that for another post/blog or in person recounting.  You kinda have to know what mấm and mít are and be familiar with Công Sản officiousness to get the humor in it.  Like many anecdotes it's the telling of it that is so hilarious.)  Weo, I guess "Best Commercially Produced Fish Sauce Export in the World" didn't really have that je ne sai quoi ring to it.  I would be remiss not to mention that Red Boat is winning the approval of all sorts of celebrity chefs and foodies all over the US.  I won't name drop, because I am bad with names and what is with the cult of personality anyways.  Just google it.

Nước mấm taste test --Don't try this at home, kids!

After doing a nước mấm taste test on a "hot date night" (which was exactly what you think a fish sauce taste test would be like on a date night for a domesticated couple), I will credit it with "Best Fish Sauce in the Western Hemisphere" for sure.  I expect there to be a vast quantity of inferior bootleg versions of this in the next year--Gold Boat, Red Yacht, 2 Red Boats, 3 Red Boats, 2 Red Boats and a Dinghy.  I hope Red Boat has a good trademark lawyer...

Anyheo, I am currently was organizing a wholesale coop for Red Boat for Holistic Moms Network Tri-City & San Jose chapters and my phamily & homies in the Bay and SoCal with the approval of the gracious owner Cường Phạm (no relation, that I know of.  I mean, one never knows.  Obama and every US President but one is related to King John of England for pete's sake.  Yeah, King John of Robin Hood notoriety.  Deep innit?).  I can be a little ... enthusiastic about things I like (see pimping pork for example).  I seriously was on the verge of fermenting my own fish sauce when hallelujah, I found Red Boat--saving me the hassle of sweet-talking the husband, finding a spigot crock, sourcing sustainable, wild caught anchovies, fermenting dead fish, fobbing off angry neighbors and intrepid/gangsta racoons (if you don't know about the gangsta racoons of Alameda County, weo count yourself lucky).  My husband is relieved and instead my phamily, friends, acquaintances, strangers, Sunset magazine, the universe has to put up with me singing the praises of Red Boat and hella dissing whatever piss-swill fish sauce they use (it's endearing in context, really).  FYI I will seriously throw-down epidemiology with any MD who spuriously claims that fish sauce causes strokes.  Let's see the correlating research on say, the entire subcontinent of Southeast Asia, controlled studies, or did med school not teach them evidence-based medicine?  I was not a research analyst for almost a decade without knowing a thing or two about substantive proof.  Fear of salt is yet another American cultural myth while fear of the lack of salt is a colonized people's legacy.

The order ended up being 9 cases which totally exceed my expectation for 3 cases.  I should have just gotten 10 cases because there were a lot of latecomers who wanted in and I am not willing to break into my personal reserves and it also makes a great gift.  My aunty Len, the Phamily matriarch, says the company should give me free fish sauce for being a one-woman promotional dervish.  Never mind the fish sauce, I want stock options!  (Actually, anh Cường, I'd be happy with free nước mấm or like y'know, a bad-ass Red Boat t-shirt/swag. Just sayin'.)

I am usually too busy cooking or eating or doing stuff to make food porn.  I do have a few relevant photos scattered over various social media sites so I'll dig them up eventually and add them to this particular post here.  I'm a busy work-at-home mom starting up a new birth support worker business, freelance writing, making art, following my bliss, living and loving, on top of the blogging.  Hence the sporadic nature of my posts.  (FYI there's several drafts in the queue--local organic meat sources, nước cốt dừa|coconut milk, Brown Rice Bánh Xèo|Savory Crepes, Bún Măng Vịt|Duck & bamboo soup, Bánh Da Lợn|Pandan Mung bean cake-ish whence we get into the origins of the name, and Râu Câu|Seaweed jelly birthday cake using homemade fruit food coloring--so subscribe to my blog for updates on the food front.)

As with all my recipes, I try to use organic or sustainably produced ingredients where possible.  It just tastes better.  Also, I eliminate wheat, dairy, soy (when possible), chemical additives, and refined sugars.

Recipes below:

1. Anchovy Salad Dressing
2. Gỏi|Slaw
3. Gỏi Cuốn|Spring rolls
4. Nước Mấm Pha|Dipping sauce

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

Gỏi Cá Tái | Ceviche Recipe

Gỏi Cá Tái | Ceviche

Me and my homegirl Tuyền have been bouncing recipes off each other after trying something similar at O3 lounge in SF when we were celebrating Q2's wedding.  This is inspired by love and life.  It is not strictly Vietnamese.

• Any raw seafood (halibut, cod, scallops, langostino, etc.) chopped into small pieces
• Lightly blanched shrimp (or raw) chopped into small pieces
• garlic and/or shallots
• Chopped cilantro leaves
• Keffir lime leaves
• Lemon or lime juice
• (Optional) Fresh coconut water
• Sea salt
• Dash of Red Boat Nước Mấm
• Chopped tomatoes
• Chopped avocados
• Pomelo or grapefruit sectioned without the skin
• Chipotle habanero sauce (I get this from Azure Standard)
• Bánh Tráng Nướng|Roasted Rice Paper, Bánh Phồng Tôm|Shrimp chips, Tortilla chips or over shredded cabbage.

Blend a little coconut water with garlic, shallots, keffir lime leaves, cilantro, lemon juice, nước mấm, and seasalt.  Pour over raw seafood.  Add tomatoes, avocados, pomelo, and several dashes of chipotle habanero.  Lightly toss and salt to taste.  Garnish with a few whole cilantro leaves.  Let it soak for 30 min.

Eat with Bánh Tráng Nướng--this is a specialty of Central VN which is my dad's quê hương|natal province, shrimp chips, tortilla chips, or over cabbage slaw.

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

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!

Real Phở Ga Recipe

I'm cleaning up the blog a bit, so more on the cultural history of pho over here and my phở -natic confessions.

Real Phở Ga

Vietnamese chicken noodle soup

Use organic, sustainably-raised ingredients when possible.  Grass-fed or pastured beef/chicken really taste soooo much better.  At the very least, get halal chicken which is raised humanely and without antibiotics.  Next up, try organic, free range.  And the top tier is organic, pasture-raised, grain-free chicken which has incredible flavor.

BROTH

• 1 whole organic chicken, unwashed
• 1 organic sweet onion or 3-4 shallots, carmelized
• 1 whole fresh ginger
• spice: 10 star anise
• small handful of cloves
• two 3-in stick of cassia (saigon cinnamon)
• handful thảo qua/smoked cardamom (can find in an Indian or Southeast Asian grocery)
• handful of coriander seed (aka cilantro seed)
• sea salt to taste
• 1/4 cup Red Boat fish sauce (do not mess with any other fish sauce)
• raw organic apple cider vinegar (with the mother)

FIXINGS

• 2 bags of med-large size  bánh phở/thick rice noodles/pad thai noodles. (I use dried gluten- & preservative-free noodles.  I like the Ba Cô Gái|Three Ladies brand).
• shredded chicken meat & offal
• mung bean sprouts
• cilantro
• thai basil
• limes
• ngò gai/rice paddy herb (optional)
• fresh chile or chile paste (I get mine from my mother-in-law)
• Red Boat fish sauce

If you are using whole chicken, low boil with innards and spices for 30 minutes in a 5 qt stockpot until it is cooked (if you cut it up it’ll be a little faster).  Skim any scum that comes to the surface.  Remove the chicken from the broth and allow to cool.  Then shred the meat.  (This can be done the day before.) Put the bones back in the soup with 1 spoon of raw apple cider vinegar and bring to a low boil for 1 hour. If you are using a pressure cooker, reduce times by 30%.

 If you are using mainly bones from 1-2 whole chickens, roast them for 15 min.  Low boil for at least 1 hour with a spoonful of apple cider vinegar to allow the bones to release the minerals.  You’ll still want to add some raw chicken pieces (neck, backbones, leg quarters) to enrich the broth flavor. (Remove the leg quarters when cooked if you plan on eating it, otherwise all the flavor will get extracted.)



Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

Real Phở Bo | Vietnamese beef noodle soup recipe

I'm cleaning up the blog a bit, so more on the cultural history of phở over here and my phở -natic confessions.

Real Phở Bo Recipe

Vietnamese beef noodle soup (feeds 5-8)

This recipe endeavors to take phở back to its homemade, slow cooked, nutrient-dense roots with whole food ingredients without chemical additives and without the corner-cutting cheats found in a fast food restaurant environment.  It goes without saying, use organic, sustainably-raised ingredients when possible.  Grass-fed and/or pastured organic beef really tastes soooo much better. A second best choice would be grain-fed halal beef which is more humanely raised (no antibiotics) & slaughtered than conventional beef. This is a Northern style phở recipe which is less sweet and uses less condiments than its mainstreamed Southern counterpart that is typically found in most restaurants.  There are tips on how to make it more Southern-style if you prefer a sweeter broth.  This homemade phở is more nourishing and wholesome than most, if not all, restaurant phở, and a different culinary experience.  You can read a little more about phở here.

If you like that sweet, southern style of pho (I am a northerner, I do not like it) once the broth is done, add an unpeeled daikon and simmer to release glutamates. This replaces synthetic MSG which is the source of sweetness and the laxative-effect in restaurant phở.  Remove when it is soft enough to poke with chopstick.  If you leave in too long, it becomes starchy & breaks down and the broth will be ruined.

BROTH

• 3 lbs  knuckle, marrow bone, feet, or shank (or soup bones) and/or oxtail and my new 2017 fave short ribs (not the Korean kind)
• (optional for a meatier flavor: 1 pound piece of beef chuck, rump, brisket or cross rib roast, cut into 2-by-4-inch pieces)
• raw, organic apple cider vinegar or lemon juice
• 1 organic, sweet onion or 3-4 shallots
• 1 whole fresh organic ginger
• spice: 10 star anise
• small handful of cloves
• two 3-in stick of cassia (saigon cinnamon)
• optional handful thảo qua/smoked cardamom (can find in an Indian or Southeast Asian grocery)
• handful of coriander seed (aka cilantro seed)
• sea salt to taste (I use grey sea salt)
• 1/4 cup Red Boat fish sauce (do not mess with any other fish sauce)

FIXINGS

• 2 bags of med to extra large size bánh phở/thick rice noodles/pad thai noodles. (I use dried gluten- & preservative-free noodles.  I like the Ba Cô Gái|Three Ladies brand).
• 1/2 lb thinly sliced beef eye round, filet mignon eye of round, sirloin, London broil or tri-tip steak (If you are using a whole piece, freeze for one hour and then slice thinly.)
• mung bean sprouts (optional)
• cilantro
• thai basil
• limes
• ngò gai/rice paddy herb (optional)
• sliced fresh chiles/jalapenos or chile paste (I get mine from my mother-in-law)
• Red Boat fish sauce (accept no substitutes)
• optional apricot or prune syrup

Equipment: pressure cooker or 8 qt stockpot, pan, baking pan/aluminum foil, spice bag, ladle
If you are using a pressure cooker, expect 1 hour cooking time.  If you are using a stockpot, expect 3-5 hours cooking time.

BONES PREP THE NIGHT BEFORE

1) Acidulate bones overnight by soaking in water with 1 cup of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice.   Acidulating helps to render the collagen and calcium and release the minerals.

BROTH

2) Drain & rinse the bones.  Then parboil the bones.  Put bones into pressure cooker/stockpot.  Cover with water and bring to a boil on high heat.  Dump it all out into a metal colander and scrape off sides of pot to get rid of the scum.
3) While that is going, char a whole onion (or shallots) to release carmelizing sugars in oven or on grill. Open all your windows, ventilation fan, close all bedroom doors.  Remove outer onion skin, then put on foil in a baking pan (will release liquid) in the oven to broil for 5-10 minutes until blackened or translucent.  Scrape off most of the black and drop in the pot.  The carmelized onion is what gives phở it's color.

4) Char ginger.  No need to peel the skin.  Slice in long thin slices (length of ginger is fine).  Then panroast on a dry unoiled pan on high heat or over open flame.  You can either throw it in pot or add to spice bag.
5) Toast the remaining spices and add to the spice bag.

6) Pour in new water (approx 6-8 qts) with the bones.  Add spices to spice bag and throw in the pot.  If you are adding any tendon or tripe, that goes in now.  Bring to a boil then reduce heat to a low boil for 3-5 hours until the collagen renders. For a pressure cooker, when the indicator pops up, reduce heat to low.  Low boil for at 45 minutes to an hour. (*9/25/2017 I've upgraded to a Kuhn Duromatic 12 qt pressure cooker. I can make 12 servings of pho in under an hour! Yasss!)
7) If you like that sweet, southern style of pho, add an unpeeled daikon and simmer to release glutamates.  Leave whole or whatever chunks fits in the pot.

8)  Broth will taste plain until you add lots of seasalt which will bring out the flavors.  Add sea salt to taste (1/8-1/4 cup) and fish sauce (approx 1/4-1/3c).  You want to make it towards the salty side because the rice noodles and sprouts water it down.   Skim as much rendered fat & collagen off the top of the soup as you prefer or not.  It's more nourishing to eat it.  Nowadays, I leave it in.  If you prepare this the day ahead, refrigerate the pot and if you prefer a less nourishing broth, skim the congealed fat off in the morning.  The broth should be gelatinous after refrigeration from the rendering of collagen in the connective tissues; this is the gold standard for a nutrient-dense broth.  Note that restaurant phở never congeals.

NOODLES & GARNISHES

9) If you are using dried noodles: soak dried rice noodles in room temperature water for at least 15 minutes to reconstitute. Bring water to a boil. Drop in noodles and use chopsticks to separate. Cook until tender approx 2-5 minutes. Drain & rinse out starch with cold water.  If you are using fresh noodles, they just need to be heated up before you add the broth (otherwise they cool the broth down).  

10) Bring broth back to a boil before ladling into the bowl.  Put noodles & mung bean sprouts in the bowl. If you like your meat well cooked, you can either cook it in the broth pot first or put it in the bowl before adding broth.  If you like it rare, add meat last.
11) Garnish to your preference with the fresh herbs.

I personally do not garnish phở with anything other than herbs, fish sauce and lemon.  Hoison sauce or "plum" sauce is a popular southern garnish and is comprised of refined sugar, gluten, starch and food coloring and nary a plum to be seen; IMHO it has negligible flavor.  However, for those folks who like hoison sauce in their phở and are looking for a gluten-free/additive-free alternative, I suggest blending organic prunes or unsulfured dried apricots or with water to a thick consistency as a substitute.  If it's just a sweeter broth you are looking for, you can add carrots to the broth making.

Leftover broth can be frozen in 1 cup amounts or left in the fridge for a few days. 


Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

This could probably be made in a slow cooker, but I've never tried.  Leave a comment if you have tried it and let me know how yours turned out.

If you are using organic bones, you can reuse them a few times with new water and seasonings before throwing them away.  That next batch will taste slightly like pho even without the spice bag though.

Shake that thing baby baby

Gelatinous broth

Real Food, Real Phở

Organic, grass-fed beef from local Pampero Ranch

Links to recipes at the bottom. 
N.B. As a former career academic, I reserve the right to edit and editorialize in perpetuity; I  updated the history of Nam Định as of 10/15/2013.

As I stated previously, I started this blog to share my love of Việt food and my nutritional lifestyle that promotes healthy, sustainable choices.  I am not a food professional.  I am a home cook--albeit anthropologically trained in the culture of Việt Nam at the doctoral level and partially raised by my ông bà ngoại|maternal grandparents which informs my approach to the social history of foodways.  Below follows two recipes for phở bò|beef noodle soup & phở gà|chicken noodle soup.  But first a little historical reckoning about the social foodways of Phở.

The Genealogy of Phở

The French try to claim inspiration rights for phở with this spurious pot-au-feu nonsense perpetrated by an important somebody like francophile Craig Claiborne with a vast knowledge of (European) food yet with limited knowledge of the five thousand of years of Việt culture much less the last 500.   And this supposition is eagerly repeated until it is accepted as mythologized gospel by more urbanized Việt|Việt Americans pioneer chefs seeking to validate or elevate Việt cuisine/culture.  This mythos lacks an understanding of peasant political economy, modes of production, and foodways, and dare I say, Việt history.  Viet history did not begin with Western missionaries in the 16th century, French invasion in the 1880s, American occupation in 1954; while Viet culture and civilization goes back thousands of years, there is documented history dating back to 111 BC with the first Han conquest.

Though Việt Nam has a long history of influence from South Asia, con trâu|water buffalo is not a Sacred Cow; except for the ethnic Chàm Hindus, cows were not venerated as divine avatars of Vishnu.  The simple truth is, Việt folks have never had the luxury of retiring ông trâu|elderly water buffalo "out to pasture."  Those senior or surplus buffaloes go in the pot and every inch of them is used.  Livestock reproduction is not managed as it is here in the agriculture industry (that Mike Rowe is a crack up).  Con trâu be gettin' it on when and where they damn well like.  The offspring of such merry unions are put to work, sold, or eaten.  Phở, and by extension beef, was not available everyday as they are now in the US and in the cities in Việt Nam.  Phở wasn't written about prior to French colonization, because let's face it, phở was not a meal of the emperor (really a king trying to elevate to the Middle Kingdom's bar, but let's not argue semantics) nor of the citified literati; it was and is a simple peasant dish that no one composed lục bát poems about.  Not even Hồ Xuân Hương bothered to make it sexy.   

Phở is a Viet dish.  Phở was a dish comprised of necessity as a by-product of a special occasion, a celebration, a wedding (ông ngoại revitalized this tradition in the US when he slaughtered a cow in this manner a few decades back for his nephew's wedding in San Diego--and his former parish comprised of Northerners from the same province now does this regularly as a fundraiser), a funeral, the birth of a son.  When my ông ngoại|maternal grandfather returned to his natal hamlet in rural North Việt Nam (in Nam Định province, purported to be the birthplace of pho, and one of the original 8 provinces that are the cradle of Việt civilization) in the late 1990s for the first time since becoming a refugee in 1954, they honored him in age-old tradition--by slaughtering a surplus water buffalo on his behalf, collecting its blood for tiết canh|blood pudding, and ceremonially smeared the whole intact carcass with blood before lighting a bonfire to burn off its hair. (I am digging up the pictures but alas, they seem to have been lost after his death.)  Then about an inch or so of skin and meat was skinned and served as thịt tái|seared carpaccio with thinh|roasted rice power and tương cụ đà|fermented soy dipping sauce.  The rest of the meat and organs were made into various dishes and the bones were not given to the dogs, they were made into phở.  The hooves were made into goblets and the horns into a trophy for the walls and a story for the grandchildren (I wonder what happened to the horns now that ông ngoại has passed?).  The village was fed for a week.  This isn't French.  This is common sense, peasant sense, Việt sense.

Anyone who argues that Phở was invented by the French would also need to make the case that thịt tái is a French invention as well though it shares no French cognate and with no parallel except with Italian carpaccio; or for that matter, bò lúc lắc and its genealogical predecessor the Khmer Lok Lak|ឡុកឡាក់.  And they also have a lot of 'splainin' to do do about the husbandry of trâu and the political economy of surplus capital (trâu); mayhaps, elderly trâu transcend to heaven like a bodhisattva once they've served their life's purpose.

Lễ Đâm Trâu--there be some Phở for breakfast. Blessed be.

All we need to do is look at the elaborate rituals around slaughtering water buffalo--Lễ Đâm Trâu--among ethnic minorities in Việt Nam that have the least amount of francophilia.  Some of the ethnic minorities in VN are also con rồng cháu tiên--descendants of Âu Cơ and Lạc Long Quân pushed out to the highlands by the agrarian Kinh--with shared cultural traditions.  Once eschewed by the communist state as barbaric, and likely surpressed, currently there is a state-sponsored revival of the Lễ Đâm Trâu for cultural tourism; these festivities which honor the sacred buffalo and give thanks for the harvest season.

Here's the Lễ Đâm Trâu of the Ba-Na tribe of Gia Lai

 (coincidentally the village my paternal family lived in when they were being "re-educated").  

Trâu introduced at 4:40.

To claim a French origin for Phở is the height of colonial arrogance and yes, VN the nation-state did internally colonize over 50 tribes of ethnic minorities so Viet colonial arrogance with regards to the tribal minorities is par for course (not to mention Viet Nam's own colonization of the Cham & Khmer kingdoms in the 16th century and the rich cultural legacy that created in the South.)

[Revised 10/15/2013] Taking a closer look at the history of Nam Định province, purported to be the birthplace of phở, it is important to note the significant Spanish influence in the region, not French. What?! There is historical evidence dating to at least 1533 in Nam Định to that effect, but Spanish Dominicans from the Philippines began their Vatican-sanctioned missionary work in earnest in eastern Tonkin in 1676--their Apostolic Vicariate region comprised all the provinces east of the Red River and the sông Lô|Clear River including Nam Định (which falls under the Bui Chu Diocese established in 1679).  My grandparents' village church was established in 1719. ( I certainly did learn a lot about Catholicism in VN through research for this post.)

By contrast, French engagement in Nam Định (1883) was marked by colonial invasion and violent bloodshed as Viet folk mounted rebellions. Then French interests turned to exploiting cheap labor source for textile production and they established Nam Định as the center of their colonial textile industry. It's not surprising that my ông ngoại, my mother, one of my aunties & one uncle are capable tailors as a result of this legacy.

Arguments for a French infused genealogy for Phở has a romanticized view of the social nature of colonization (á la Indochine) that needs correcting.  Napolean Bonaparte did not decide to invade Viet Nam because he wanted to share classic French cooking techniques. French colonial administrators and their soldiers were not congenial Jacques Pepins-type paisans traipsing about the Viet countryside giving fracking cooking lessons to peasant womenfolk. If anything, the womenfolk hid when the French were nearby because rape is a weapon of domination. The French were in VN/Indochina to enforce an imperialist military occupation, maximize resource extraction and exploit labor/sexual subjugation.  French plantation owners intentionally/deliberately borrowed tactics from American slave-owners; rubber was harvested on the blood, sweat, tears, and corpses of Viet bodies.  To imagine that French colonizers were conveying tips on onion carmelization while conscripting forced labor, imposing harsh taxes and alcohol gavage quotas, raping congaïe|con gái (a Viet word that means daughter or girl child corrupted by/in French to connote a concubine), to imagine that as a benevolent transaction akin to the bantering between Julia Childs and Jacques Pepin is the height of ahistorical imperialist amnesia. The generation (and really, the rural populace who bore the brunt of the exploitation) that experienced and remember French rule is now passing, but my ông ngoại's stories of French brutality will not be forgotten.

Coming to America

Here in the US, Viet cuisine has also infused itself with the Standard American Diet--high meat content, highly industrialized food processing, additives/preservatives (oh the ubiquitous MSG in all its iterations), refined sugars, etc.  Nước mắm |fish sauce has gotten a bad reputation amongst medical doctors who without any scientific evidence at all claim that it causes heart disease and strokes in the Viet American population. (I'd still like to see the research looking at the entire subcontinent of Southeast Asia consisting of millions of people and the correlation between fish sauce and heart disease/mortality to back that claim. Hey, I'd still like to see evidence-based medicine but that is another kind of blog entirely.) This ignores of course all the additives, preservatives and industrial chemical processing that goes into producing most fish sauce. (I've done posts about fish sauce and a taste test.)

Yo! Get to the phở-king point!

I grew up eating my bà ngoại|maternal grandmother's Northern-style phở for brunch almost every Sunday.  She would wake up as is customary, before the crack of dawn, and begin to simmer those bones for at least 5 hours.

Phở is a delicate balance of aromatic spices simmered in beef broth, graced with the pungent flavor of fresh basil and cilantro.  And in my opinion, phở is completely ruined by hoison and sriracha sauce and I have maintained this attitude since childhood even though this is how the rest of phamily eats it. I had my first restaurant-made (Southern-style) phở when I was in my early 20s and was appalled. Phở became fast food. Sweetened with MSG, overly sharp with fish sauce, and served with the ubiquitous hoison and sriracha.  In my hoity-toity opinion, hoison and sriracha mask the flavor of inferior broth--bones not simmered long enough to extract the minerals and beef essence.  I'm not sure I even finished that first restaurant bowl.

In American phở restaurants, it has become the norm to be served a supersized portion and to abandon the dredges of watered down soupy MSG, muddied by hoison/sriracha, wilted herbs, and thickened by noodle detritus. In our Phamily, the custom was to serve a Viet-sized portion, and drink it to the last drop. ông ngoại was fond of telling me stories how they survived the brutalities of French colonization and the atrocities of Japanese occupation and the indignities of American intervention. ông ngoại would give me the body counts of how many millions died under each regime. So I always licked my bowl clean.

Over the years, I've had to take my soul food familiars and bring them back to the basics.  In a way, I've decolonized my diet--I've eliminated the wheat and dairy of French influence, and the industrially processed, chemically laden ingredients and products of Japanese & American influence.  I use organic, grass-fed beef bones, organic spices (when I can source them), dried rice noodles (I've yet to source or make brown rice noodles), herbs from my garden, mineral-rcih grey sea salt, and real fish sauce.  The result is deeply satisfying, nutrient-dense, nourishing.  It is not the sweet phở that most phở fans accustomed to the fare served up in phở restaurants across the US will be used to. It is not my bà ngoại's phở because there is no spice like nostalgia, and alas she took her recipe when she crossed over (and to be real, she loved her some MSG).  This is my Phở. Phở real.

One day, my grandchildren will tell stories about my phở in fond memory and will eschew the dishwater that passes for phở in most restaurants (two notable exceptions to my hatred of phở restaurants).

[Note: Everyone's spice mix/taste is different.  Mine is only an approximation of what magic was in bà ngoại's phở.  I have only tasted phở like bà ngoại's twice since my youth; once at a hole-in-the-wall shop in Qui Nhơn (the city my ông bà ngoại settled in after 1954) and while volunteering post-Katrina at the communal kitchen of Mary Queen of Viet Nam Church in Versailles, New Orleans--a community settled by Viet refugees from two villages in Nam Định province.]

Without further ado...

Real Phở Bo recipe

Real Phở Ga recipe

 

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!