Last Sunday my friends and I converged on the South Williamsburg loft of my good friends Michala and Rasmus for a momentous and historically significant occasion. One may compare the importance of our little get-together to the Yalta conference held at the twilight of WWII, attended by Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt, where they carved up Europe into fiefdoms and set the stage for the cold war. Or one may not... only the test of time will tell!
Michala did most of the recipe research and we wound up using a melange of four different recipes with an emphasis on this
preparation we found online at Epicurious.com.
BROTH
- 5 pounds beef marrow or knuckle bones
- 2 pounds beef chuck, cut into 2 pieces
- 2 (3-inch) pieces ginger, cut in half lengthwise and lightly bruised with the flat side of a knife, lightly charred
- 2 yellow onions, peeled and charred
- 1/4 cup fish sauce
- 3 ounces rock sugar, or 3 tablespoons sugar
- 6 whole star anise, lightly toasted in a dry pan
- 6 whole cloves, lightly toasted in a dry pan
- 1 tablespoon sea salt
- 1 cinnamon stick
NOODLE ASSEMBLY
- 1 pound dried 1/16-inch-wide rice sticks, soaked, cooked and drained
- 1/3 pound beef sirloin, slightly frozen, then sliced paper-thin across the grain
GARNISHES
- 1/2 yellow onion, sliced paper-thin
- 3 scallions, cut into thin rings
- 1/3 cup chopped cilantro
- 1 pound bean sprouts
- 10 sprigs Asian basil
- 1 dozen saw-leaf herb leaves (optional)
- 6 Thai bird chilies or 1 serrano chili, cut into thin rings
- 1 lime, cut into 6 thin wedges
- Freshly ground black pepper
We planned our Pho making party as an all day event, but our broth really only had a good six hours or so to simmer. A great deal of preparation went into the event, Michala picked up 7 pounds of beef knuckle on special order at Brooklyn's famous Marlowe and Daughters. I bought a new and massive cooking pot on the Bowery and watched a butcher trim off fat as if it were butter on our "eye of round", or roast beef, at a Halal butcher in Paterson, NJ. If you've never been to Paterson for Middle Eastern food drop me a line- it's really worth a trip.
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| Three serious cooks in the kitchen- The Album. |
Since we needed to start cooking around one in the afternoon, I also brought over some Chinese Char Su pork, egg noodles, and Choy Sum or Chinese broccoli for our lunch.
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| A little of this |
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| A pinch of that |
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| A dash of this |
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| And you get this! |
Lunch was delicious and quick to prepare. I added a little sweet Chinese sausage to my bowl and ladled on some oyster sauce to keep it real. Am I the only one that doesn't care for oysters but really appreciates oyster sauce on my noodles?
The noodle lunch was really just a warm up for the main course. We started the stock the moment we walked in the door.Pho broth needs to simmer a long time and it was clear time would be our enemy in this endeavor. First we had to bring the knuckles to a furious boil to bring out the impurities. All the liquid from the initial boil is discarded and the freshly boiled bones are added to a fresh pot of simmering water to make the beef base.
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| 7 pounds of beef knuckle |
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| Boiling out the impurities |
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| Our Pho base with "purified" bones |
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| Michala chars an onion directly on the stovetop |
Once the broth was set to simmer Michala charred two onions on the stove, peeled off the crusty layer, and added them to the pot.
Anna, our star chef visiting from Denmark, added the mixture of spices like slightly seared cinnamon stick and star anise to a tea bag to marinate in the broth.
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| Anna admiring her handiwork |
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| Cinnamon and star anise are seared to bring out the flavor |
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| Since Anna was minding the soup Michala and I decided to kick back |
I know it looks pretty easy in the pictures, but making Pho is labor intensive and actually required quite a bit of preparation. It took us about three hours to get to the point when we added the star anise and cinnamon, which were left to infuse in the broth and removed after thirty minutes. Meanwhile, we had frozen our eye of round so that it could be cut into slices thin enough to cook quickly in the soup. A deli slicer would have been a nice addition here, but Anna and Michala did an admirable job sawing through the frozen beef.
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| Slicing the frozen beef |
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| Eye of round slice razor thin |
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| Jalapenos in action |
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| Ban Pho noodles left to soak- they cook in the boiling broth |
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| The table is laid- saw tooth herb, limes, bean sprouts, and brisket to add to the PHO |
After our long day in the kitchen, the guests began to trickle in and we were ready to sample the goods.
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| The Pho is assembled |
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| Rasmus observes the chef |
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| Graham, Nina, and Annamette and Anna patiently wait |
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| and wait.... |
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| Charice enjoying a glass of Soju |
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| Annemette finds a perch |
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| Anna makes Eugene cry |
And finally we dig in!
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| David assumes attack formation |
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| This is the best way to digest Pho |
So, what were the results of the momentous Pho-extravaganza? We has a lot of fun, and we enjoyed learning about the work that goes into preparing our favorite soup. Did we achieve that elusive and delicious homey flavor one finds in an authentic Pho? We may have, but we would have needed to let our broth simmer and concentrate for many more hours than we had. We had a very good time, albeit labor intensive for some of us. But now we understand and can appreciate what really goes into that $5 bowl of Pho, served simmering and fragrant moments after you order it. For a minimum of effort and the least expenditure, one can have a far superior bowl of Pho. It's nice to have a party, but I'm afraid next time we'll be ordering in.
