I’ve had one miserable cold after the other since the beginning
of December. I had a couple of days over
Christmas where I felt a bit better, but then going back to work at the beginning
of January meant another couple of weeks of snivelling and whining that I
thought I was dying. Apparently I’m not
very good at being ill. All that I’ve
really wanted to eat was hot, spicy clear soup.
I demanded that my husband took me out for pho, a traditional
Vietnamese noodle soup. We’re lucky that
we have several really good Vietnamese cafes and restaurants nearby, which are
family run. But then I started thinking
about my idea to try a new recipe every week this year and I figured it couldn’t
be that hard to make my own pho. It’s
basically a slow cooked bone broth, with spices and noodles.
I read several different recipes to try and come up with the
best one. All of them seemed to be
missing a few steps here and there, so I muddled through the best I could and
then tried to write a more coherent one myself.
Ingredients for the
broth
2lb beef
bones, including bone marrow
2lbs oxtail
3 large
white onions
Large chunk
of root ginger
Small beef
brisket
2 cinnamon
sticks
1 cardamom
pod
2 star anise
2 tbs cloves
2 tsp coriander
seed
Orange peel
2 tbsp salt
2 tbsp fish
sauce
2 tbsp sugar
Bring a large pan of water to the boil, add the
bones and oxtail and boil for 2-3 minutes.
Remove the bones and oxtail, discard the water
and thoroughly rinse the bones and oxtail with cold running water.
Place the bones and oxtail in your largest stock
pot and fill with cold water. Return to
the hob and heat.
While the stock pot is heating again, peel the
onions and cut in half. Cut the ginger
in half lengthwise. Place these under
the grill and cook until browned.
Remove the onions and ginger from the grill and
trim any blackened parts off as these will make your stock muddy looking. Add the onions and ginger to the stock pot.
Take a clean pot, fill with water, a pinch of
salt and bring to the boil. Place the brisket
in the boiling water and poach for 2 minutes.
Remove the poached brisket from the water and
add to the stock pot, which should now be boiling.
Simmer the stock pot for 1.5 hours. During this time the stock will collect
fat/scum on top. Skim this off with a
fine mesh sieve.
Once the 1.5 hours is up, remove the
brisket. This should still be in one
piece. Place to one side to cool.
While the brisket is cooling, take a frying pan
and dry fry the spices together to release the aroma.
Take the toasted spices and tie in a square of
muslin and then add to the stock pot.
Add the fish sauce, sugar and salt.
Add more
water if you feel the stock pot needs it at any point.
Take the cooled brisket, paint each side with fish
sauce, season with salt and pepper, wrap and store in the fridge until
required.
The secret
to a good bone broth seems to be the longer you cook it, the better it
tastes. I left mine simmering for 4
hours after I had taken the brisket out, so 5.5 hours in total. I added more water a couple of times and
continued to skim fat or foam off it whenever it was required. The house smelt amazing when this was
cooking. Then I turned it off, covered
with the lid and left it to cool overnight on the hob.
The next day
I skimmed off as much settled fat as possible and then strained the broth
through a colander. Set the bones and
oxtail to one side for the moment*. I sieved the broth through a muslin to remove any remaining sediment, before placing in the fridge to cool, in the hope I could remove any more fat
that I’d missed in the skimming process.
As it turned out, I’d actually got most of the fat and the remained
amount was easily removed once it had solidified in the fridge.
Soup Ingredients
Rice noodles
Spring
onions
Red chillies
Sliced brisket
Bean sprouts
Red peppers
(if you want)
Lemon wedges
Thai basil
(if you can find it)
Mint
Thin cut
flank steak – sliced raw
sirracha
Layering up
your soup bowl is a fairly personal choice.
I just gathered the ingredients together and ditched them on a serving
platter on the table for people to help themselves.
The cooked noodles
are placed in the bottom of the bowl and the boiling stock ladled over the
top. Each person then adds the other
ingredients that they want afterwards.
The only tip that we had was to add the uncooked steak first to allow as
much time as possible for it to cook through.
*I took the cooked oxtail and removed it from the bone and kept it back to make an oxtail ragu. It was a delicious second meal and the meat was tender and tasty.
