DISH #10 PHO

Ah, the final dish, the one to complete my menu, a pasta dish, a noodle soup-- phở, the perfect meal with which to enter Autumn. I've touched on my affinity for noodle soups here on Kitchen Toro, recently in Thursday The Long Way: Eating in Airports, when remembering stopovers at Narita Airport, and more locally, at Phở 75 in DC. What is it and what's so special about it? Well, generally, phở is a bowl of clear beef broth with rice noodles, accompanied by thin cuts of beef, tripe, green onions, mint, lime, bean sprouts and chili peppers. Done well, phở isn't just a soup, it's a delicate balance of broth, meat and noodles that fills your belly and makes your brow sweat.

I broke it down to it's main components and decided to play with them: broth, noodles, beef. I'm willing to guess that the French colonial presence in Vietnam may have some influence on how they make the broth component of the soup. Whether or not there's merit to that guess, I decided to make the broth from a beef consomme. In addition I decided to try my own hand at homemade rice noodles and I also made a spicy meatball.

You can't have a soup without the broth and you can't have a consomme without a stock, so my first step was to make a marmite. And while my marmite would adhere to the traditional method we were taught in school (it's adapted from our school recipe), including a bouquet garni, my cheesecloth sachet would have a few additional ingredients to give some additional and more traditionally Vietnamese flavors to it.

Toro's Phở Marmite
6 Lbs Beef Bones
50 ML Vegetable Oil
2 Large ½'d Roasted Onions
2 3-inch Pieces Ginger, Roasted
500 G Carrots, Mirepoix
200 G Celery, Mirepoix
200 G Leek, Mirepoix
250 G Tomatoes
30 G Tomato Paste
2 Cloves Garlic
Bouquet Garni:
10 Peppercorns
2 Bay Leaves
2 Sprig Thyme
5 Anise Stars
1 3-inch Cinnamon Stick

Procedure:
Brown the bones in a little vegetable oil. When they begin to caramelize remove them to stock pot. Halve the onions and ginger pieces, brown the halved surfaces then add them to the pot with the browned bones. Add mirepoix vegetables and brown in vegetable oil then remove them to the pot with the browned bones and onions. Cover bones and vegetables with water and bring to a boil.

Degrease the pan then deglaze the sucs with water and add the resulting liquid to the stockpot. Lower stock to a simmer and skim well. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic and bouquet garni in a tied cheesecloth sachet. Simmer, skimming often for about 8 hours, then strain.

I then used our school recipe from our textbook to clarify the marmite and make the consomme.

Beef Consomme (Consomme Brunoise, p. 213)
1½ L Beef Marmite
200 G Lean Ground Beef
40 G Carrots, Julienne
40 G Leeks, Julienne
20 G Celery, Julienne
100 G Tomatoes
3 Eggs
20 G Tomato Paste
~1 Tablespoon Salt for Seasoning

Procedure:
Bring marmite to a boil in a stock pot then turn off the heat and cool. Mix ground meat with julienned vegetables, chopped tomatoes, tomato paste and egg whites. When the marmite is cool, add the clarification.
Bring to a simmer, stirring on the stove. When the raft begins to form make a hole in the center. When the raft forms, reduce the heat to a low simmer and cook for about an hour. Ladle out clarified broth and pass through a chinois lined with cheesecloth.

Remove fat from surface using parchment paper scraps. Taste and adjust seasoning.

The resulting broth was flavorful. I could taste the anise and the cinnamon.

For the noodles I adapted a recipe for Pâte à Nouille Fraîches (p.268) from our school textbook.

Toro's Plum Paste Rice Noodles
200 G All-Purpose Flour
100 G Organic Brown Rice Flour
3 Whole Eggs
1 Tablespoon Plum Paste
5 G Salt
10 ML Olive Oil

Procedure:

Mix together the two flours well. Form a well in the center and add the eggs, plum paste, salt and oil to the well. You can obviously use the traditional method of making pasta here, using the fork to beat the flour from the edges into the wet ingredients but I used a dough hook and my KitchenAid which eventually kneaded the mixture into a ball.

Let the dough rest in the fridge for an hour then roll it out in the traditional method, cutting the dough into three even pieces and flattening one at a time then feeding them through a pasta machine repeatedly then cut each individual piece of dough into noodles using your machine. Instead, I used my KitchenAid's pasta attachment.


Bring a pot of water to a boil and salt it heavily then cook the pasta until al dente.

The noodles were somewhat problematic. The first time I just used brown rice flour and the results were disasterous. The rice flour just didn't have the consistency needed to give the dough the right consistency (no gluten...). So I used tried again using twice as much regular flour than rice flour. The noodles were delicate but they worked.

Toro's Spicy Meatballs
75 G Ground Beef
75 G Ground Pork
20 G Shallots
20 G Green Onion
40 G Cremini Mushrooms
10 G Chives
2 Tablespoons Brown Organic Rice Flour
3 Tablespoons Sriracha Chili Sauce

Procedure:

Mix all ingredients in a food processor until the creamy in consistency. Using spoons make quenelles and drop the meatballs into a pot of stock or salted water (I used leftover marmite).

There are some finishing touches that needed to be added, garnish-wise to complete the dish to order-- they follow.

Preparing the Garnish

The Mushrooms
4 Tablespoon Dried Porcini Mushrooms, Soaked in Hot Water
5 Cremini Mushrooms, Sliced and Sautéed
5 Oyster Mushrooms, Sliced and Sautéed
2 Tablespoons Butter
Salt and Freshly Ground Pepper

Procedure:

Soak the porcini mushrooms in warm water and drain when soft. For the other mushrooms, clean and slice then saute in a hot pan with butter. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper.

The Tripe
360 G Tripe, Cut in Pieces

Procedure:

Boil the tripe in water and slice to the appropriate size for the bowl.

The Beef
1 Beef Fillet
1 Tablespoon Butter
Salt and Freshly Ground Pepper

Procedure:

Thinly slice the fillet then season with salt and pepper. Heat a sautoir with butter and sear both sides of the beef quickly then remove from pan.

The Egg
1 Egg, Poached
1 L Water
50 ML Vinegar

Procedure:

Boil the water then add the vinegar. Stir the water gently then drop the egg into the water and remove when appropriately poached.

Remaining Garnish
1 Jalapeno, Thinly Sliced
1 Green Onion, Thinly Sliced
5-6 Bean Sprouts
1 Lime, ¼'d
1 Sprig Cilantro
1 Sprig Mint

To Order:

Place noodles in the bottom of the bowl and ladle hot consomme over them. Place three slices (Tampopo-style) in the front of the bowl. Place two reheated dumplings at the back of the bowl. Place the poached egg in the center, the tripe at it's right, the different sauteed mushrooms at left and scatter the porcini around the rest of the bowl. To finish scatter the jalapeno and the green onion slices around the bowl. Garnish with sprouts, cilantro, mint and lime wedge.

Overall, I was pleased with the results. Though it took several attempts to pull off the noodles (I would have benefitted from more time to perfect them) and they didn't particularly taste like plum paste they worked. When all was said and done, the meatballs and the jalapenos brought some nice heat and when the broth was sipped from the bowl my brow was slightly sweaty and my stomach pleasantly full.