Biscuits of Today

Pho Bo in Only Four Hours!

Why buy a $4 bowl of pho, the deliciously aromatic and savory national dish of Vietnam, from the local Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall when you can spend four hours making it yourself?

Ok, that's not very convincing. I guess there aren't many compelling reasons except I'm bored and underemployed right now (anyone out there have a part time job to offer?). I'm also obsessed with using all of the stuff in my fridge before it goes bad. I had some mint languishing in the crisper, so I turned to my stacks of cookbooks checked out from the library for inspiration. I came across a recipe for Pho Bo in the beautiful cookbook, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen by Andrea Nguyen, and thought "Wow, I have all of those ingredients right now!" Strange ingredients like beef bones, rice noodles, fish sauce, star anise, cloves, etc. And to think, that morning I got anxious about the lack of food in the fridge and considered going food shopping...

Admittedly, I've always been intimidated by this noodle soup, but Nguyen encouraged me with the words "nothing beats a homemade bowl" of pho. I didn't follow her directions to a T because I'm a big advocate of using whatever you have on hand (and I also took some short cuts), but it still turned out fragrant and flavorful, and dare I say better than any pho I've had at a restaurant. Here's how I made it:

Pho Bo (Beef Pho) recipe adapted from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen by Andrea Nguyen

Ingredients:

• 1 yellow onion, unpeeled
• Chubby 2-inch piece of ginger, unpeeled
• 2 pounds beef or lamb bones (I bet pork, chicken, or whatever bones would do in a pinch)
• 3 quarts water
• 2 star anise
• 3 whole cloves
• 2 inch cinnamon stick
• 3/4 pound boneless beef chuck, rump, brisket
• 3/4 tablespoon salt
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• Vietnamese style rice noodles

1. Place the onions and ginger directly on the gas stove with a medium flame. Let the skin burn, using tongs to rotate the onion or ginger occasionally. After 15 minutes, the onion and ginger will have softened slightly and become sweetly fragrant. There may even be some bubbling. You do not have to blacken the entire surface. When amply charred, remove from the heat and let cool.

2. Remove the charred skin from the onion. Trim off and discard the blackened root and stem ends. Slice onion into rings. Use a vegetable peeler, paring knife, or the edge of a teaspoon to remove the ginger skin. Halve the ginger lengthwise and bruise lightly with the broad side of a cleaver or chef's knife. Set the onions and ginger aside.

3. Pile the bones, beef, onions, ginger, star anise, cloves, and cinnamon stick into a stock pot and cover with the water. Add salt, fish sauce, and brown sugar and cook, uncovered, for 1 1/2 hours, adjusting the heat if needed to maintain a simmer.

4. At this point, the beef should be slightly chewy but not tough. Fish it out of the broth with some tongs and transfer it to a bowl of cold water to cover. Let the meat soak for 10 minutes to prevent it from drying out and turning dark. Drain the meat, set aside on a plate to cool completely, and then wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate. Meanwhile, maintain the broth at a steady simmer for 1 1/2 hours longer.

5. Strain the broth into a bowl and return it to the stock pot with the heat turned off. Prepare the rice noodles according to the directions on the package and add to the broth.

6. Remove the beef from the fridge and slice into thin slices against the grain. Add beef slices to the broth to be warmed through.

7. Ladle the pho into soup bowls. Set out a plate with garnishes like lime slices, cilantro, mint, basil, sliced chiles, green onions, and mung bean sprouts for guests to garnish the soup to their liking. Don't forget to make some Siracha available. Accompany it with a tall glass of jasmine iced tea like they serve at my favorite Vietnamese restaurant in New Orleans- Pho Tau Bay!

In the end, I realized there were other reasons to make pho besides being bored. Nguyen writes, "for the most fragrant and flavorful broth, I recommend the bones of grass-fed or natural beef." I used these, as well as some very high quality beef chuck, and I think it made a big difference in the flavor, which was much brighter that what I've eaten at some cheap pho places.

Also, for a city where you can find almost every type of ethnic cuisine imaginable, New York is surprisingly lacking in the Vietnamese department.  When I lived in New Orleans I ate Vietnamese food on an almost weekly basis. If I can make up for New York's lack of quality Vietnamese restaurants by making it myself, then all the better.

Trout Amandine

The food I get most emotional about is probably seafood. That's saying a lot because I get emotional about most foods. Anyone who has walked around Chinatown with me can attest to that fact that I must stop and stare at the products at every seafood stall there. And there are quite a few...

One of my favorite seafood dishes is tangy, nutty trout amandine. This simple dish of pan fried fish fillets in a lemony brown butter sauce with sliced almonds is a Creole take on the classic French sole meuniere. In New Orleans, it was so easy to find trout amandine at restaurants that I used to leave it up to the professionals to make it. Now I have to recreate such things in my own kitchen. Trout amandine doesn't even use real trout- its really Gulf saltwater speckled trout, which is basically just like any other throw away white, flaky fish. Fortunately these fish are usually cheap, sustainable, low in mercury, and delicious if you know how to prepare them correctly. Also, it can be made with ingredients that many home cooks usually have on hand anyways, except the fresh fish. I made it using ocean perch, but you could use croaker, pollock, etc. Croaker Amandine just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

Trout Amandine (recipe from My New Orleans by John Besh)

Ingredients

1 cup milk
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon "Basic Creole Spices" (I used a pinch of cayenne pepper, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, and salt)
Six 5-7-ounce skinless fish fillets
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
8 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup sliced almonds
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

Procedure

1. Put the milk into a wide dish. Put the flour and Creole Spices into another wide dish and stir to combine. Season the fish fillets with salt and pepper, dip them into the milk, and dredge in the seasoned flour.

2. Melt 4 tablespoons of the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the fillets and cook on each side until golden brown, about 3 minutes per side. Transfer the fish to a serving platter.

3. Add the remaining 4 tablespoons butter to the same skillet over medium-high heat. Swirl the skillet over the heat so that the butter melts evenly and cook until the butter turns brownish, 5-7 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low, add the almonds, and cook, stirring gently, until the nuts are toasty brown, about 3 minutes. Add the lemon juice, parsley, and a dash of salt.

4. Spoon the browned butter and almonds over the fish and serve.

 

You Don't Have To Go To an Indian Restaurant To Eat Indian Food

Many people, like Alex Witchel from the New York Times, love Indian food but only eat it at restaurants. He was under the impression that it was too hard to make and required too many exotic spices. Julie Sahni, the great Indian cookbook author and cooking teacher, proves him wrong. The result is an inspiring home cooked meal. Check out the article!