But the subtitle to this post amongst all this crazy, silly politics is:
Frozen Pho
Pho is a Vietnamese noodle soup that I fell in love with while travelling there a couple of years ago. And it is the perfect soup to freeze. It is basically a clear, light beef stock, cooked with a few Asian ingredients. What I have done this time is to make the broth/stock and freeze it. When I want some Pho I can heat the broth, get my fresh ingredients and voila. I have seen Luke Nguyen's recipe in his "Secrets of Red Lantern" cookbook and it is very complex. I prefer Charmaine Solomon's "The Complete Asian Cookbook" recipe and here it is:
3 kg of beef bones
500g of gravy beef
2 onions, sliced
thumb size piece of fresh ginger
stick of cinnamon
1 tsp of black peppercorns
salt
For this batch I could only find lamb rib bones
And I used 2 chicken carcasses, halved, instead of gravy beef
Spices
This is not a dark stock so nothing is fried of first. Put all the ingredients into the pot, top with cold water, bring to the boil and very lightly simmer for a long time. Recipe recommends overnight, but I did it for 8 hours.
There is one trick I learnt from the Red Bridge Cooking School in Vietnam and that is to get a pot of boiling water and blanch the meats before they go in, only for a few seconds, just to wash them
Pull the bits of used meat out with tongs and then strain into containers.
Now it is quite oily so put in the fridge overnight so the fat can be taken off when it solidifies.
Separate out into labelled containers and put in the freezer.
So what to do when you want to have soup? That is for another time, when I next eat Pho.
But here is a link to Luke Nguyen's Pho Bo from the SBS website. Enjoy
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