Life is Like a Bowl of Pho

(Note to my fellow Psych 200 students: I love to eat and cook, so I thought it would be fun to try to incorporate food and recipes into my blog for our class. It may be a little different, but I hope you enjoy it!)

When I was younger and living in Seattle I used to pass this restaurant on my way to work. It was called "Pho." I had no idea what that meant. Evidently nobody else did either, because after a few months the owners put up a big vinyl banner to clarify: "Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup."

Still, I was neither intrigued nor tempted. Fast forward 20 years and two important changes have occurred: [1] I'm a more adventurous eater (I give much credit to my "foodie" husband, who on our first date took me to a weird Chinese place in Vancouver and offered me 1000-year-old duck eggs) and [2] there are a lot more pho restaurants around. There are even a few here in Bellingham, all offering their own version of the glorious sweet, rich broth filled with various tender meats, exotic sauces, savory spices, and - of course - noodles. And if you drive up (or down) to the big city there are some neighborhoods where the pho restaurants actually outnumber the coffee shops!

Yet, each restaurant does their pho a little differently. Some use thin noodles, some use wide. Some use beef broth, others use chicken - or even vegetable - broths. Some offer just the standard meats: beef strips and meatballs. Others offer more exotic fare: tripe, tendon, or tongue. I even ate at a pho place in San Francisco that offered "chicken intestines" instead of noodles. (Um, no thanks.)

In a way, to understand pho is to understand life. How does the merging of two microscopic cells become a living, breathing, growing little human? How does one seemingly innocuous bowl of beef broth evolve into a decadent meal that is equally delicious at nearly every pho restaurant, yet also equally unique? Certainly, the creation of a human life is infinitely more complex than that of a simple bowl of soup. But the principle is the same: making something amazing and vibrant and wonderful out of the most humble of ingredients. Does it turn out a little too salty sometimes? A little too spicy? Or sometimes is an ingredient forgotten, giving an unexpected - though not necessarily unpleasant - result?

In a society where so many restaurants try to be the same...where you can go to Denny's in Bellingham or Denny's in Florida and get the same bowl of turkey soup for lunch...we tend to have settled for the expected with our food, and with our families. We try to mold our children into an image of who we think they should be, how they should look, how they should dress, and how they should act. We seem to want them to be the predictable Denny's turkey soup, rather than the pho: vibrant, and changing, and never-the-same at any two restaurants. As a parent, I'm guilty of this too. Rather than celebrate the differences in my children - which, as we've learned this week, are likely there because of genetics more than anything - I try so hard to guide them toward all thinking and behaving the same.

But really, life should not be a bowl of Denny's soup. Life is a bowl of pho: different on every corner, but infinitely unique.

Jennifer's Slow Cooker Pho

(a variation on this recipe http://steamykitchen.com/3136-crock-pot-pho.html)

I've been trying to make the perfect pho at home for a few years now. A friend e-mailed me the recipe above and it comes pretty darn close. Here's my version - with a few changes - which turned out yummy. I didn't include exact proportions (pho just isn't like that, you have to be creative - just like with parenting), but if you'd like more precise numbers just check the link above.

First, I bought about 5 pounds of beef marrow bones (let me save you some running around...you can get them at the Bakerview Cost Cutter for less than $2/#). I laid them in a roasting pan with 1/2 an onion and several slices of fresh ginger. I placed the pan, uncovered, into a 425 degree oven.

Next, I took a cardamom pod, three whole cloves, three whole star anise, 2 small cinnamon sticks, 1/2 tsp. of whole fennel seeds, and a bunch of coriander seeds and I toasted them in a small frying pan. There are lots of places in town to get good whole herbs; I got these at Fred Meyer, and it was about $1.50 for all of them in the bulk section.

You'll know they are done toasting when you can just start to smell them. Remove them from the heat right away so they don't burn.

After about 40 minutes the beef bones were nice and brown so I took them out of the oven and put them in the slow cooker (along with the onion, ginger, and toasted spices). You'll need a big (5-6 qt.) slow cooker for this.

To the crockpot I added enough water to fill it to about 1 inch from the top, along with 3 TB of fish sauce (you can get this at any grocery store, but the good stuff is at the Asia Market over on Meridian & Broadway) and 3 tsp. of sugar. I put the lid on the crockpot, set it to low, and let it cook overnight for 10 hours. The next day there was quite the layer of beef fat on top of the broth, so I used a gravy separator to get rid of most of it, then tasted the broth and added a little more fish sauce, some soy sauce, and a little more sugar. (This is the part where you get to decide how you want *your* unique pho recipe to taste.)

When it was almost time to serve, I put a pot of water on to boil, then removed the pot from the heat, added 8 oz. of dried rice noodles, covered and let it sit for about 30 minutes so the noodles could soften. Then I made a little tray of chopped up cabbage, onions, green onions, thinly sliced jalapenos, cilantro, bean sprouts and lime wedges. I also sliced up a small steak - very thinly - and just before serving I put the slices into the crockpot to cook. Then I drained the noodles and set everything out on the counter along with soy sauce and chili sauce - the nice thing about pho is people can put whatever they want into it.

To serve: get a big bowl and put some noodles in the bottom. Shake a little soy sauce on top. Add your favorite veggies, then ladle the hot broth and beef strips over the top. Yum!