Work’s been crazy! So many new photography jobs! I’m filling up so quick for family portraits for the holiday season so if you need them get at me sooner than later! I’m doing hour long portrait sessions for $100.00
I had a really rough week two weeks ago, I was sick, and had a ton of events and jobs to go to. I ended up not going to this really great networking event because I knew I was going to be shooting a really prominent New Orleans restaurant the next morning and wanted to be rested since I was feeling under the weather. The long and the short of it was they totally blew me off after I showed up and had set up my equipment and were really unprofessional about it. Things like that are so defeating but I’m lucky to have such an amazing support system of friends that reassure me, and remind me to focus on the good.
I know cooking is exhausting for a lot of people, especially with time consuming recipe’s like pho. I find it lately to be my quiet time, where I can reflect, slow down and really take time to think about what I want and how I might get there.
In my scouring of the internet I was thoroughly unable to find an authentic Pho recipe. I compiled a lot of different recipe’s that I found out in the world, along with my 6 quarts of beef stock that I had made the week before, and some local ingredients that I got. If and when I find a legit pho recipe for ya’ll i’ll throw it out into the world.
Pho Broth (makes about 6 quarts of Pho Broth):
6 quarts of beef stock
1/2 cup Pho Spices (Star Anise, Cardamom, Fennel, Cinnamon, Coriander, Cloves)
Salt
Sugar
1 Cup Dried Mushrooms
Ginger root 1 cup of 1 inch knobs
4 teaspoons of fish oil
If you want to make your own beef stock:
2 lbs Beef Bones
6 Carrot or Carrot Tops
2 Onion cut in half
1 Celery Stalk cut in half
1 Parsley Bunch divided
2 Whole Heads of Garlic cut in half horizontally
4 Bay Leaves (2 per pot)
6 Tablespoon Black Peppercorns (3 per pot)
2 Tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce (1 per pot)
1 Tablespoon Tomato Paste (.5 per pot)
Since this is such a labor intensive broth to make I would recommend making ALOT of it and storing it in mason jars to freeze for later occasions. Last week I made short rib ragu, and my pots were not big enough to contain the meat with the bones still on the short ribs. Since I already was cooking with onion, celery, carrot and parsley I decided to make some beef bone stock with all of the short rib bones I had. I used two 6 qt pots because those are what I have to use and divided my ingredients between the two. With a little olive oil in the bottom of the pan I seared about six short rib bones in each pot, along with the garlic, and onion, until fragrant. I filled both pots with water leaving about an inch of space and added the celery, carrot tops, bay leaves, black peppercorns, Worcestershire sauce, tomato paste, and a generous amount of salt to each pot and brought to a boil. I allowed both pots to simmer for about two hours, and removed from the stove. I strained out all of the bones and vegetables and combined about four quarts of the stock into one pot. Keep the remaining two, you will need them later.
If you skipped making beef stock and bought it from the store (no one blames you):
Bring 4 quarts of stock to a simmer again and then added in pho spices, mushrooms and sugar. For sugar I used palm sugar, which is a hard natural rock sugar that is significantly less sweet than traditional sugar. I used about a tablespoon of palm sugar, if using regular sugar i’d start with a half teaspoon and taste as you go. I found a packet of pho spices at the hong kong market that I think was 5 oz for $2.00, you want to make sure you’re using the spices as the whole spice not ground. I cooked the pho broth for about an hour, adding water as needed to keep the pot full, and then strained out all of the spices, returned to the stove and simmered for another 2-3 hours, alternating between adding beef stock and water. You will likely need to add more salt to your broth. I probably ended up using about 10 quarts of liquid between the 6 quarts of stock and adding extra water, and finished with around 6 in the final product. 6 quarts of finished pho broth was about 12-14 servings. I don’t think there really is too much cook time on this stock, I will say though that I would not boil the spices in the broth for more than an hour and a half because they start to get really overpowering.
Pho “Stuffing”:
Bean Sprouts
Cilantro
Basil
Pea Shoots
Rice Noodles
Scallions
Jalepenos
Lime Wedges
Baby Bok Choy
Marinated Roasted Mushrooms: I made a light dressing out of some really good local Worcestershire sauce, olive oil and salt, tossed my mushrooms in the dressing and threw in about 6 whole garlic cloves and then roasted them for 30 minutes at 350 in the oven.
Jammy Tea Eggs: Bring a pot of water to boil, boil eggs for exactly 6.5 minutes and then put them in an ice bath, carefully peel shells and then submerge in a soy bath (I did about a cup of soy a half cup of warm water and two tablespoons of white sugar) for about 2 hours.
Beef: I used a round roast (3 lbs was about 12 servings), and froze it so that I could slice it paper thin. The whole idea with pho is that the scalding hot broth cooks the paper thin beef.
Serve your fresh herbs and veggies on a big platter for your friends to “dress” their pho accordingly. I left Sriracha, Soy and Hoisin on the tables as well. The important part about serving is that your broth is insanely hot, so that as soon as your pour it over your beef, and noodles it begins to cook your beef.
