Phenomenal Pho
How Hieu Nguyen makes the real deal at home.
By Lindsay Sterling
My friend's husband, Hieu Nguyen, grew up in Dalat,
Vietnam, until he was five. He remembers Vietnam’s gorgeous rolling hills, beaches,
rainforests, and lakes as a cross between Vermont and Costa Rica. He hasn’t
been back since he left in 1975, the day before Saigon fell. He hopes one day
to visit with his wife and kids. In the mean time, he lights incense and cooks
a Vietnamese chicken noodle soup, called pho, combining his grandmother and
mother’s methods with his own, discovered after years of cooking it every
Sunday for his family.
He starts
with one whole chicken. Insisting that the clear broth is only achievable by
removing all the skin and fat, he does so with a sharp boning knife, creating what
looks like a great textbook chicken anatomy poster. Then like a surgeon (he even
wears surgical gloves) he cuts off every muscle group from the bones while
leaving the entire skeleton still intact. He massages all the meat pieces in a
bowl with fresh chopped ginger and garlic, sugar, salt and fish sauce, and lets
them marinate on the counter while he makes the broth.
In a large stockpot he covers the bones
with three inches of water, and adds a peeled carrot. Before adding a two-inch
chunk of ginger and a whole onion to the stockpot, he toasts them directly over
the flames of his gas stovetop so that they’re steaming, and the ginger skin is
smudged with black. He fills a mesh spice ball infuser with 3 sticks of
cinnamon and about a teaspoon each of black peppercorns and cumin seeds, a
slightly smaller amount of whole cloves, 6 star anise, and 10 green cardamom
pods. He screws on the top and then hangs the chain on the rim of the pot
letting the ball of spices float in the water.
I’ve tried
making pho before and my broth was cloudy and disappointing. One thing Hieu shows
me: infuse, don’t abuse. The broth is clear and delicate not only because he
took off all the skin and fat, but also because he never lets the broth boil - not
even a simmer. Also, about every ten minutes throughout the hour and a half that the
broth is steeping, Hieu lifts out fine particles from the top of the broth with
a handheld fine-mesh strainer.
After he has removed the carrot,
onion, ginger, bones, and spice ball with tongs, he carefully adds the chicken meat
to the hot broth and sets a timer for thirteen minutes. Once the timer is up,
he removes the chicken with the tongs and has me taste it: the most tender chicken
ever. He insists: thirteen minutes poaching is the magic number.
He loads each
extra large bowl with rice noodles (cooked just like you would spaghetti), sliced
chicken, scallions, broth, fresh mung bean sprouts, and the fresh whole leaves
of Thai basil, culantro, and cilantro. He squeezes a lime wedge over each bowl
and puts a whole fresh Thai chili on the side for munching on. (I will only
make it through half of mine, but he will eat two). Hoisin and Sriracha sauces are
ready to be squirted on top. The contents of our bowls are to be tossed like a
salad, and slurped with fat-bottom spoons and chopsticks. The result is better
than a restaurant, and far cheaper. Hieu finds the whole process meditative.
Click at right for the recipe, how-to-photos and cooking class info.
Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2013
