Pho

A while ago I read a book called The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb.  I think I bought it because I loved the cover but it's actually a very good book too!  It's about an old Vietnamese man who has a pho cart from which he sells the delicious, fragrant soup.  Ever since then I have wanted to try to make pho, and I've finally found a recipe - and it's just as delicious as it sounded in the book - really fresh and herby but still substantial enough for a meal.

"The history of Vietnam lies in this bowl, for it is in Hanoi, the Vietnamese heart, that pho was born, a combination of the rice noodles that predominated after a thousand years of Chinese occupation and the taste for beef the Vietnamese acquired under the French, who turned their cows away from ploughs and into bifteck and pot-au-feu. The name of their national soup is pronounced like this French word for fire, as Hung’s Uncle Chien explained to him long ago. 

“We’re clever people,” his uncle had said. “We took the best the occupiers had to offer and made it our own. Fish sauce is the key—in matters of soup and well beyond. Even romance, some people say.”

—from The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb

Pho (serves 4)

200g flat rice noodles

1 tbs sunflower oil

6 spring onions, sliced on an angle

2cm piece of ginger, very thinly sliced

1 small red chilli, finely chopped

3 cups beef consommé, or good beef stock

1/4 cup fish sauce

1/4 cup freshly squeezed lime juice

100g bean sprouts

1 cup coriander leaves, plus extra to serve

1 cup Thai basil leaves, plus extra to serve

1 cup mint leaves, plus extra to serve

400g good quality steak (or rare roast beef)

Cook the steaks quickly in a hot frying pan or on the barbeque until they are seared on each side and very rare in the middle. Cover with tin foil and put aside to rest.

Cook the noodles according to the packet instructions.  Drain and rinse under cold water.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat, add the chilli, spring onion and ginger and cook, stirring,  for 2-3 minutes until the onion is soft.  Add the beef stock and one cup of water, and bring to the boil.  Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes.  Turn off the heat and stir in the fish sauce and the lime juice.

Slice the steaks into very thin slices.

Divide the noodles into four large soup bowls.  Top with the bean sprouts and herbs and then ladle over the broth.  Top with the slices of steak and some extra herbs.