It must be exhausting by now to hear all this food talk. Sorry. So here’s another entry on food. Food. I would be lying if it wasn’t one of the main reasons for coming here. Soup.I am a bad liar.
OK, so yes. You could say I left family and loved ones and simple conversations in English for soup. Soup. They say you are what you eat, and I sure am a) made with love and b) dirt cheap, so it must be true. I am estimating that, at the time of this publication, that I have eaten over 150 bowls of some sort of noodle-in-a-bowl-emerged-in-liquid dish. It’s an extremely agreeable task. It’s available day and night. I can eat it for breakfast most of the time, thus most of the time provide entertainment for the slurping and surrounding of curious cliente. Ever seen Discovery Channel footage of a gazelle drinking from a watering hole. Alone. Exposed. Easy meat. One eye always on the lookout. My face might be hidden in steam but I can see (and feel) them watching me.
At first I thought most pho places were very similar. This has to do with the fact that we are spoiled with variety in Vietnamese restaurants in the US. You don’t get fancy-shmancy with your giant prawn and scallop seafood smorgasbord hold the cilantro with a vegetarian broth obscenities here. NEVER. It’s either chicken or beef. And the pho vendors take great pride in their product (and even if it’s complete shit). I walk into one of my favored chicken pho places. It’s crowded and I’m awkwardly stepping over knees, around tiny scattered plastic stool, kicking through withered remains of lime quarters, fallen chopsticks, wads of napkin with who knows what sorta of buried treasure is inside. My crotch practically brushes up against the back of some little grandmothers white-haired head. I sit down, understanding immediately why maybe evolution told the gazelle to never sit down. Dragonlady’s driving the the noodle-train today and fastens her gaze upon me. She juts her chin forward and looks straight down her nose, what’ll it be. I wanna say something cleaver like “basted sunny side up”, but skipping straight to business it may come out more like “DERRRRRR, no MSG please?”. She still might throw in a few good tablespoons, even in plain sight, depending on if she thinks it’ll bring her family luck. Or something. And I hope it does, because her broth almost makes me shed a tear.
I know I have to learn how to make street pho while I’m here. Coincidentally, my friend/mother-figure/ex-landlady Nancy tells me that her mother is a pho-professional, with almost 20 years of the curbside business under her belt. So we thought it appropriate, me being a cook and Nancy finding most things I do quite humorous, that an apprenticeship must go underway. And it did, last Saturday at a reasonable 7AM. For the stock, like me, take’s time, love, and attention. Nancy’s momma is a 4-foot-10 bundle of love, and apparently knowledge, since during the 6 hours it takes to do the stock, she continued telling me her greatest secrets with every step of the way. Of course I pick up maybe like 1 one out of every 100 words she’s saying. Nonetheless, she’s happy to tell me. And apparently feed me. By 9:30AM, I for some reason continued to eat my way through 3 bananas and am about to dive into 2 servings of instant noodle (make that just over 200 bowls total). I follow her like a puppy dog back and forth between the kitchen and the front patio, where we’ve teetered a 15 liter stockpot ontop of a bucket-turned-brazier sort of stove device. Like I told you, I wanted to learn my pho street-style.
The Vietnamese start their pho like they start their morning exercise routine: excessive and repetitive. Submerge beef bones (preferably the ribs, hips, and upper leg,) in cold water for one hour. Drain and rinse off in more cold water. Put in stock pot and submerge again with cold water. Bring up to a near simmer and strain water. Fill with cold water again and this time add a good thumb sized crushed piece of ginger. Whatever you do don’t try to peel the ginger, for this may me met with a shameful shake of the head, a shove out of the way, and a prompt fist-smashing of the root instead. Cover the pot and bring to a simmer. The trick is to try to keep the stock from a rolling boil, for two reasons. First is will become cloudy, less attractive (less lucky). Second it will be a pain in the ass to skim. As we all know skimming is already a pain in the ass, so best to make it less difficult.
And this is the existence of your 6 hour life as a pho chef. There are many ways to spend this time, perhaps this master/student symbiosis could really turn a beautiful thing. Like an anemone and it’s clown fish they may talk to each other without either one to know the slightest what the other was saying. The Master and The Student could have made Banh Troi (for it seems that this would be the 4th snack before 1PM), which is boiled glutinous rice balls filled with a chunk of palm sugar and topped with sesame seeds. Maybe they would roast star anise, cinnamon sticks, and cardamom (specifically the amomum genera. But all cynicisms aside, this produced the most beautiful of smells), and proceed to sit on their heels on the kitchen floor to pulverize them into an aromatic blend using a mortar and pestle. A few times there could be a deep conversation concerning age, nationality, and marital status. Perhaps between long shifts of skim-watch one would let the other one nap on the ridiculously hard mattress upstairs. The two were as one,just by sitting, staring out the window, while the excitement builds for the feast to come. They each knew that a da
y spent in a kitchen is a day well spent.Skim buddies --->
<--- Banh Troi. Note that I (was forced to) finish my entire plate. Also note that the gentleman 2nd from right brought his surf board to Hanoi with him.
