Vietnamese National Dish: Pho - #shayansglobalcooking

GOOD Moooorrrrnniiiingggg VIETNAM!!!

Only four more countries to go.
W, X, Y and Z

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let's check out V and Vietnam. The National Dish was a clear one, Pho all the way. I do love a Pho, so was glad the vote went towards Vietnam.

The broth is the key component of this dish. It is also the stage that takes the longest as it involves making sure the stock and veg infuse together to make it deep and full in flavour.

​I wanted to do Beef Pho, but I had to get the beef and bones to start. This seemed like a long process. I have become really lazy and this stopped me from going to the butchers to get this. Luckily, as fate would have it, we had a whole roast chicken that evening, so I decided to go for Chicken Pho.

The recipe I used was from the Epicurious site: This recipe was for a Classic Chicken Pho. 
With Chicken the other benefit too was that the cooking time was a lot less. So instead of 6-8 hours simmering the beef bones, it was just a couple of hours for the chicken and veg.

The recipe from the Epicurious site was something I followed, relatively stringently. The few differences I had to make were due to lack of ingredients. Instead of raw ginger, I used powdered ginger and instead of rock sugar, i just used caster sugar. 

Time is key to this dish and letting the chicken broth bubble away with the onions and ginger set the magic in motion. I do feel that the beef bones, would make for a richer and deeper taste, so that will happen next time.

​After the relative success of this, I will make Pho again and very soon.

One last word of warning. Make a lot of broth. I used quite a small saucepan, which meant that the broth was only enough for one person. Considering the amount of time spent, my wife wasn't happy that we had to share this dish.