Pho Bo, fo sho

Having only just written about pho I thought it highly appropriate and relevant to write another post about the subject, Pho Bo this time, and well we had guests so what better time to try out something new and untested, no pressure at all, and it’s not like it’s a quick process, only a few hours, not standing in front of the stove though. That wasn’t enough pressure for me though, I also decided it was a great time to wire in a panel heater, I didn’t electrocute myself and I learned how to wire up a loop switch and install a power socket. I don’t want to make it sound hard, it’s not, it’s not even that time consuming, pretty much set and forget for an hour, add something, wait an hour, repeat a few times, so I broke the recipe down to a pretty manageable timeline which I’ll outline below. Adapted from Lucky Peach, which they adapted from somewhere, I forget and I don't have the issue in front of me.

Ingredients
3–4 kg Beef bones
500 g Brisket
200 g Fillet or topside, something lean and tender
3–4 Brown onions
Ginger, a hand sized root
1 Tbsp White Pepper
30 g Palm Sugar
2 Star Anise
2 inches of Cinnamon
4 pods Cardamom
2 Cloves
Salt
Fish Sauce

Day before

• Season the brisket with a tablespoon of salt and place on a rack over a sheet pan and refrigerate.

Pre-timing

• Set oven to 180ºC
• Get a large stock pot full of water and bring up to the boil.
• Arrange onions and ginger on a sheet pan.
• Blanch bones in the water for 3 minutes.
• Dump bones into a clean sink.
• Clean the pot.
• Rinse the bones thoroughly with cold water and add back to pot.
• Fill up the stock pot with enough water to cover the bones by an inch.
• Put the pot on a high heat and bring to a simmer.
• Skim off any scum that forms.

Hour 0 (Start)

• Reduce the heat to maintain a gentle simmer, add 1 tablespoon of salt. Skim off any scum that forms.
• Put the onions and ginger in the oven.

Hour 1

• Remove the brisket from the fridge.
• Remove the onions and ginger from the oven. Remove the skins from the onions and slice the ginger into 1 cm slices.

Hour 2

• Add the brisket, onion, ginger, sugar and white pepper to the pot.
• Half cover with the lid.

Hour 3

• Add the cinnamon, star anise, cloves and cardamom.

Hour 4

• Get an ice bath set up.
• Remove the brisket and put in the ice bath for 20 minutes. Pat dry and set aside until ready to serve.

Hour 4.5 (4 hours 30 minute)

• Remove the bones with a strainer, and pass the broth through a sieve.
• Adjust the seasoning with salt and fish sauce, I like to go in first with the fish sauce, pretty heavy I must say and then tweak it off with salt.
• Either let it cool and refrigerate until you’re ready, which makes removing excess fat easy, or serve straight away. If the later just keep the broth on a low heat while you get everything else together.

Serving
You can build up bowls of soup for each person, or, as I did, have everything central on the table and have each bowl just contain rice noodles and broth. In either case, Make sure the bowls are HOT and the broth is HOT, lukewarm ain't gonna cut it.

Rice Noodles: I like the medium thickness rice noodles. I put them in a pot, roasting pan for a large crowd, cover with boiling water, put the lid on and leave for 5–10 minutes.

Rare Beef: Slice the topside or fillet as thin as you can, freezing it for 15 minutes or so to firm it up can help, arrange on a plate.

Brisket: Slice thin, arrange on a plate.

Other fixings you can and should have on the table:
Hoisin Sauce
Sriracha
Vietnamese mint
Regular Mint
Spring Onions
Chillis, sliced
Coriander
Mung Beans
Lime

Pho real

Pho has always been a favorite, usually post work stop offs at the locals to get my fix before heading home. Not really quite nailing it at home and feeling dejected and disappointed at my futile attempts which rather left me with a why bother it’s cheap enough to buy out anyway attitude. Homemade isn’t always best, but there is a certain satisfaction in creating something yourself, so it was with much joy I received the latest issue of Lucky Peach, which is dedicated to all things Pho, and recipes to boot. So here is Pho Ga, adapted from Lucky Peach.

Ingredients
1 Chicken, size 16
1.5 kg of chicken necks or carcasses
3-4 Brown onions
1 piece of ginger, about the size of your hand
1 piece of ginger, about the size of your thumb
1 stick of cinnamon
2 cloves
3 cardamon pods
2 star anise
1 dried red chilli
1 Bunch of scallions
White pepper
Salt
Fish sauce
Pho rice noodles (I like the small sized flat noodles, not vermicelli, but each to their own)

• Rub the chicken with salt until the skin is taught and refrigerate overnight, or a couple hours at least. Remove half an hour before cooking.
• Preheat the oven to 175ºC.
• Bring a large pot of water to the boil, you need enough to submerge the chicken and cover it by an inch.
• Slice the thumb of ginger and scallions and add to the pot, also add the dried chilli.

• Lower in the chicken and bring back to the boil, cook for 15 minutes then turn off the heat and cover, let it sit for 30 minutes for a 1.6kg (size 16) bird.
• Slice the onions in half and arrange on a sheet pan with the hand of ginger, place in the oven for an hour.
• Get an ice bath ready. 
• Gently remove the bird from the pot and place in the ice bath. Let it sit for 20 minutes.
• Strain the solids out of the cooking liquid and put it back on the heat.

• Remove the meat and skin from the cooled chicken and put the remains and juices in the pot.
• Take the onions out of the oven and peel, remove any overly burnt bits, slice the ginger in half. Add to the pot along with the necks or carcasses, cardamon, cloves, cinnamon, and star anise. If there is not enough liquid to cover the bones by about an inch add some water.

• Bring the pot to a simmer, add a teaspoon of salt, reduce the heat to low gentle simmer, cover and cook for 4 hours.
• Shred the meat and skin into long pieces, refrigerate until needed.
• Strain the broth into a clean pot. Simmer uncovered for 10-15 minutes, adjust and season with salt, white pepper and fish sauce.
• Place the noodles into a bowl and cover with boiling water, let them stand for 5 minutes, or follow the instructions on your packet.
• Place a portion of noodles into a hot bowl, top with a handful of the shredded chicken, sliced scallions and fried shallots. Serve with the fixings below arranged on a plate or two so you can dip into them as you need.

Fixings
Limes
Sliced fresh chillis
Fried shallots
Sliced Scallions
Coriander
Mint
Vietnamese mint
Sriracha
Bean sprouts

Chicken Noodle Soup

Nothing beats chicken noodle soup on a crisp winters day. There are a couple of steps and a couple of pots involved in this version, but it’s not overly complicated or confusing, just keeping the two stocks separate gives a cleaner flavour and lets the chicken stock reduce down and develop deep caramel flavours.

Chicken Stock
Chicken, broken down to fit in the pot.
Ginger
Garlic
Chili, whole dried sichuan
Bay Leaf
Salt

• Add the chicken to a pot and cover with an inch of water, toss in the rest of the ingredients and bring to a simmer.
• Cook until the chicken is done, but not falling off the bone. Transfer the chicken to a bowl.
• Strain the liquid and put back on the heat. Reduce to about a quarter of the original volume.

Vegetable Stock
Wood ear fungus (black)
Shiitake, dried
Garlic
Ginger
Onion
Bacon, fatty rashers
Celery
Carrot
Chilli
MSG (optional)

• Add all to a pot and cover with water. Bring to a simmer and cook for half an hour. Strain.

Building the bowl

• Pick the meat off the chicken, and set aside.
• Combine both the stocks, taste and season with salt, soy and sesame oil. Reduce a little if required.
• Cook fresh noodles.
• Portion the chicken and noodles into bowls, pour over hot broth, add spoon or so of chilli crisp (or oil), and a little bit of pickled daikon. Slurp and enjoy.

Smoked Carrot and Ginger Soup

Best laid plans and all of that! Well I had the bright idea of smoked carrot and ginger soup, smoke some carrots cook them in the pressure cooker with a little baking soda so they would caramelise and add a bit of depth of flavour, chuck a bit of ginger in there too, purée that up and hey presto tasty soup. Well, I was quite wrong, putrid foul orangey brown gunk that offended just about every sense one has, binned. The house ended up smelling of this smoky concoction from hell for the best part of a day. Not to be put off by hell carrots I started again, with a little smoky cheat, Al Brown’s Whitestone smoked butter would add that much desired smoky flavour to the soup not the carrots.

1 Kg Carrots
25 g Smoked butter
Thumb of Ginger
25 g Unsalted butter
1 Red onion
Coriander, root and leaves.
1 Scant tablespoon Peanut butter
Peanuts, toasted and crushed
Chilli flakes
Chilli oil
1% Xanthan Gum (1% by weight of the finished product)

Peel and dice the carrots, peel the ginger and slice into large chunks, clean the coriander root, peel the onion and slice into quarters. Place into a pot and barely cover with water, add the unsalted butter, bring to a simmer over low heat and cook covered until the carrots are tender.


Strain the carrots (keeping the liquid), place the coriander root, onion and ginger root along with the cooking liquids into a pot and start slowly reducing the liquid.

Work the cooked carrots through a mouli and sieve, I did this a couple of times to get super smooth purée. Use some of the reduced cooking liquid to loosen the purée to the desired consistency.


Place the soup in a blender, add the smoked butter, peanut butter and chilli oil (to taste), start the blender, when a vortex forms sprinkle in the xanthan gum, let it run for about 30 seconds.

Pass the soup through a sieve into a pot, season with salt as needed, heat to desired temperature. Serve. Garnish with finely sliced coriander, roasted peanuts chilli flakes and chilli oil. I went a little further with it and made a crab meat salad, crab meat, sliced coriander leaf, toasted peanuts, chilli flakes and oil tossed together and placed in the centre of the bowl.

Corn and chicken soup

Well I had caught this winters bug and found myself feeling rather sorry for myself and with a bit of time to kill, as well as some bugs, nothing does a better job than a hearty corn soup or a chicken soup. As I was not completely bed ridden, rather just inconvenienced to feel like a steam roller was trying to escape from my face, I mustered up as much energy as I could and put far too much effort into this chicken-corn soup, but it was worth it, the time taken to reduce the liquid down to a thick silky soup was well used to prepare a hot toddy or two to sooth my scratchy throat.


Measurements are volumetric for you today also, well in the two main ingredients anyway, one litre of stock, and one litre of corn kernels, the end result is about 700 ml of soup. It’s all rather simple to begin with, take a pot and add to it: two chicken thighs, a carrot, bunch of parsley, thyme, dried chilli, bay leaves, peppercorns, the green parts of spring onions and one litre of chicken stock. Bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer, cook until the chicken is cooked through and tender. Remove the thighs from the pot and move them to a bowl and cover with cling-film. Strain the liquid into a bowl and discard the solids, transfer the liquid back to the pot along with the corn kernels.


Frankly it’s winter and I used frozen corn, when the corn has warmed through use a stick blender to purée the mixture, pass through a fine sieve then the remaining solids through a fine mouli, the end result should be a smooth liquid free of kernel skins and a volume of about 1.5 litres, pour this back into the now clean pot and simmer until it has thickened and reduced, I ended up with 700 ml of soup at the right consistency. When the soup has thickened adjust the seasoning, shred the chicken thigh meat and add to the soup, bring it back to a simmer and serve with some spring onion garnish and a good drizzle of a quality chilli oil.

Bacon bone soup

It’s been a little longer than normal since my last post, but with work being crazy busy at the moment, and me going ever so slightly mental over the upcoming Visa Wellington on a Plate, The City Market: Pecha Kucha presentation, nothing like deadlines to bring out the best in you, maybe. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and the pressures are slowly abating, plus I’ve got four days to unwind, de-stress and really put my thinking cap on.

In my ever humble opinion, and I know the better half very much disagrees, nothing beats split pea and bacon bone soup, rich, salty, thick, soupy goodness that warms the very soul on a dark winter's night. However as I mentioned, the better half ended up being tortured with the luscious aromas of simmering bones and split peas, and boy did she let me know she was not happy, a pity too, seeings as I made a five litre batch, oh well more for me, and anyway it was her fault for buying me a 16 litre stock pot for my birthday, what was I meant to do?

The quantities in this recipe is for a rather large batch soup, but should scale down (or up) pretty easily, and if you don’t have access to bacon bones a bacon hock should suffice. I know the vegetable quantities are rather vague, I didn’t take very good notes on this one, but just add to your own tastes.


1.5 kg Bacon Bones
4 cups Green Split Peas
1 Large bouquet garni of fresh herbs (parsley, thyme, oregano etc)
1 Tbsp Caraway seeds
4-5 Juniper berry
3 Bay leaves
Even quantity of Celery, Carrots & Onions diced
5 Litres Water

Get a pot with enough water to cover the bacon bones on to boil. When the water is at a roiling boil, blanch the bacon bones for 3 minutes, to remove any excess salt. Drain.


Add everything to the pot and bring to a simmer, cook for 2 hours.

Now the next part is a bit tricky, probably a lot easier in smaller quantities, you need to remove all of the bones. So with a combination of straining and scooping, remove all of the bones to a bowl, ready to have the meat picked off. You’ll need to let the bones cool down a little before you attempt to pick them over, so while you wait, return everything else (apart from the bouquet garni and bay leaves) to the pot and with an immersion blender, purée the soup. When the bones are cool enough to handle, pick the meat off and place back into the soup, discard the bones. Taste and season.

Serve it up nice and hot with some crusty bread, even better, crusty bread slathered with garlic confit. Unless you’re going to make it through five litres of the soup, wait for it to cool, portion it into containers and freeze.



Head over to Urban Harvest and check out my Pan Roasted Brussels Sprouts recipe.

Dashi with Miso noodles and Hamine egg

Sometimes an idea stays dormant in my head for quite awhile, in fact this one has managed to stick around since august last year. I came across Hamine eggs on a post about hacking electric pressure cookers Dave Arnold had written for Cooking Issues, it was a small part of the whole article but something about those light brown eggs drew me in, I knew I had to try them. The idea got locked away into the ‘will try it eventually’ part of my brain, waiting for something to bring it to the forefront again.

We had a long drive to do a little (as possible) work on a farm in the weekend, I took along Ideas in Food to read on the way up. Flicking my way through, reading what caught my eye, I came across a recipe for miso noodles, they sounded delicious, and then the thought popped into my head, I could make a cool miso soup, where the miso is noodles, I had a bit of Kombu in the pantry to make Dashi with, and had just bought some blond miso. But noodles and Dashi weren’t enough for me, so I was thinking what else to have with it, do I want to take hours cooking pork, or some shredded chicken or fish, I could speed up the pork with the pressure cooker, or eggs! Hamine eggs would be perfect to try with the noodle broth.


Hamine Eggs
Boil eggs for 5 minutes and then cook on high pressure for 50 minutes
Let the pressure drop naturally, otherwise the eggs may explode. They can be done traditionally too, but take 24 hours or so.


Shitake Dashi
2 Litres Water
25 gram Kombu
20 grams Shitake
1 bunch of spring onion

• Bring the water up to 65°C and steep the Kombu for 1 hour, holding the temperature at 65°C
• Pulverise the Shitake into a powder with food processor.
• Simmer the Shitake powder and spring onion (whites and roots, reserve the green part) for 60 minutes.
• Strain, season with fish sauce and light soy sauce.

Miso Pasta (Ideas in Food)
1 egg
55 grams miso (blond)
225 grams flour
75 grams water

• Mix the egg, water and miso in a bowl.
• Pour the flour into another bowl, make a well in the centre and pour the liquid in.
• Mix together, forming a dough, tip out onto the bench and knead for about 5 minutes.
• Cover and rest for 30 minutes.
• Divide the dough in two.
• Roll out one half using a machine, or by hand.
  
• Run through a pasta cutter.
• Set noodles aside and work on the other half of the dough.

Cook the noodles for a couple of minutes and transfer to a serving bowl, top with a egg cut in half and sliced greens of the spring onion, ladle over the Dashi.

When life gives you onions…

My parents generation have lead us to believe pressure cookers are time bombs of boiling hot lentil stew, ready to spray every wall of the kitchen and give all occupants 3rd degree burns. Nothing could be further from the truth, modern cookers have built in safety measures, and with correct use, are about as likely to explode as your kettle. They are an invaluable piece of equipment in the modern kitchen, and to make life even easier there are electric models available that don’t require constant attention, and won’t take up valuable stove space (although do a little research, you need a model that goes to 15psi, Russell Hobbs version does).

The idea started something like this... “What would happen if I put a whole lot of onions, a little wine, and splash of cognac into a pressure cooker”. It was about 1am, so not the ideal time to start cooking, but the idea was jotted down for the next night's meal. I know that when you pressure cook onion, it becomes mellow and sweet, and loses the harsh onion sting. Along with the pressure cooked onions, I decided to slowly caramelise sliced onion the traditional way, to really beef up the onion flavour. At least there was backup in the fridge if the whole thing turned pear shaped.

You don’t need to add a lot of liquid when pressure cooking, as it’s a closed system, so hardly anything will evaporate off, and all of the liquid from the onion will be pulled out, so only the bare minimum should be added, and added for flavour.


Ingredients
2kg Brown onions
30 ml Brandy
250 ml White wine

1. Slice the head of the onions off, slice in half and peel.
2. Thinly slice the onions, a mandoline makes quick work of this.

Pressure Cooker

1. Melt a knob of butter in the pressure cooker, when sizzling add a handful of onions and sweat slightly.
2. Add the brandy and let it cook off the harsh alcohol bite.
3. Pour in the white wine, and add about two thirds of the remaining onions.
4. Season with some salt and pepper.
5. Cook on high pressure for 1 hour.

Frying Pan

1. In a heavy based pan melt a little butter on the lowest heat and add the remaining onions.
2. Season with a little salt.
3. Let it cook on low heat, occasionally stirring, until the onions have caramelised. It will take about 40 minutes on the lowest heat, it’s a long time, but very much worth it.

Serving Up

1. When the hour is up, use a quick release on the pressure cooker.
2. Purée the pressure cooked onions, and pass through a sieve.
3. Stir in the caramelised onion, saving a bit for garnish.
4. Enrich the soup with a little butter, and adjust the seasoning.
5. Ladle into warm bowl, garnish with some caramelised onion and sliced herb.
6. Serve with some crusty bread.

The soup is rich, sweet, savoury and very very moreish. If you wish, you could loosen the soup with a good beef stock.

This recipe was originally posted by me on Localist

Summer Soup

It seems like only last week that the bean stalks only had a few lonely pods hanging from them, but now they sag heavily laden with plump broad-beans ready for picking. The herbs also have had a massive growth spurt in this strange hot but humid weather, especially the parsley. The potatoes I planted, what feels like an age ago, should finally this coming weekend be ready to harvest (fingers crossed).

It was all feeling quite green, lively and summery, the type of day you either chuck a huge piece of red meat on the barbecue sit out side with a cold beer (cocktail or wine) and get heat stroke, or, as I did, go the other direction and have a warm (not hot) aromatic, take advantage of all the great produce, soup.

I had some home-made chicken stock in the freezer and a couple of chicken thighs in the fridge. I defrosted the stock on the stove and then gently poached the chicken in the simmering stock, making sure to skim of any scum that formed.

While the chicken was cooking, I set about preparing the vegetables, a red onion; bunch of asparagus; carrots; confit garlic (again, a staple for the fridge); spring onion; celery; olives; parsley; broad beans; and peas.


The carrots, asparagus stalks (not tips), onions, celery, and garlic were set aside in one bowl to cook first, as they take a bit longer to become tender.


And the remainder in another bowl, ready add at the last minute.


I gently sautéed the first lot of vegetables on a low heat, to soften slightly. As they cooked, I took the chicken out the stock and shredded the meat off the bone, then strained the stock. I added the stock to the pan, a small handful of fusilli pasta, and let it simmer gently for about 8 minutes.

After about 8 minutes the pasta should almost be cooked. I then added the rest of the vegetables, herbs, shredded chicken, and a squeeze of lemon. Tasted and adjusted seasoning (and added a small shake of chilli flakes).

When the pasta is cooked (about 3 minutes more) take it off the heat and let it sit to cool down a little, this soup shouldn't be eaten piping hot.

1st post - Cannellini & Chorizo Soup

Welcome, as a renter of property rather than an owner, I often (read always) end up with a crap tiny kitchen to work in, much to my dismay (usually, number of bedrooms, sun, size of lounge & price override the want of a nice kitchen), but in hardship comes inspiration and the need to not let my surroundings get the better of me!

I do promise in future posts to include images of the process and final product of recipes but not in this one sorry.

A major staple in my pantry is always canned beans, they are so versatile and can be used to create great dishes.

Cannellini & Chorizo Soup

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Ingredients
Celery
Chorizo
Potatoes (Nadine or similar)
Shallots
Butter
Olive Oil
Garlic
Cannellini beans
Stock (chicken)
Thyme

Mise en place
Finely dice - Celery, Chorizo, Shallots & Garlic
Very thinly slice - Potatoes
Warm - Stock

Method
In a pot, warm olive oil till very hot and add shallots, garlic, thyme and half the celery saute till soft & transparent. Remove thyme. Season well with salt (sea) and pepper. Add beans and stock and let simmer gently while you work on the rest.

In a saute pan, add oil and when very hot add the rest of the celery and saute till soft then add diced chorizo and cook until nicely caramelised. Set aside on a plate or in a bowl.

In the same pan, add a good knob of butter & thyme and just before it browns lay out the potatos in the pan and let them sit, basting now and then with the butter (they will cook quickly).

While the potatoes are cooking, take the simmering beans and blend until silky smooth, (add back to the pot) add in chorizo and celery and let simmer very gently, add the potatoes (minus the thyme) to the pot and let simmer for a minute or two.

Season to taste.

Serve in bowls, finish with a swirl of olive oil and cracked pepper.

A good hunk of crusty bread and butter is a perfect way to sop this soup up.