The October 2009 Daring Cooks' challenge was brought to us by Jaden of the blog Steamy Kitchen. The recipes are from her new cookbook, The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook. I can't tell you how excited I was to get started on these recipes. I love to try recipes from various Asian cultures, but never really tried Vietnamese food on my own. The trick for this month was to really nail the broth, and the best part is, with a good recipe, it's impossible to fail.
We were given a short version of Pho Ga (Chicken Pho), but I went with Jaden's longer beef recipe which can be found on her website. What makes the broth special is attention to detail. To begin, onions and ginger are broiled very closely to the top of the oven (I used the toaster oven which may not have been ideal, but saved a lot of energy!) until they are nicely charred. This imparts some extra depth of flavor and richness.
While the charring is undertaken, whole spices are toasted to add an additional layer of flavor. The recipe calls for star anise, cinnamon, coriander seeds, fennel seeds and cardamom pods. I was tempted to add in peppercorns because for me no recipe is a recipe without garlic and black pepper. I held back in both instances to give the recipe a shot as written. Also, who am I to judge what a recipe for Pho needs? I've eaten it and enjoyed it, but this was the first time.
Once the spices and aromatics are prepared, they go in the pot with beef bones, fish sauce, sugar and some chunks of meat. I must say that if I had any idea how good that simmered beef would be, I would have added three times the amount. I used about half of what Jaden suggested mainly because I didn't get enough when I was at the butcher. These pieces of meat were some of the best parts of the whole dish.
I made the broth on a Saturday evening, refrigerated it and then made the Pho on the following day. I can't say for sure that the broth was even better, but the spices and meatiness really came th
rough once the soup was put together. Most of the work in the broth is waiting and drooling over the simmering pots, so it's silly to say that the broth makes the soup, but it really does. The extra steps in preparing it from scratch, and preparing it this way were well worth it.
We used all the traditional (or at least suggested) toppings for the Pho - mint, cilantro, sliced chilis (one Serrano and one Jalapeno from our garden!), bean sprouts and slices of raw skirt steak to cook in the broth. I took Jaden's advice and made a dipping sauce of chili paste (our Sriracha had turned, so I used sambal olek instead) and hoisin for the freshly cooked pieces of beef. Delicious. The sauces do also add additional flavor to the soup and once I had a bowl of straight soup, I started mixing a bit in.
We got 8 good sized meals out of this challenge and easily could have stretched it for more. I will absolutely be adding this in. I just wish I had more freezer space to make gallons of the broth to keep around. Such is the burden of living in Brooklyn.
The next part of the challenge was to make dessert wontons. Jaden's recipe was for chocolate wontons, but also invited us to get creative. I made three types of wontons in four shapes. I made a straight chocolate wonton with 70% dark chocolate, a banana-chocolate combo, and the piece de resistance, a lemon ricotta wonton w
ith blueberry dipping sauce. These last were inspired by our wedding cupcakes which combined lemon curd, blueberries and lots of buttercream icing. I struggled to be super creative, but I did enjoy the process of thinking about great combinations to put in the wontons which also turned out to be fascinatingly easy. I nearly said fool-proof and that's probably dangerous, but as long as you don't over fill the wrappers, you can really put just about anything in them and fry them up. I can't wait to experiment more in the future.