"there's a reason that most people in vietnam buy noodle soup from a vendor. putting together a bowl of soup isn't complicated, but it does require some effort." so says charles phan, owner and chef at the slanted door in san francisco, and author of the newly released vietnamese home cooking where you can find those words in his chapter on soup. it's a book i've been pouring over, partly because i'm obsessed with the restaurant (find me a person who has stuffed their face with one of his crispy, hot imperial rolls and washed it down with grüner veltliner who isn't), and partly because, in recipe and photograph, it reminds me of a trip to vietnam when i was twenty-one and the world belonged to me and i to it. there's also the ménage à trois of chile, cilantro and lime juice coursing through its pages.
amidst the page turning, i began to secretly wonder if i could recreate even a semblance of my first bowl of pho. it was in hanoi at a hole-in-the-wall (seriously, if a place looks too clean in hanoi, don't even bother. look for little plastic stools that appear to have been sat on a thousand times or more. this is a very good sign). i have no memory of the details save the seemingly bottomless pile of fresh herbs that arrived with my steaming bowl. i only know that it was the best soup i'd ever had. the moment was marked. at the very least, i trusted phan's recipe would yield something very delicious and restorative, even if it didn't move the mark on my plotline. there is something exceptional about pho in any form. it is humble enough to be eaten every day, fashioned from the most familiar ingredients, but complex and surprising in every bite. it has it all: raw, cooked, hot, cold, fresh, soft, crispy, chewy, brothy, umami. the list goes on.
i spent the next nine hours of my life procuring ingredients, blanching chicken bones, perfuming my little home with the scent of whole roasted onions and ginger, skimming stock, awkwardly moving a whole chicken from steaming water to an ice bath, skimming stock some more, deep frying shallots, cleaning herbs, cooking noodles, skimming stock, straining stock, skimming strained stock. you get the picture. when you cook like this there is plenty of time to reflect. what i came up with is this: if your day permits you time to make a decent bowl of pho, consider yourself very lucky. time to make soup--time to reflect while plucking cilantro leaf from stalk--is an overlooked luxury. i don't want the car or watch, just the privilege of hours to do all the things the soup vendors do. sitting down with my creation, the fragrant, brothy bowl on my table said grace for me.
notes
* vietnamese home cooking by charles phan can be purchased from your local bookseller or found here. it contains this recipe for pho ga (chicken noodle soup) among many other
* visit the slanted door online here.