Vietnamese Pho, Straight Up
I am attracted to new languages. Not for the reasons one might imagine – desire to visit another nation, or make some kind of business, or win a language stamp, like an “I’ve been there” label plastered proudly on my luggage. No, I love languages because they allow me into a previously-unimaginable part of myself, which is a previously-unimagined facet of my (or our common) humanity. Some dive into the sea, some fly into space: I mine myself for the ore of my Self, and the more words you know, the easier it is to name emotions and ideas that were always whispered, never said. When I discover something new, I discover a new me.
One of my favorite variations-on-theme is the myriad forms we humans have for preparing our daily bread. This many years into the Grand Experiment, and I haven’t gotten near to the bottom of that mystery; and though I have found delightful gustatory rooms that I visit again and again, that I know by rote and the palm of my pan, all it takes is a new taste or new touch or new idea, and another language of the kitchen is overheard.
When I moved back to Boston from the highly-experimental territories of Brazil (despite the obvious faults that every country expresses, and Brazilians own as much as any other people on the planet, I do love that nation’s vitality and upsurge of imagination and possibility), I looked for some of the diet options I had enjoyed down near the Uruguay border. There had been macrobiotics and farm-to-tablers, rustic Italian banquets where families sat down with their hotel guests, vegetarian buffets, influences from the Lebanese and the Japanese and the German and what-not. Mostly I wanted to replace in Boston what had been lost in geographic translation, and that was the diet of fresh fruits and vegetables that had become part of my daily down there.
I didn’t find it, unfortunately. Not very well represented, this vegetarian community. But I did stumble upon the Organic Garden Cafe in Beverly, Massachusetts, and that experience was one of those sea-change moments. A raw foods specialist, their “combo platter” was delicious, light, and left me with a kind of energetic buzz that was nigh on epiphany. Please go give them a try, next time you’re buzzing around Massachusetts’ north shore.
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Preamble aside, I have finally gotten ‘round to supplementing my daily bread with home-made daily raw foods. I checked a book out of the library, and was so delighted with the simplicity, palate, and how my body received a few test recipes, I researched a more complete volume and picked it up today. As the day stumbled to a close, I thought to make a little… anything, to lightly feed the body before sleep. With the ingredients I had, I chose this raw Vietnamese Pho noodle soup recipe from Ani’s Raw Food Essentials, modifying it slightly to adapt to my ingredients. Wow! This was absolutely delicious, straight from the unheated pot. Hope you like it!
| Combine in a large bowl, mix well to coat ingreds, allow to marinate 20 min | 1/2 c 1 t 1 T 1/2 t 1/3 c 4 | thinly sliced sweet onion garlic, through a press ginger, through a press ground cinnamon tamari or Bragg’s aminos whole pods star anise |
|---|---|---|
| - | ||
| stir in to create “broth”; keeps 2+ days refrigerated | 4 c | filtered water |
| - | ||
| divide soup ingreds among 4 bowls; ladle broth over, one star of anise in each as decoration; keeps 1 day refrigerated | 4 c 1/4 c 1 1/2 c 1/2 c 1 1 | “spiralized” summer squash scallion, shredded lengthwise bean sprouts * shredded basil, mint, and cilantro * lime, in wedges red thai chili * |
Theoretically serves four. That was not my experience this evening.
A spiralizer is an inexpensive plastic kitchen utensil that makes summer squash – that royalty of the vegetable kingdom: my neighbor in the Minnesota farmlands looked at our zucchini grove, spat chaw, and said, tersely: “Pig fodder!” – make sense. It spins hunks of vegetables into long vermicelli threads or flat noodles. In my first half-recipe recipe I turned one yellow summer squash into vermicelli. Delightful.
The asterisks above indicate items I modified. I had no bean sprouts, so used none, and the result was delicious. I bet the extra crunch would be a great addition, and will add it next time. I thought I had, but did not have, cilantro. I picked the last basil leaves from the pre-frost garden, and sliced some mint I had into long threads; again, outstanding flavor. I am a chili-hound, and add habanero oil to almost everything, but my current batch had gone ‘round the bend, so I left this dish without additional heat. The flavor was complex, robust, and was plenty as is. Love the touch of star anise, that had been missing from my previous attempts at the traditional pho dish.
Finally, I crushed raw cashews with the flat of my chef’s knife and added them to the top.
I took one bite… and then another and another, with what I felt at the time to be embarrassing acceleration. No matter, it disappeared so fast, the only ones who noticed were the ones I sheepishly (or joyously) told.
So on to tomorrow’s adventure of a day!