I found this article over the weekend but didn’t have a chance to post it.
At that moment, I made it my mission to track down a singularly authentic pho recipe. Now, after tireless investigation, and just when I thought I had a pho worthy of showing off to experts, I learn there is no such thing: It seems that everyone, whether from northern or southern Vietnam, whether raised on his own mother’s pho, or recently converted to Vietnam’s national soup, has a firm and personal idea of how pho should taste.
In its native country, pho is simply great street food — inexpensive, thick with noodles, fragrant with an array of Asian herbs and spices, onion and ginger and eaten nearly 24 hours a day, especially for breakfast. Vietnamese immigrants introduced it here in restaurants after the war ended in 1975: You can hardly pass a strip mall in some parts of the Washington region without being propositioned by a neon pitch for pho.
I’d been wondering what the key ingredients were for Pho for awhile to further refine my palette, as well as perhaps try to cook some myself. Really as a bachelor it’s much easier just to buy it when it comes down to it, but I would like to give it a try just for the experience if anything else. Perhaps this will happen sometime after I’ve thoroughly tried out my new Thai cookbooks.
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