Chicken Pho

As I have mentioned over and over again in San Francisco, the weather does and always will baffle me. I do not understand if it is hot, cold, foggy, sunny or anywhere in between - even if I check the weather. As I think on the new year and what I want to get out of it, clarity on my body and what I put into it is one thing I know I can control and, as a Virgo, it's something that is important to me. Control and remaining focused. Food can help with that! When it is 50 degrees out but looks sunny and inviting, make soup. The answer is always soup.

I've been easily distracted this past year - distracted by emotionally unavailable men, distracted by meaningless work that started to wear me down, and distracted by relationships that don't feed me the way they used to. As cliché as it sounds, I am not one to post and reflect on my year, but I suppose this is my equivalent way of doing that this go around. One of my best friends Chris sent me a meme that said "2018 is the sad bitch, 2019 is the bad bitch". Chris also was the one that called my employment with Stitch Fix the toxic relationship covered with a bandaid that no one wanted to pull off, and I'm glad it finally was.

The best comfort in life for me is having a good friend over, warm food, and a belly full of laughs and that is what I had last night. Rachel was over and we made pho, which was a PHO-KING adventure. It started at a Chinese market and led me to discarding of a "fresh old chicken". My friend Alicia looked this up for me, and apparently old chickens are good for bones and cooking broth, so my gut told me I was right in choosing the old guy for my soup. Thank god Rachel was with me because I did not want to deal with that fucking old chicken... like truly I am shooketh by how nasty that was and #godbless for Raquel.

I did buy fresh chicken for the actual eating part, which I'll include below in my edited recipe from Smitten Kitchen's version.  I have edited her version quite a bit, so I will simply include my recipe below and adjust to your taste as needed.

I am now also fully committing myself to a gluten free lifestyle, as my body for the past year has been telling me to do so, so I will admit that everything in here is gluten free. If you prefer different noodles other than rice noodles for pho, feel free to switch it up. I also want to mention... if I had bought these ingredients at Whole Foods, I'd be $100 deep. I went to a Chinese market instead and in total for ALL ingredients, I spent $35. So choose your store wisely, because your homemade meal could save or cost you roughly $70.

Ingredients for broth:

2 yellow onions, quartered
3 1/2 inch thick slices of fresh ginger, smashed
4 quarts cold water
1 "fresh old chicken" - or chicken bones and skin
4 bone-in chicken thighs
5 tablespoons salt
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon star anise
1 teaspoon ground fennel
2 tablespoons Asian chili-garlic sauce
1/4 cup Asian fish sauce (I used a vegetarian version because honestly I just couldn't find a normal fish sauce at the market I was at)
1 pound fresh rice noodles (bánh phó)

Garnishes:

1 large scallion, thinly sliced
1 cup mung bean sprouts
1/2 cup cilantro leaves
2 limes, cut into wedges
2 jalapeños, thinly sliced
Hoisin sauce
Crispy shallots (recipe below)

Crispy shallot recipe:

2 cups thinly sliced shallots
2 cups canola or vegetable oil

Directions for shallots:

1. In a small saucepan, heat the oil over medium-high. Add the shallots and cook, stirring frequently as they’ll want to cook unevenly, until light golden brown, about 4 to 8 minutes, depending on their thickness. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate to drain. Watch them, because like pine nuts, they will go from perfectly golden brown to burned in an instant. 

Directions for Pho:

1. Char onions and ginger: Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Put the onions and ginger on a lightly oiled baking sheet and roast for 30 minutes, or until softened and lightly browned. If you have a gas range, char them a bit over a flame. That's what I did and it turned out fine! 

2. Cook the chicken: Fill a large stockpot with the water and bring to a boil. Add the roasted onions and ginger, and the quartered fresh old chicken, salt, sugar and any of the optional spices and bring to a boil. Add your Asian chili-garlic sauce here - I added two heaping teaspoons which changed the color of my broth quite a bit but allowed it to have the flavor and heat I needed so that I didn't need to add any later on. Lower the heat to moderate and simmer until the chicken is cooked, about 30 minutes.

3. Add the chicken thighs and simmer for 2 hours longer. Strain the chicken broth into a large soup pot and cook over high heat until reduced to 12 cups, about 15 minutes. Stir in the fish sauce; adjust to taste. Shred the chicken thighs away from the bone and add back to the broth. 

4. Prepare noodles: Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil and cook rice noodles. Drain the noodles, then add them to the saucepan and boil over high heat until tender, about 3 minutes. Drain well. Divide the noodles between 6 large bowls and sprinkle with the scallion. The reason you do this separately from the broth is to keep the broth clear - the noodles cooked make the water murky and you want your broth to remain pure. 

5. Finish and serve the soup: Ladle the broth and chicken over the noodles. Serve with the bean sprouts, basil, lime wedges, jalapeños, chili-garlic sauce, hoisin sauce and crispy shallots.