Phở Night

The nice family invited me over for homemade phở at their place last night - and it was a dinner to remember for a while (Vietnamese is one of those herb-centered world cuisines I love in their virtuous soups, this rare opportunity to experience traditional cooking was a time to savor and to learn secrets of the recipe and meet new friends). The broth is the soul, said my gentleman host, onions for sweetness, and dried star anise, cloves, cinnamon, ginger for complexity and clarity.  We are both from the north country, my wife and I, and it is where this soup was born, he added. Restaurant or food truck phở always comes with beans sprouts, basil leaves, jalapeño and limes to dunk in the soup, but at their home one garnish stood out that surprised me: cilantro. It's not a stretch of the imagination to add another herb component to it, it's just not indicative, I mused, but that's the kind of revelation I was hoping for to see (and how it was sliced, minced fresh to smithereens with raw onions was interesting), and besides it was home cooking as in the north country and not commercially for sale here. And it made all the difference to the phở, deepening its umami by enriching the hoison sauce and chili paste tandem condiment to its taste, the vegetables' heat swimming in perfume oil with a kick. I also never had artichoke tea before, and that was served alongside our dinner. Conversation at the table I shared a travel story with the family of my visiting Vietnam on backpack moons ago and seeing the country by bus and foot. In Hue, central Vietnam, passing a university district I had asked the students on break on the street smoking in their medical school uniforms where I could get what they would get themselves this great soup. Come follow us (a bunch of them were actually headed to the unassuming shack just across), and they all unanimously said: here. We sat around a soot-covered vat under burning wood constantly adjusted by the large madame sweating in her apron and ladling out this food ambrosia into our waiting bowls heaping with white noodles and cut herbs and vegetables (the florets of the basil, I was instructed, must be picked out by pressing down on the base and sliding up to the tip of the stem and dislodging these velvety micro-blooms directly onto the steaming hot soup to poof its magic), and then Let's eat. "This is in a way so many of the great meals of my life have been enjoyed, sitting in the street, eating something out of a bowl I'm not exactly sure what it is, scooters going by, so delicious, I feel like an animal, where have you been all my life?" (Anthony Bourdain, in Saigon). The home of my hosts sits on a beautiful bluff with harbor views and town lights dimming the black ocean, and the flow of our dinner was absorbed in talk that converged new relations with a convivial beginning. We all got to know each other well, and food was the harbinger at its best.     

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