Pho is a dish of skillful combination and connection: a combination of colors, flavors, textures, connections between seasons, different spaces, and even connections between memories, present, and future.
Once, in a cooking class that I attended, the cooking instructor - the head chef of a Vietnamese kitchen at a 5-star hotel in Hanoi, asked the students what the most special thing about pho was. Some of us said that the meat had to be fresh, some said that the pho broth had to be simmered from beef bones for hours, some mentioned cinnamon, anise, cardamom... But in the end, the instructor shook his head and said that the students had only paid attention to the details. The most special thing about pho is that the ingredients are used in their almost original state, using the simplest preparation methods: blanching, boiling, and simmering the bones for a long time for the broth, then combining them to create a very harmonious dish with an extremely different, attractive, and delicious flavor.
Yes, everyone exclaimed with delight. Pho is truly a skillful and harmonious combination. Eating a bowl of pho has all the ingredients from starch, meat, vegetables, there is water and solids, there is hard and soft. There are products from the sea if you add a few sea worms or products from the forest if you add a little cinnamon and star anise to make broth. There is the white color of rice, the red color of thinly sliced beef marinated in fish sauce and ginger slowly passed through the knife blade or the golden color of chicken, the green color of onions and coriander, maybe the spicy taste of chili, the sour taste of vinegar, lemon...
Pho is so familiar that I don't think much about it other than enjoying it. But thinking a little more about the originality and skillful combination makes the dish extremely pure. It turns out that almost everyone likes pho because of its authenticity. Just like in life, processing and seasoning in all kinds of ways, with all kinds of backgrounds, eventually gets boring, and in the end, only the authenticity remains to impress people.
Pho is available everywhere, but when talking about Pho, we are talking about the typical dish of Hanoi. As the writer Thach Lam once wrote, “Pho is a special gift of Hanoi, not only Hanoi has it, but because only in Hanoi is it delicious”…
In fact, going up to the Northwest regions, in the cold early morning of the misty mountain air, holding a bowl of steaming pho at the morning market, the pho noodles are thick and sliced into large pieces, the beef is also thickly sliced, the broth is sweet from stewed bones without a trace of MSG, is also very enjoyable.
But Hanoi pho is known for its long, thin rice noodles, large, thin slices of beef, lightly poached rare meat that is pink and crispy but not tough, with a choice of rare, well-done, brisket, and flank, and a clear broth, and that has naturally become a standard for pho.
Thach Lam defined Hanoi's delicious pho at the beginning of the last century, and people have engraved that concept of delicious pho in their hearts: "Delicious pho must be classic pho, cooked with beef, clear and sweet broth, soft but not mushy noodles, crispy but not tough fatty flank, lemon, chili and onion, fresh herbs, Northern pepper, a drop of strong green rice lime, and a little bit of water bugs, lightly like a doubt... For decades now, no one has known that light scent of water bugs, but Hanoi pho is still complete.
Each person, each family has their own secret to cooking pho. How to choose ingredients, what ingredients, how long to simmer to get a delicious pot of broth. The meat must be bought early in the morning, sliced thinly, across the grain, and marinated with what. Then there is grilled ginger, grilled onions, roasted cinnamon, star anise, cardamom, coriander roots and seeds simmered with water, fresh onions, coriander, chili…
A good pho restaurant will have a fragrant aroma that fills the entire street. There are pho restaurants that have been around for decades, and have been loved by customers for two or three generations, such as Pho Bat Dan, Pho Ly Quoc Su, Pho Khoi, Pho Thin, Pho Hang Dong, Pho Ga Cham... In Hanoi, there are also many traditional pho restaurants from Nam Dinh, which is considered the homeland of pho.
Nowadays, everyone is busy, young people find it difficult to keep up with the cooking secrets of their grandmothers and mothers. Sometimes they want to cook pho at home. The key is to use fresh ingredients and season them just right. Without being too fussy, they can still have a delicious pot of pho to serve their family, making it a joy on the weekend.
The purity of pho allows people to eat pho for breakfast, lunch, or dinner and still feel light. Or it is suitable for any season, in winter a bowl of hot pho is great, and in summer a bowl of pho makes you sweat but still feels comfortable.
And more than that, pho is also a connection between regions, domestic and foreign. From Hanoi, Nam Dinh, pho is present in many places throughout the country, each with its own flavor. Pho Nam has herbs and bean sprouts. Pho Gia Lai is made from dry pho noodles, similar to pho Nam because it has beef balls. Pho is also present in many countries and on the menu now the word Pho is still kept intact without needing to be translated into the local language. I used to have a German teacher who loved Vietnamese food, during the months I studied in Germany, he invited the whole class to eat Vietnamese food several times, once went to eat pho, the class included colleagues from developing countries, everyone loved pho.
Families now send their children to study abroad, before they go, parents often teach their children how to cook pho. Or else, when they go there, the children will learn how to cook it themselves online. Fortunately, in America, Europe or Australia, beef is abundant, delicious and tender, and not expensive, so children sometimes cook it themselves to help them miss the taste of pho at home. Or when friends gather for a party, each person makes their own typical dish, or on occasions such as Vietnam's National Day, Vietnam's cultural week, pho is often introduced as a typical dish, when mentioning Vietnam, people mention pho, spring rolls, more than enough to conquer friends from all over the world.
A colleague of mine who is working in South Africa, in early December, she told me that the Vietnamese agencies in Pretoria organized a pho day. 400 bowls of pho were served free of charge, our brothers and sisters in conical hats, red shirts with yellow stars, quickly blanched the noodles, poured the pho, looking beautiful and fresh, making the entire diplomatic corps in Pretoria respect and impressed.
Pho thus became a connection between the past, present, and future. In the old days, when there was poverty and famine, children wanted to get sick so they could eat pho. My parents told me that when my mother was pregnant with me, she craved pho, so my brother and I drove to a restaurant, but he stood outside to watch the car while my sister went in to eat, because we didn’t have enough money to eat two bowls for two. It turns out that many families have experienced this story.
Pho has now been awarded a heritage. A heritage that is not in a glass cabinet, but still accompanies us vividly every day to continue to be preserved and created, to continue to be a connection between people. Pho travels with Vietnamese people to all five continents, each Vietnamese person when cooking pho for foreign friends to enjoy has become a culinary ambassador to introduce the culture, the country and people of Vietnam.
Source: https://daidoanket.vn/pho-la-ket-noi-10299261.html
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