Category: recipe

Super Delicious Aïoli in 5 minutes!

Okay, I know I said we don’t really celebrate Christmas, but in fact we still do with the extended family and hence I have a present for all of you – a simple recipe for aïoli!

I’ll start by saying I’ve made aïoli for years, but have never been entirely satisfied with the result until this version. The two keys to today’s success are most definitely the quality of the garlic and the choice of oils. In the past, I simply used extra virgin olive oil, which is often too fruity or sharp for a good mayonnaise of any sort. I found myself often compensating with extra mustard, or too much salt, hence the ‘meh’ outcomes. This version uses a mix of a mild extra virgin olive oil and grapeseed oil.

I probably don’t need to explain the reason for using good quality garlic, but I was lucky to find some locally grown globes where we are down the coast (silly me left our own garlic at home) that are very tasty indeed. Whatever you do, NEVER buy cheap Chinese garlic – aside from the obvious food miles and ‘goddess knows what they’ve put on it’ issues, it has no flavour.

Okay, enough back story. Here’s the recipe. We’ll be enjoying it tonight with crayfish and asparagus. 🙂

2 eggs

2 cloves garlic

1 T dijon mustard

juice of 1 lemon

pinch salt

1 C extra virgin olive oil

1 C grapeseed oil

Put all ingredients except the oil in a container and hand blend (I use an electric hand blender, but of course you can whisk if you like!). When combined, drizzle the oils in slowly while blending until fully emulsified. Takes about 5 minutes. Enjoy!

Tour de France Stage 12 means Cassoulet!

Presumably most of you have noticed that the Tour de France has been on. Given my recent work travels, my exhilarating participation in the democratic process of establishing a new peak representative body for international students (#allhailCISA), my usual family demands with the Jonai (who are orsm not only in my view, but by global consensus), and my public disavowal of all forms of spectator sport, I really haven’t. In fact, when someone said ‘Lance Armstrong’, I had an immediate case of deja vu/wait, what? But some time ago, I agreed to post something about the destination of Stage 12 of the Tour de France when the lovely Barbara of Winos & Foodies asked for people interested in posting something on the food of particular regions…

See, as my few regular readers will know, Tammi Tasting Terroir is meant to be about understanding, considering, eating and critiquing regional distinctions, variations, meanings and instabilities. So when Barbara asked who was interested in a project about such regional distinctions I think I might have extinguished a star as my hand shot up. But wait, it has to be about France? Hm, my research is about Australia, Vietnam & Italy, but sure, why not? It’s not like I don’t know how to do research… (increasingly, don’t you just ask the twitters?) <hopes her supervisor isn’t reading this>

Tami (one ‘m’, clearly not me, but an interesting confluence nonetheless) over at Running With Tweezers did a gorgeous post on tapenade, tomatoes provencale and roasted apricots for Stage 11, which you should definitely pop over and drool at.

So it’s lucky that I ‘ve been to France. In fact I’ve been thrice. I went with my family at 14 (please don’t ask them for the 4th of July story on the Orient Express), fell in love with Stuart in Paris while working as an au pair to earn enough money to survive (recounted briefly in this poem that is of no interest to anyone except us), and finally, with my entire American family plus our then 5yo, 3yo, & 3 month old children, mostly in the south. And that’s when we made it to the Languedoc region, which is where Mende is, which is where Stage 12 of the Tour finishes this year…

So what do you want to know about Mende, the Languedoc region, and its foods? Well, the critical dish we’re going to discuss here is cassoulet. Of course the region is also famous for its duck confit, and I could tell you about those I’ve made and those we’ve brought back from France in tins, but I’m not going to do that here… According to my much-beloved French sister-in-law, one of the things that makes cassoulet famous is that it takes three days to digest. 😉

So here goes – I’ve made cassoulet a few times, and it’s pretty hard to stuff up if you’re paying any attention and using plenty of delicious ingredients. The catch is that I’ve been urgently called to Sydney on work (and obviously I should have written this much earlier, but to be fair, I only just got back from two days on the Gold Coast – speaking at a conference – and a week in Tassie setting up CISA and researching the ethical raising of pigs. Okay, we also ate a lot of Bruny Island Cheese).

What this catch means is that I’m cheating a bit. I’ve made cassoulet, I’ve eaten plenty of it, and now I’m going to give you a recipe I’ve drawn together from my memory of making it, and recipes I’ve read/tasted/imagined/enjoyed and ask you to make it yourself. 🙂 I’ve crowdsourced photos from lovely food bloggers on the twitters (who enjoyed the versions below at Libertine, written up here by @tomatom) since I’m unable to cook it up here in the hotel in Sydney. I’m now tempted to make it for friends on Wednesday night, so will update with photos if I pull that off…

This photo was taken by the fabulous Penny (@jeroxie) over at Addictive and Consuming.

Cassoulet

This hearty stew varies considerably in different regions (and even within them, as per any famous dish made in various households), and it’s fun to imagine the many spirited debates southerners must have about the requirements for pork, quality pork sausage, lamb or duck confit. Personally, I reckon you simply cannot go wrong as long as there is free range happy pork (‘only one bad day’), sausage and duck. Yes, I realise that means this is a very rich dish – that’s the point. And how fitting that I am offering it to you here in Australia’s depth of winter, as I cannot imagine it having any appeal in the current French summer!

1kg haricot (cannellini is fine, a variety of haricot) beans

1 duck, jointed

700g fresh Toulouse (pork) sausage (free range)

1 free range pig’s trotter

100g free range bacon or speck, roughly chopped

1 garlic globe, chopped

2 onions, sliced

pinch thyme

3 bay leaves

1 carrot, thickly sliced

1 stick of celery, sliced

2T tomato paste (you can also use homemade roast sugo, in which case double quantity)

Salt & pepper to taste

Soak the beans overnight. Drain and put on the heat for 10-20 minutes, until soft but still al dente. Take off the heat, drain and set aside. Meanwhile, you should be making a stock from the trotter, garlic, onion, thyme, bay leaves, carrot & celery. Simmer in water for at least two hours to infuse the stock with loads of flavour. When you’re satisfied the stock has a lovely flavour, it’s ready for its next starring role.

Meanwhile, fry the duck pieces just to brown and seal in delectable juices. Also fry off the sausages. You can then slice them and add to the beans or else leave them whole – this is purely a matter of your taste and aesthetic. Set the duck and sausage aside while stock comes to maturity.

Once both the beans & the stock are ready, and the meat is browned, layer roughly, including the bacon pieces, in a casole, or a casserole dish or oven pot of some sort, ensuring some sausage is pushed in at the top. It’s useful to put the trotter in the bottom for more flavour. Pour half the stock in when you’ve half filled the pot. Stir the tomato paste or sugo through.

I use my le Creuset (I should mention I have one that was a gift, & another that was found in the hard rubbish collection in Carlton – it has exactly *one chip* in the enamel in the bottom, but somebody threw it out – lucky us). Pour the rest of the stock into the pot, cover and put in a medium/low oven for around three hours (150-160C). Uncover after the first hour and allow the top to form a bit of a crust, cooking for a further hour or two, pushing the cassoulet down with a large spoon periodically. Pour more stock in during cooking if it dries out too much.

Some people put bread crumbs on top to form the crust, but my understanding is that it’s more traditional to allow the beans and sausage to form their own crust by slow cooking uncovered at the end.

Serve with a scrumptious fresh baguette, preferably homemade. Predictably, I prefer sourdough. 😉

Here’s another photo, this one by the orsm @snarkattack. 🙂

And now watch the food tour go on over at Barry’s Bistro as the Tour heads into Stage 13…

Simple lemony, garlicky, basil-y hollandaise

You can’t beat a hollandaise soaked stack of goodness on a slow weekend morning. My lovely fellow cook Shel introduced us to the wonders of homemade hollandaise on a decadent flyaway weekend in Merimbula back in 1997 and we haven’t looked back. I’ve Jonai’d the original recipe as we really like to give it a lift with the basil and garlic.

I’m sure Larousse would not be happy with me, as this version requires no reducing, but I’m willing to bet that you, dear readers, will not be disappointed. The lovely Zoe (of Progressive Dinner Party fame) and her family were instant converts to homemade hollandaise when we enjoyed this on our summer holiday, and her son apparently dubbed it ‘Tammandaise’, a name we now use as well. 🙂

Hollandaise Sauce

3 egg yolks

splash of white wine vinegar

juice of 1 lemon

1 clove garlic

handful basil

salt & pepper to taste

200g butter

Method

Put all ingredients except butter into a tall cup and hand blend (or you can put them in a blender). Heat butter on stovetop or in microwave until just boiling. Pour very slowly into cup with other ingredients, blending constantly. Pour over stacks of goodness, add freshly ground black pepper, and enjoy!

Some options for the stacks on which this heaven will be poured:

Eggs from your ladies in the back garden (poached in slow boiling water with 10% vinegar)

Free-range bacon, for those who like Benedict

Spinach leaves for the Florentine-inclined, but nice with Benedict too

Mushrooms (sliced and fried up, a nice addition or to substitute for the eggs so it’s not so rich)

Roast tomatoes

Avocado

Good quality (homemade?!) sourdough bread, toasted

All bread is not created equal…

If you’ve been here awhile, you’ll know I decided to learn to make good sourdough this year. Well, here we are on the 1st of March, and by golly, I made a bloody good sourdough ciabatta last night. So tasty, with such a lovely crumb and crust that 10 year old Oscar declared, “Mum! This is amazing! And you said you needed all year to learn how, and it’s only been what, two months?” Major brownie points for eldest child. 🙂

But let me caveat last night’s loaves – they were indeed sour, with an excellent crusty yet chewy crust and a good crumb, but not as chewy as I think a ciabatta should be. It was really good bread, but still doesn’t fit my imaginary endpoint for this year.


Some detail then. For these ciabatta, I did a series of short kneads of a fairly wet dough, though not so sticky I couldn’t handle it, with ever-increasing proving times. So maybe 10 second kneads three times with about 10 minutes in between each, then about a 2-hour rise before splitting the dough, stretching it carefully and allowing another half-hour rise. Into a very hot oven (250C) with a water bath on the top shelf & a quick spray of the loaves at the beginning & one midway through baking. My starter, Fran, is currently mostly organic wholemeal flour, and the flour I added for these was organic unbleached. I didn’t add any commercial yeast as I was looking for a flat bread anyway. This was lazy baking at its finest, and the results were lovely.

A few nights earlier, I whipped Fran up into some rye dinner rolls to have with our soup.They achieved exactly the soft, pliable texture you want from rolls, with crusty crusts. This dough was wetter than the ciabatta, and I added some commercial yeast for a better rise to great effect.

I’ve also embraced the joys of sourdough pizza crust, which goes perfectly with the salty, spicy combination of Stuart’s home-cured olives, anchovies, bacon and chilies, plus garden-fresh tomatoes and basil and a thin lashing of homemade passata.

So it seems my ‘specialty’ breads are the winners thus far, as my loaves have often been unwilling to give me a good rise. They do say that sourdough starters are unreliable leaveners, and I’m finding this to be distinctly true. Check out my most hilariously unintentionally flat loaf, which still tasted quite nice, though a bit dry (and hell on the toaster, let me tell you!)

When I’m looking for a higher loaf, especially for toasting, I’m learning to add commercial yeast. It doesn’t affect the flavour, which is invariably sour, but gives the bread the lift that Fran seems unable to offer.
I should add that the sourness is wildly variable as well, though predictably so. If Fran hasn’t made some bread for more than a few days, she gets rather sour. If I’m making bread every day or two, she’s less sour. The metaphors write themselves, so I won’t bother here.

This last loaf below was my sourest to date (and by the way, given my California origins, I’m looking for the sourest of the sourdoughs!), and it also had the best crumb, even though it didn’t rise much. If you check out the dough below, you’ll see I really took Annette’s advice to heart on this one and worked a really sticky, wet dough. In fact, it finally inspired me to get a proper dough scraper to assist with this rather messy method.

I feel almost guilty that for those of you out there looking for a scientific account of breadmaking, I’m just tossing around vague generalities. But these days, I cook by touch, smell, taste and imagination, rather than ratios. There are obviously ratios involved, but given my propensity to constantly adjust them by a smidgen, I’m afraid I can’t really offer much insight into quantities of what’s in my bread.

I think one of the best things about my relaxed approach has been the way it makes breadmaking seem like a simple and lovely thing to do, much like making the children a milkshake rather than mastering a croquembouche. It means I wander into the kitchen, see Fran on the bench and think, ‘Hey, I might get some bread started,’ and then wander in and out of the kitchen to tend to the dough over the afternoon or evening. The other positive outcome is the exciting array of outcomes – this is no McDonald’s where you can expect the same burger every time, no matter where you are – open your palate and be prepared to be surprised at every new loaf of bread. 🙂

2010: The Year My Sourdough Obsession Gets Personal

Many years ago I made a feeble attempt to bake bread, and the results were sufficiently disappointing to keep the local bakeries in business. A decade or so later, inspired by Jess Ho’s regular breadmaking success, I decided to try again.

On our trip up country over the holidays, I read a simple recipe from an early Stephanie Alexander cookbook, in which she instructed me to put the yeast, sugar, water and flour all together and let it rise. Having left my critical faculties at home that day, I literally piled the ingredients together, stirred a bit, and waited. Of course, since I hadn’t got the yeast active with the sugar and water before adding the flour, the resulting sponge was rather firm and somewhat dry, but I persevered with my obtuse instruction following and left it to catch some wild yeast. Each day I simply re-wet a cloth and put it back over the starter. It gained a bit of that beery smell, but was a bit of a lump – not that exciting, though I was, in fact, still excited. After three days, I added starter to a new dough, let it rise, punched it down and formed loaves, let it rise, and baked some beautiful looking but rather boring tasting bread. It was still better than supermarket bread, but let down by poor-quality flour from the local country Woolies and poor process, it was ye olde white bread incarnate. But then we came home…

After a trip to Whole Earth in Smith Street Fitzroy, I had plenty of flour to play with. I also happen to already have a number of great references on this topic, all of which I spent a few days reading in preparation for the challenge of making good sourdough bread. I should also explain that as I am formerly from the west coast of the US, I have a strong predilection for very sour sourdough, which is the first bread I intend to master. And I’m determined to do it with wild yeasts, hence the need to commence my own sourdough starter with just flour, water and a plum plucked from our tree.

So the starter was simply equal parts flour and water (I did 2 cups water, 1 cup rye flour and 1 cup unbleached, all organic) and a plum, which will help introduce wild yeasts more quickly. Stir, cover with a muslin cloth, and wait. O_o

Next morning, Fran (I’ve named her with a nod to my favourite San Francisco sourdoughs, and in the tradition of @thatjessho’s ‘Rusty’) was bubbling merrily, and had filled the house with the smell of a football team on the pints. I moved her closer to the back door, fed her a little more flour and water, stirred eagerly, and left her alone to get wild. Which she did.

Next, to be honest, I went to Brisbane for two days, then came back to a bunch of office work, so poor neglected Fran (Stuart was feeding her, but by now she really wanted to make bread) got a bit lonely. I popped her in the fridge for two days, and then pulled her out yesterday afternoon to reactivate the yeast, and a couple of hours later mixed her with some more flour and water, kneaded for about 10 minutes, and then left her to rise overnight. (Remind me to write a poem about the deep, visceral pleasure of kneading…)

As I wanted Stuart to taste Fran’s first loaves, we were up at 6:30am to divide her into two loaves, knead them briefly and then allow to rise on a lightly floured pan for about half an hour. Finally, into a hot oven (200C) for about 40 minutes, tapped the bottom to check for the hollow sound, and out she came to finish cooking and cooling on the rack.

10 minutes later, we sat down to a delectable brekky of scrambled eggs, fresh rye sourdough, with sea salt and cracked pepper.

In terms of the results, I reckon the loaves wanted another five minutes in the oven and five cooling as they were a little too dense and moist for my palate, though very tasty. I look forward to making one that has all of those lovely chewy well-aerated holes throughout. I hope to post regularly on Fran’s loaves this year until I perfect the art, so stay tuned…

Palak Paneer Kofta

The first time I went to India in 1998, I fell deeply in love with the food. As a vegetarian at the time, I delighted in the lengthy menus with a small ‘non-veg’ section at the back, and couldn’t get enough of all things palak (spinach). Two particular favourites were palak paneer and alu palak.

In the middle of our month’s travel through the north, we found ourselves stuck in Agra for an unexpected extra night (due to thick fog and a malfunctioning ILS at the Agra airport). Exhausted from long bus rides, insouciant touts, and endless transport delays, we splurged and stayed the night at a family-run guest house near the airport called New Bakshi House (and it really was a splurge at $42 for the two of us, including breakfast and a hot shower, when we were used to paying around $10 a night).

The main treat at Bakshi House, however, was not the comfortable beds or hot water, nor even the delicious home style food, but the lovely hostess, Rani, who shared her recipes with me. As I banged on about my love of palak and paneer, Rani assured me this Indian cheese was very simple to make, and gave me her recipe, as well as others for kuku, alu palak, malai kofta, ghobi, yoghurt, and another I wrote down as ‘a Chinese dish’. Although she was adamant that paneer was very simple to make, I perhaps simply wasn’t a confident enough cook yet to believe her. It in fact took me nearly a decade before I attempted to make my own.

Here is Rani’s recipe:

Paneer

Boil 1 litre milk (her sister-in-law Tina had lived in America for 17 years, so perhaps she introduced Rani to half & half , which the original recipe called for. I use raw milk.).

Add 2 tspn lemon juice.

As soon as milk curdles, remove from heat.

Put cheesecloth in sieve. Pour milk mixture through & cover lightly.

Leave 1 ½ hours or more (you may rinse the curd at this stage if you’ve added too much lemon juice).

I think that for many years I simply didn’t trust the simplicity of this operation. Surely the paneer wouldn’t form? Trust me, it does every time, just like that. I now use ordinary full cream milk, and for a family of five I find I need to do about 3L to make enough paneer for a meal (it makes about 500g). I also usually press mine as it rests in the sieve, unless I’m making paneer koftas, since I’ll be crumbling the paneer anyway. I also save the whey, which you can use if you’re making chapatis or parathas. If not, as per @crazybrave’s suggestion recently, I simply add it to the chook scraps.

Here’s what I did with my most recent paneer, which I will usually make before lunch if I want it for dinner. This recipe is adapted from my favourite Indian cookbook, bought in Calcutta, “Desi Khana: The Best of Indian Vegetarian Cooking” by Tarla Dalal.

Palak Paneer Kofta

Koftas

For 500g paneer, I add about 4T plain flour, chopped coriander to taste (loads!), chopped chilies to taste, pinch of bi-carb soda and salt to taste. Form into balls and deep fry until golden brown. Rest on paper towels.

paneer koftas

Paste

Bash up (or food process) loads of garlic, pistachios or cashews, poppy seeds (not too many as they’re bitter), ginger & chili (if no children will share this meal) – all to taste, which means lots of garlic especially in our house. Tarla adds grated coconut, but when I was short of any, I actually used coconut cream & just add it after the other ingredients fried for a bit.

Chop up a giant bunch of spinach and cook it lightly with about ½ cup of water until it’s fully wilted. Blend the spinach to a puree and set aside.

Heat ghee in a cast iron frypan and cook the paste for 3-5 minutes, until

the garlic loses its acerbity.

Add a couple of tablespoons of coconut cream and cook for another minute or two.

Add about a cup of full cream natural yoghurt and cook on lower heat for another minute or so.

Add the spinach puree, 1T raw sugar or jaggery, salt to taste and cook for another 3 to 4 minutes.

Add the koftas to heat back through and serve. 🙂

My kids adore this dish, as do adults. You can serve it with rice and naan or pappadums. If you make it spicy, it’s worth serving a raita as well. As for the paneer, it’s also delicious simply on its own – I have to hide it from the kids while I’m cooking or there’s never enough…

The Great Pho Party ’09

So I’m back. Hopefully this blog will come alive again now that I’m back to focusing on food and identity full time in my PhD (after a manic year off as a worker). But on to the real story…

Last weekend, to celebrate receiving a scholarship for the rest of my PhD (yay!!), I invited about 20 of my friends and family who have been through the first couple years of my part-time student/mother/worker struggles with unfunded study. Most are fellow students, all are lovely, and most also really like pho (Vietnamese noodle soup). (N.B. I know I should use diacritics, but am too lazy to go copy them and paste them here, so indulge me.) I had never made pho before, though in a cooking class in Saigon I was shown the basic method for pho bo (beef pho). As the grateful recipient of a lovely big 15L stainless steel pot for last summer solstice, what better way to use it than to make pho for loads of people? Well, you’ll see that my lovely pot wasn’t as big as it seemed…

Friday morning, Stuart and I wandered dreamily through Minh Phat (Vietnamese grocery off Victoria St, Richmond) gathering crucial ingredients, then over to a fruit shop for a few missing herbs (esp. sawtooth coriander) and finally the butcher for the meat and bones. I first asked for 4kg of shin bones and was told they didn’t have any. Weird, huh? I accepted this bizarre response and asked for 4kg of flank, which I got (and realised was A LOT of meat!). I then asked for 1.5kg of topside, whereupon the woman serving me lfinally ooked quizzically at me so that I said, “I’m making pho”. She appeared quite excited about this and thrust a bag of beef balls at me, insisting I needed them too. Sure, why not? Finally, she asked me to wait, rushed out back and dragged a huge bag of bones in, pulling four out and telling me, “for you, no charge today.” I was delighted (and she clearly was too – I guess not many Anglos pop in to get ingredients for serious quantities of pho – and I think she must originally have thought I wanted their bones for a dog?), thanked her graciously, paid for the rest (only $47 for all that!) and then Stuart and I lugged our 10kg of meaty goodness back to the car and rushed home.

Dearie me, I wish I’d started the stock earlier, but I think I had extra bone, which made up for a slightly too short cooking time… so now it’s 11:30am, guests will arrive at 7pm, and this stock wants a minimum of 6 hours…

Method & Ingredients

Remember, I was cooking for 20 (and ended up serving 25, with plenty of ingredients except the rice noodles, which ran out for the last 5 of us, but I had some dried to make up the shortfall).

4kg shin bones
4kg flank, cut into pieces about 15cm long
1.5kg topside, sliced thinly
4-5 brown onions
8-12 shallots
2-3 bulbs ginger
6 cinnamon sticks
12 star anise
4 brown cardamom pods
6 cloves
1/2C salt
1/2C sugar
1/2C fish sauce (buy a good brand, which should say “Nuoc Mam Nhi” – any from Phu Quoc are great)
4kg fresh rice noodles
spring onions, finely sliced
sawtooth coriander
coriander
bean sprouts
Vietnamese basil
chilies, sliced
lemons, quartered
chili paste
hoisin
nuoc mam cham (dipping fish sauce: fish sauce, lemon, garlic, chili, sugar)

First, take your bones and soak them in warm water with lemon juice and a generous pinch of salt for about 1/2 hour. This starts to release the blood so you will get a clear stock. Then pop them into boiling water for a further 5-10 minutes, before transferring them to your stockpot full of boiling water. I put them into my 15L pot and simmered them there for about 3 hours, skimming the scum off the top frequently.

While the bones are simmering, lightly bash the cinammon, cloves, star anise and cardamom to break them into smaller pieces, then dry roast them for a few minutes in a (preferably cast iron) frypan (to release more of their oils before adding them to the stock). Put the spices into a muslin bag and drop into the stock.

Next, hold the onions, shallots and ginger over an open flame until chargrilled and set aside to cool. When cool, pull and rub the blackened skins off, cut the onions in half, and pop all of it into a muslin bag. Add these to the stock after about 2 hours.

Next, you’re going to add the flank to cook for 2-3 hours. This is when I realised I needed the bigger pot. Stuart dragged his brewing pot out for me, which is about 40L – it takes up 2 burners but does the trick. 🙂 Add the salt, sugar and fish sauce now. After 2-3 hours, pull the flank back out, pop it into a baking dish with some of the stock and leave to cool.

Once the stock has been simmering for about 6 hours (you can definitely go longer – this is a minimum), pull the bones and muslin bags out and strain it through a piece of muslin into a clean pot. (I was able to put it back into the 15L pot at this stage – and I had added some water when I went into the big pot.) Did I mention that it’s very very helpful to have a second person around when you’re making this much pho? Stuart was very helpful and appreciated!

Your stock is ready! The flank should have cooled, now you can cut it into bite-sized pieces (and I removed a lot of fat whilst doing this – very happy chooks Saturday morning!). Taste the stock and adjust seasonings if you need to with salt, sugar or fish sauce. It’s also common in Vietnam to adjust with msg or ‘pork powder’ or ‘chicken powder’, which are msg-free stock powders (Knorr is a favoured brand in Saigon). I was very happy that I had no need to add any.

As guests are ready to serve, have your flank in one bowl, the topside in another, a pot of boiling water next to the stock, and your rice noodles ready to go, as well as your array of plates of herbs, lemon, bean sprouts, fresh chilies, and chili paste and hoisin. I used Stuart’s brewing sieve to dip the noodles into the boiling water to heat and soften them before placing them into a bowl. Next, I added the raw sliced topside, then boiling stock, then flank pieces before handing the bowl to the grateful recipient to add their own herbs, etc. Voila!

My favourite comment of the evening may have been, “I’d pay $8.50 for this” from a Vietnamese Australian friend, though I did also appreciate, “it tastes just like real pho in Saigon”, even though much of my theoretical work thus far has been contesting notions of authenticity and its instability as a category, let alone its essentialising tendencies… I guess the point is that we all agreed it was rather delish.

I think next time, though, I might cook it for just 10 people!