Yesterday I went to the store to pick up some things to prepare a soup this week. Considering how easy the last soup was to prepare, and how much I ate of it, this week I am attempting something a little more ambitious: Pho.

It’s quite a pretty spread of ingredients.

As always, first comes prep. First, some things have to go into our 425F preheated oven - onions and shallots get 30 minutes, bones are rotated then and get an extra 30.

Note to self: use parchment paper next time!

The spices need to be cooked a little to bring out the flavor - into the pan goes star anise, coriander seeds, and fennel; with a little oil. Toasted until just slightly changing color, we don’t want to burn them just release the flavor and infuse with oil.

The point isn’t to cook everything yet, but to get it browned. In retrospect, I wish I had pulled the skins off of the onions and shallots before I added them to the pot.

Inside our pot I have already put in soy sauce, fish sauce, chili sauce, 2 bay leaves, salt, peppercorns, sliced ginger, and some apple cider vinegar. Once everything is nice and browned it all goes in the pot as well.

I tried a different method this time for cooking - I read instead of slow cooking, with an Instant Pot I can pressure cook stock for a lot less time and get a good result. I put it on for 2 1/2 hours, and when I pulled the lid the first thing that came out of my mouth was ‘wow’. It smelled and tasted amazing.

Into this, goes some shaved strip steak and mushrooms. I bought some small intestine and put a little in, but I’m still intimidated by it and need to experiment more to get my confidence up. I would have done tripe instead, but I didn’t see any. Some of the best Pho I’ve had was made using a good portion of offal.

There was still a lot left of the bones, so after draining off the first batch (and re-upping on onions, garlic, salt, and liquids) I pulled a second; this time setting it for 4 hours. The result was much much darker and fattier. I think I may use this one as a stew base. I now understand why Chinese cooking is so much heavier than Vietnamese - the Chinese as a culture never waste things; so of course they are going to try to extract everything from the bones.

I was hoping that this would produce something that made meals quick and easy; but Pho requires a lot more prep at mealtime. You have to prepare the cilantro, basil, bean sprouts, scallions, and noodles.

I filled up eating the meat and marrow that fell off of the bones in the morning so it wasn’t until dinner that I got around to the actual soup.

For the noodles, you pre-soak them in room temperature water. My broth had gone cold, so I let them soak for long enough that the broth came to a nice simmer. The noodles go in to boiling water for just over a minute, till they are just to or past al dente. They will soften a little more once put in the broth, so better to go on the under than over side.

In the end, how did it turn out? It was excellent!!! Some may prefer it without cilantro, or with a little extra fish sauce. I added some extra sriracha to mine. The only downside was it needed some more meat.

On a personal note, despite burning myself all the time, cooking is a really positive thing for me. No matter what comes, I am going to endeavor keep a positive outlook on life - perhaps soon I’ll be able to make some fish soup with my spot being so close… Through this journey I am rediscovering that cooking is definitely a part of core Martin that shouldn’t be neglected.