My adventures making PHO

[Dave (imported)]

Can't resist. It's not absolutely real PHO because I'm allergic to fish sauce and hot sauce so I can't use those in any food I eat. SO I guess that it is faux Pho.

In case you are wondering PHO is an Vietnamese beef soup with noodles and veggies that is served boiling and you cook paper-thin sliced beef in it. There are various versions of this dish ------ Shabu Shabu in Japan and Mongolian Hot Pot in China. They are variations on steaming-hot or near-boiling, highly aromatic beef stock served with raw vegetables and tho sliced beef.

It took me a while but I finally assembled all spices (cardamon pods, star anise, fennel seeds, and other that are more common) but today was the day. And you need a mesh bag or cheesecloth to make one. It's called a Bouquet Garni by real cooks

SO it starts with parboiling beef bones, lots of beef bones like about two packages from the supermarket --

Chicken stock is simple, you get a chicken thigh or two drumsticks, drop them in water with the veggies and spices and simmer away.

NOT WITH Beef bones. you parboil them.

WHY?

a) ugly grey scum on the top of the water. I mean ugly and stinky and gruesome yuck.

b) fat and grease. Not good fat like bacon fat but ugly fat, evil fat, fat that rises from the grave like the undead ...

SO then you rinse the parboiled bones under cold water and set them aside so you can throw out that ugly nasty water.

Scrub the pot and start again.

After that, it's just adding roasted onions, ginger, the spices, salt, pepper, and the parboiled bones and mind the broth like you always did.

It's still an oily stock while in the pot. I will refrigerate it overnight and then skim the fats and oils from the top. AFter that, I will freeze it in single portions.

In case you want to see the finished product which is delicious and wonderful, here's a good picture and recipe:

http://www.steamykitchen.com/271-vietna ... p-pho.html

[talula]

Isn't cooking a wonderous thing Dave? I set off today to make soysauce which so far has not been too bad but man is it messy. Kinda makes a person wonder how on earth this stuff was invented.

tal

[Dave (imported)]

There's a few things that I cook that I look at and say: "how the hell did anyone think to cook THAT?"

[Dave (imported)]

I tasted the PHO stock before I got in bed and it's good and strong but still needs decanted from the oil and grease. I guess that I should have spent the time it simmered on the stove skimming off the oil and grease.

My chicken stock is an easy skim because drumsticks and thighs aren't fatty. Beef bones with marrow are tasty but heavy in fats. This stock needs to be cooled and I'll bet nearly frozen. It's just an extra step and I have the time.

[transward (imported)]

There's a few things that I cook that I look at and say: "how the hell did anyone think to cook THAT?"

The one that amazes me, particularly since they are one of our oldest foods, is olives. Many think they may be the first cultivated crop, yet, off the tree they are so bitter as to be inedible. They have to be soaked in brine or lye for a prolonged period before they even begin to be edible.

Then there is: "the bravest man I ever saw

was neither a Soldier, a Sailor nor a Man of the Law,

but rather the first to eat an oyster raw. ..."

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[gareth19 (imported)]

The one that amazes me, particularly since they are one of our oldest foods, is olives. Many think they may be the first cultivated crop

Whoever thinks this hasn't done much research. According to Zohary and Hopf, The Domestication of Plants in the Old World, the standard work on the subject, the first definite signs of domesticated olives date from the Chalcolithic in Israel and Jordan (2000:149), which would be well after the 8th millennium when the first domestic wheat and barley appear.

off the tree they are so bitter as to be inedible. They have to be soaked in brine or lye for a prolonged period before they even begin to be edible.

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No, though modern growers will darken unripe olives by using lye, just as they ripen tomatoes by flooding them with ethylene gas, that is not a natural or necessary step. Left on their own, olives will fall off the tree and slowly dry like other fruit and become edible just like crab apples through the natural maturation process. All we need to do with our olives is spread them out in the sun and maybe sprinkle some salt on them. No soaking in lye or brine needed.

[Dave (imported)]

I took a solid layer of oils and fats off the top of the stock while I was cooking my regular dinner.

Simply take a slotted spoon and lift it away when it's cold and the fats have congealed into a white layer on the top. It's much simpler than decanting or skimming the oil with a spoon while its hot. So this is a two day affair.

Now all I have to do is put it into meal sized containers and freeze it.

[transward (imported)]

Whoever thinks this hasn't done much research. According to Zohary and Hopf, The Domestication of Plants in the Old World, the standard work on the subject, the first definite signs of domesticated olives date from the Chalcolithic in Israel and Jordan (2000:149), which would be well after the 8th millennium when the first domestic wheat and barley appear.

I've been busy and haven't gotten around to replying to this. You would of course be correct if I had mentioned the domestication of olives. Domestication is defined as :

Domestication (from Latin domesticus) is the process where by a population of animals or plants is changed at the genetic level through a process of selection, in order to accentuate traits that benefit humans. ... In the Convention on Biological Diversity, a domesticated species is defined as a "species in which the evolutionary process has been influenced by humans to meet their needs."[1] Therefore, a defining characteristic of domestication is artificial selection by humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication And this occurred when early humans began to develop the technology to control plant and animal reproduction. And the dating of domestication is pretty well figured out by carbon dating the seeds of modified plants in the kitchen middens and coproliths of early man. New DNA technology has refined this dating by comparing the DNA of ancient wild and early domesticated varieties of plants and dating when the new variants split off from the wild strains.

I try to be careful about the words I use and I mentioned cultivation, not domestication. Man was cultivating plants for millenia before they domesticated them, and this dating is much more speculative. From contact with modern stone age cultures, it is clear that people were watering, weeding, and pruning wild seeded trees and long lived perennials, and transplanting seedlings to create orchards, long before they developed the techniques to domesticate the plants. A number of histories observe that ancient man was an orchardist well before he became a farmer. And the earliest cultivated trees are usually given as fig, date palm, and olive. (at least in the Mediterranean and Fertile Crescent areas.) The oldest association of olives and man is 19,000 years ago.

Olive wood samples have been recovered from the Upper Paleolithic site of Boker in Israel. The earliest evidence of olive use discovered to date is at Ohalo II, where ca 19,000 years ago, olive pits and wood fragments were found. Wild olives (oleasters) were used for oils throughout the Mediterranean basin during the Neolithic period (ca 10,000-7,000 years ago). http://archaeology.about.com/od/oterms/ ... istory.htm

And when man began to control reproduction it is obvious that annuals like emmer/wheat, and barley, which have a generation period of a year or less would be domesticated before trees which often take 20 years from seed to fruit and next generation seeds. Same reason scientists studying adaptation and evolution use fruit flies, life span of hours, rather than turtles with life span of centuries.

No, though modern growers will darken unripe olives by using lye, just as they ripen tomatoes by flooding them with ethylene gas, that is not a natural or necessary step. Left on their own, olives will fall off the tree and slowly dry like other fruit and become edible just like crab apples through the natural maturation process. All we need to do with our olives is spread them out in the sun and maybe sprinkle some salt on them. No soaking in lye or brine needed.

Assuming you are speaking from personal experience I will defer to your opinion. I have never lived anywhere near where olives grow, but I feel about them the way most women feel about chocolate, (not that I don't love chocolate) and have read extensively on the subject. Other authorities seem to disagree with you.

Olives in their native state are virtually inedible by humans, although domestic animals like cattle and goats don't seem to mind the bitter flavor. Once cured in brine, of course, olives are very tasty. Olive wood burns even when wet; which makes it very useful. It is likely that the original use of olives was for the oil, which is virtually smoke free and can be used in cooking and lamps, and in many other ways. http://archaeology.about.com/od/oterms/ ... istory.htm

Given how beloved the olive is, it's ironic how intolerably bitter this uncured fruit is. Unless you have grown up around the trees and developed the taste for its fruit since childhood, it is simply impossible to pluck an olive off the tree and eat it. Only after long, elaborate curing processes and marinating do olives acquire their exquisite taste. How this wondrous alchemy - on a par with the transformation of grapes into wine or barley into whiskey - was sought and discovered must contribute in part to the mystery and allure of the olive.http://www.delallo.com/articles/olives- ... -and-table

My original statement was actually meant more poetically than historical fact. I was thinking of Durrell's lines in Prospero's Cell, "The entire Mediterranean seems to rise out of the sour, pungent taste of black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat or wine, a taste as old as cold water. Only the sea itself seems as ancient a part of the region as the olive and its oil, that like no other products of nature, have shaped civilizations from remotest antiquity to the present."

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