Several weeks ago, Eleanor Hoh (@wokstar) started sending good #ff tweets to a number of her followers she feels are fanatic about pho. A #ff is a weekly ritual whereby you highlight, via a hashtag, tweeps you recommend others follow. foodiePrints' twitter account (@foodieprints) was one of the tweeps she included.

As the Apartment 613 blog recently confirmed, we at foodiePrints are rather pho obsessed. Practical, low cost, and satisfying, Ottawa is blessed with a large number of Pho houses. We have eaten so many fine bowls of pho we have actually developed a list of characteristics to look for.

So, it was with great pleasure I accepted Eleanor's challenge to join a number of food bloggers, make a bowl of pho, and mass post an entry into the food community of the blogosphere by March 20, 2010. Do check Eleanor's blog, Be a Work Star, for a list of blog posts.

For our contribution, we decided to attempt a lamb pho. However, we borrowed aspects from French cookery to make it: salting (curing) and searing the meat before simmering. What resulted, while borrowing aspects of the traditional pho flavour profile, was not pho. Why? The broth did not taste as clean as a pho broth should. The broth was not clear. And, the broth was overly rich, carrying too much lamb flavour.

A Bowl of Lamb Faux Pho

Overly Rich Broth
However, it was a good bowl of noodle soup.

Here's how we made it.

Broth:
We took approximately 1.5 kg (3 lb) of lamb bones with a good deal of meat on them.

Lamb Bones
We seasoned them with kosher salt and placed them on a rack set in a plastic tray. Then, we placed the tray in the fridge, covering it with plastic wrap, for 2 hours.

Lamb Curing
The idea was to draw out liquid and concentrate flavour.

To flavour the broth, we took two small onions, halved them, and impaled each half with 5-6 whole cloves. We placed each half into a slow cooker and added a tbsp of black peppercorns, a dash of kosher salt, an inch of ginger (sliced), and the peeled and separated cloves of one head of garlic.

Gathering Flavourants

After 2 hours curing, we dried the lamb pieces and seared them in a well oiled metal bottomed pan, set to medium heat on a stovetop (2 minutes/side).

Lamb Searing

Lamb Seared
With so many pieces of lamb, we worked in batches. Every time we finished with a batch, we de-glazed the pan with a splash or two of water, scraping the fond, and added the liquid to the slow cooker.

Most Asian soups (broths or stock) are characteristically flavourful, but clean in taste and visually clear. This is usually accomplished by pre-simmering soup bones and/or meat for thirty minutes to an hour, dumping out the cooking liquid, and rising everything. I have always been told this "cooked out impurities." Impurities or no, the process largely eliminates the scum (protein foam, blood, and marrow) that floats to the top of a simmering broth or stock. Left in, the scum tends to cloud a soup. This is why culinary students are taught how to "clarify" broths or stocks with an egg whites. Post-simmering, a broth or stock can also be clarified with agar agar and a centrifuge, but I digress.

For this batch of broth, we filled the slow cooker pot to just above the bones and brought everything to a boil on high, boiling it for 5 minutes.

To be Broth being Brought up to a Boil
Afterward, we let the mixture cool to barely simmering and simmered the mixture on low for 3 hours. During the first hour, I checked the broth every 20 minutes to skim off the scum.

We then placed the entire pot into the fridge so the fat can setup on top and be lifted off. After straining and re-heating, we produced a rich broth that tasted very strongly of lamb. In the background were the typical pho broth flavours.

Done
To finish it, we diluted the broth with water and seasoned it with fish sauce to taste.

Faux Pho:
To serve, we plated bowls with fresh pho rice noodles, "as fresh as we could find" bean sprouts, cilantro leaves, lime juice, and soup beef balls (from frozen).

Clockwise from Left: bean sprouts, noodles, cilantro

Fresh as we Could find Bean Sprouts
If you have ever ordered beef balls with your pho in a decent pho noodle house, you were most likely served heavily processed beef, shaped into balls, that had a strangely chewy texture. These beef balls are sold in many Asian markets in the frozen section.

Soup Beef Balls
While we went with the frozen option, I have made soup beef balls from scratch before with very finely food processor processed beef, chestnut powder, rice starch, and a little baking soda.

If you come across comments condemning pho noodle houses for serving "artificial beef" with their pho. The soup beef balls are likely what they felt was off-putting.

Here is our accompaniment plate:

Accompaniment Plate

More after the jump...

Ever since Jenn finished schooling at Queen's, she and I have been throwing Christmas dinners for her family every year. This year, we went with a turkey-based feast. Due to other engagements Thanksgiving weekend, we opted for Mongolian Hot Pot using a chicken pho broth in October. This left me without having cooked a turkey for 2009 and I could not let December pass without roasting one up.

Given the shopping insanity we witnessed at the nearby Loblaws Superstore (190 Richmond Road), leading up to the week of the 25th last year, we opted to order an (apparently frozen) organic turkey from Wellington's own Saslove's (1333 Wellington Street W.). Originally scheduled for pickup on Christmas Eve, we requested to fetch our turkey the day before (December 23, 2009). We were glad we did. Apparently, the entire neighbourhood and surrounding ones order turkeys from Saslove's. While the 22nd of December was quiet at Saslove's store front, word quickly spread that the entire shipment of turkeys had arrived. Surprised employees had to create a queue to the back of the butcher's the next day to hand out turkeys. They created a queue to the only cash and till that could handle debit and credit cards. They created a bypass queue to a second cash and till for anyone paying with cash. Guess which queue was longest? On the bright side, everyone in line was friendly to one another and the staff made light of the situation to lift spirits. I remarked to Jenn that we have never had a better turkey buying experience. Though, next year, we will be ordering two small turkeys instead of the giant $86.31 (before taxes) monstrosity we ended up lugging home. Interestingly, giblets cost an extra $5.

Dinner-wise, here is the menu we chose:
Chinese Appetizers (Small plates for Arrivals)

Small Plate Buffet

Rolled Prosciutto

• Pig tails slow poached in a soy master sauce with brown sugar, Chicken marinade, ginger, and star anise, served warm
• Stir fried ginger and scallion omasum (3rd stomach of a chow), served warm
• King oyster mushroom chips
• Atlantic smoked salmon
• Pingue prosciutto from The Piggy Market

Starter

• Cauliflower Soup, flavoured with Parmesan and topped with shredded and crisped king oyster mushroom

Mains

Feast

Tortiere

Lo Mai Fan in Lieu of Stove-top Stuffing

• Butter and Summer Savoury Roasted Turkey Breast
• Turkey Leg Confit
• Traditional Quebec Tortiere (filling: pork, ground beef, onion, cloves, rosemary, thyme, celery and potato) from Petit Bill's Bistro ($16.95, $5 of which to raise money for the Salvation Army's Toy Mountain campaign)
• Stir Fried Chinese Greens (Yu-Choy, which seems to be the green of choice this Christmas), courtesy of Jenn's mom.
• Sticky Rice (called Lo Mai Fan) with Chinese Sausage (lap cheung), celery, and shiitake mushrooms

Dessert

• Fresh fruit (freshly cut pineapple and orange segments)
• Apple Pie from Farm Boy, courtesy of Jenn's brother

Recipes follow:
Omasum
The recipe for the stir fried ginger and scallion omasum has already been posted to foodiePrints.

Pig Tails
Pig tails, like pig feet are offcuts prized by Asian cuisine. They are usually long braised in a sticky sweet sauce, loaded with umami for special occasions like Chinese New Year. For Christmas dinner, we opted to slow poach them (2 hours) in a soy master sauce, originally leftover from a red-braise. This master sauce is one Jenn and I continually re-adjust the seasoning of and use to poach chicken with to make soy sauce chicken. We poached the tails the night before and reheated them in a pan to caramelize the sugars, just before guests arrived.

Pig Tails Added to the Soy Master Sauce

Pig Tails Poached
The tails took on the flavours of the poaching liquid. Their skins softened and caramelized beautifully in a well seasoned cast iron pan on medium heat.

More after the jump...

There is a foodiePrint on the Spinach Tiger blog; one, we are particularly proud of.

Angela, the blogger behind Spinach Tiger, organized a "Red to Remember" event to mobilize food bloggers all over the world to increase the visibility of AIDS as an epidemic on December 1, 2009, World AIDS Day. To participate, bloggers posted a dish that featured a red ingredient.

Red to Remember
Some were baked. Some, cooked. Others, stirred together.

When Jenn and I discovered Leela's post on her SheSimmers blog, we rushed to participate and add another blog to the roster.

Menudo Rojo
Ours was a menudo rojo. Its red ingredient, red peppers. It would turn out to be the only Canadian entry as well!

Go visit the Angela's blog. There are many more great red dishes featured. My favourite, Angela's own old fashioned Ice Cream Bombe.

For those of you who follow me, you may have seen some unusual Twitter activity from me early Saturday morning, last week. Not only was I awake, but I was a nervous wreck. The sound bites Amrita Singh recorded of me, meandering about how to pick harvest vegetables, were then about to air on CBC Radio1's Town and Out.

They aired.

Early as it was, some of my friends on and off Twitter tuned in and congratulated me afterward. One of my neighbours even slipped this lovely note under my door later on that morning, assuming rightly that I had gone back to sleep.

Lovely Note
Others, listened to my sound bites when the interview was put online. That's when a number of people started asking about my Autumn tomato sauce recipe.

Well, it is a roasted tomato sauce, whose specifics I am not quite sharing. As I told Amrita, there are two reasons:

1. I am not done tinkering with it.
2. I need something to fall back on in case the career I've made in information technology doesn't pan out.

I did however share some pictures of last year's batch on foodiePrints.

That blog entry and many of its fellow "autumn"-tagged entries were gathered together for a brown bag lunch I volunteered to speak at with my former shop in my previous organization.

At that lunch, I also did a double blind test, pitting my roasted tomato sauce against one from Loblaws' President's Choice brand, called "Fire Roasted Tomato." That bottled sauce is still available at Loblaws and Loblaws Superstore.

My batch was made with in season and vine-ripened plum tomatoes Jenn and I lugged home from the Parkdale Market.

Roasted Tomatoes

Simmering the Sauce

Bottled

Unbeknownst to me, a colleague portioned out the sauces in two identical containers. The containers were labeled, but the labels obscured.

Portioned Sauces

They were then served with unsalted soda crackers and my boardroom assembled shop chose which they liked best.

Put to the Test

The final results:

Voting Sheet

"A", the left hand side one, turned out to be my sauce. My colleagues actually found "B" to be more artificial tasting with a much less robust tomato flavour. One former colleague even said that "B" tasted almost metallic. Another, said that "A" was one of the best sauces she had ever tasted.

While the sample size of my shop is much too small to be statistically significant, my intention was to demonstrate that tomato sauce as good if not better than purchase can and should be made at home.

I'm starting this year's batches this weekend.

Update: For posterity, here is a screen capture of foodiePrints on the CBC website.

foodiePrints on CBC