Pho Ever

We enjoyed a big bowl at the end of class

I took a pho class the other evening at The Pantry at Delancey.  I've written about classes at The Pantry before on this blog and this pho class was another winner.  The instructor was Chef Kim Cozzetto Maynard.  I've taken classes from Kim before and enjoyed a fantastic Valentine's dinner she prepared.  She's an outstanding instructor.

Besides carefully explaining how to create the beef stock that is the heart and soul of a good bowl of pho, Kim shared her favorite brands of ingredients, which I find most helpful.  We have a lot of different Asian markets in this area and knowing which brands are preferred by local chefs helps me to narrow down my choices.

One important step to preparing the stock is to carefully blacken the onions and ginger before adding them to the bones, oxtails and water to begin the stock.

Chef Kim Cozzetto Maynard

We made sriratcha and hoisin sauces from scratch and what a difference that made!  They were really delicious and I will be making my own sriratcha from now on.  It was not only a real spicy addition to the pho but besides heat it added a lovely flavor.

Kim showed us how to make rice noodles, too.  You start with a cooked dough that is really very similar to making choux pastry.  The ingredients are different, but you cook the dough and then add tapioca flour rather than eggs.  Once the dough was prepared we used a pasta machine to roll it out and cut it for our rice noodles.

cooking the rice noodle dough

rolling the rice noodle dough

We had trays of the traditional garnishes to add to taste to our bowls of pho at the end of class and we also had made a green papaya salad with shrimp toppers that was excellent.

Having been smelling the simmering broth for hours I was more than ready to dig into a big steaming bowl of pho.
 

It was goooooooood!!!