Pho Nai!!! (Vietnamese style noodle soup with deer?)

One more reason to save bones from wild game.

I love to tell others about the benefits to home cooking of saving long bones from the wild ungulates we hunt.  When we add store-bought stock to our dishes, I always feel as though we are about to consume some industrialized byproduct of the big meat business.  While I doubt there is truly much difference in cooking processes, other than scale, homemade stock looks, smells, tastes, and feels more wholesome.  Usually, I go to the effort of making stocks so that I can use them in snotty French sauces, but not this time.  This time they are going in the southeast asian comfort food, pho.  I suppose it makes some sense that bones are making appearances in French and Vietnamese cooking... those two cultures do share substantial colonial history....

Emily and I fell in love with pho at the Vietnam Noodle Bowl Restaurant in Missoula, Montana.  Admittedly, that establishment has little in the way of atmosphere, but what it lacks in atmosphere it more than makes up for in flavor and service.  I would rather eat great food in a strip mall than help some pretentious restaurateur pay off the mortgage on his granite pillars and back-lit liquor shelves any day.  Have I mentioned I hate back-lit liquor shelves?  Rarely does the deliciousness of food live up to any price paid for atmosphere.

Back to the soup.... Pho is a Vietnamese noodle soup whose broth is a stock built from the bones up specifically for the dish.  Pho is definitely comfort food, as the flavorful and nourishing broth warms from the inside out.  Soft noodles and savory chunks of beef are garnished with cilantro, bean sprouts, lime juice, hot pepper, and maybe a dash or two of fish sauce.  Some like to mix in hoisin, but I don't prefer it this way.  Usually, beef or chicken are used, but why shouldn't venison and elk be right at home?  Let's bring a little of the flavor of South East Asia to the mountains of Idaho.

Like all of my favorite dishes to cook, pho is all about cool techniques.  First, to reduce the bones to a manageable size, I have come up with a pretty nifty approach that doesn't require an expensive meat saw.  Go out into your garage and find a crosscut or similar saw and your hammer.  Make sure they are clean of nasty petroleum oils, paints, or other chemicals.  I don't worry too much about bacteria on the tools... the bones are handled frozen and are about to be boiled, simmered, then the stock will be boiled again.  Score the bones with the saw (this is easiest to do when the bones are frozen), then flip them over and whack the spot opposite the scoring with a hammer.  The bone should break off fairly neatly.  I broke my bones down into 2-4 inch pieces, which not only makes them easier to deal with and submerge, but it also gives the young stock more access to a greater surface area of bone, meat, tendon, and marrow, all of which give body and flavor to the finished product.

Mmmm... Elk Knuckles

The second nifty pho technique is that the ginger and onion should be charred over an open flame before they are pealed and put in the stock.  This was certainly the first time I ever through a big chunk of ginger root on my Weber.  When I pealed said ginger to put it in the stock, oh, what an aroma filled the kitchen!

The third and final nifty technique is that the soup is largely cooked as it is being served.  In many soups, the ingredients are simmered together in broth. for most of the cooking process.  Not pho.  For pho, you bring your finished (strained) and delicious stock to a boil, but only after you assemble bowls with a layers of noodles, thinly sliced onion, green onion, chunks of tender meat and tendon from the stock making process, cilantro, and very thinly sliced raw meat.  We used a nice piece of mule deer steak for this component.  We partially froze the steak which facilitates paper thin slicing.  Once the bowls are assembled, you ladle boiling, steaming stock over the whole kit and caboodle.  Your meat and other ingredients are cooking literally as you set the bowl down in front of your dinner guests.  Pho always has a nice plate of garnishes to go with it.  Ours were cilantro, basil, jalapeno, bean sprouts, and green onion, and (importantly) lime.

From raw to cooked as it goes to the table.  Don't forget to pick the savory bits of meat and tendon from the bones before you give them to your chickens.  They are tender and delicious!

Somehow, this mixture of ingredients does magical things.  Comfort food that makes you sweat.  Pho is always a go-to when somebody in the family has a bad cold.  Hot, steaming, nourishing broth that is infused with herbs and jalapeno heat.  It clears your sinuses out in a hurry while at the same time satisfying your belly with warm comfort.  Not many foods can do that.

So there you have it... one more fantastic reason to save game bones and make stock.  Truly, this is one of my favorite uses yet.  And yes, it really was if we had gone to the Vietnam Noodle Bowl Restaurant.  It really was that good.

I didn't make up my own recipe... I essentially mixed and matched from these two, and I definitely didn't use any beef:
http://www.flashinthepan.net/?p=992
http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/2008/10/pho-beef-noodle-soup.html