Make it happen

Phát Phở serves wonderful noodle soup for around ₱200 per regular (small) bowl. It is expensive, considering phở (pronunciation) is just street food in Vietnam. If you know a place in Cebu City that serves cheaper phở of comparable quality, do give me a holler. Meanwhile, since I’m based at least 50 nautical miles away, I endeavor to make my own.

Phở should be easy to make. Should. All you need are rice noodles, broth, meat (beef here), mung bean sprouts, herbs (cilantro, basil), spices (spring onion, yellow onion, finger chili), and lime. I had 80% of the ingredients on hand and was willing to substitute kalamansi for lime (if you know where to source lime, another holler), but cilantro was the deal-breaker — for me, it is what gives phở its phở-ness (never mind if some describe the smell as “essence of cockroach”) — I was prepared to stick my lengua (ox tongue) broth into the freezer until such time I could get my hands on the herb.

And what do you know: SM Cebu had it in stock. Robinson’s Tacloban did, too, last I was there. Now are you prepared for a jolt? SM sells theirs for a whopping ₱270 less per kilo! I didn’t bother to check Metro Ayala’s price the last time I found cilantro there, but apparently such price differential is not uncommon among the big supermarkets, even in Manila. It is easy to overlook because we rarely buy herbs in large quantity, but now I wonder what the DTI has to say about that.

By the way, any of you know where I can get phở spice packets? I just used up the last of my whole cloves to flavor the broth and I can’t seem to recall where I had purchased them (star anise and cinnamon stick being the two other dried spices you need, as per Andrea Nguyen’s recipe). Much as I like to make phở any time the mood strikes, the reality is that I can’t. It is easy like going on vacation is easy — that is, once you have the preliminaries out of the way. Where I live, it has to be planned for in advance. You could say it’s too much of a bother for a bowl of noodles. Why else would Quickchow be so insanely popular around here?

But you’d be wrong.