The Bo Kho (Beef Stew) Post

In my family, dinners were a tradition. It didn't matter what you were doing when dinnertime rolled around: doing homework, chores, going out with friends. When Mom called, you picked yourself and you get to the dining room. It was time for dinner. Growing up, I did not crave Vietnamese food. Rice, pho, chicken roasted in fish sauce and ginger, unexciting. It was the necessary chore towards my reward of McDonald Happy Meals at the end of the week.

Of course, as I got older, my palette developed, though even in my teenage years, I still preferred hamburgers. Then I got to college and somehow, the foodie emerged, shedding the old, fat-loving coat behind. The proverbial butterfly that was started enjoying fine foods and insects instead of just plain leaves (I quite like this analogy, it makes me feel pretty). There, living in the dorms at UCLA, surrounded by burgers, sandwiches and pizza, I ran in the opposite direction.

I wanted bun rieu (vermicelli in a shrimp soup), banh canh tom cua (udon in a crab-meat soup), com (rice). In short, I wanted everything I didn't want the first 18 years of my life, something that was fresh and healthy, not oily and fattening.

When I traveled to Europe, that craving got worst (then again, if you lived with English food for 6 months, you'd be craving cardboard by the end). That was compounded by the fact that I couldn't even buy the herbs needed to cook a proper Vietnamese meal.

Now that I'm in Syracuse, I crave Vietnamese food all the time. The problem is, with the exception of rice and spring rolls, these dishes are complicated and require hours of preparation. It only works if I have hours of time on my hands and willing to pick up 4-5 different kinds of spices. And I can't even buy Vietnamese food either, since there are no decent Vietnamese restaurants in town.

It was Labor Day this past Monday and I finally decided to undergo a dish that I have never made, for fear that I would mess it up and ruin a good memory of childhood. This memory included my mom standing next to a stewpot a quarter of my height and stirring, and me fearing that she'd drop the hot stew bowl that she would carry from the stove to the dinner table, sans potholder.

Monday was cold, the first winds of fall approaching, and I was missing California. I was alone in the house and back home, they had finished burying my grandmother. It was a melancholy, slow day and I wanted to be lazy instead of reading about Media Law. So I decided to kill time with cooking.

I decided to start simple. I would make bo kho, which is Vietnamese beef stew. It's usually served with baguette, a leftover of French colonialism. Bo kho was something that my mother would sometimes make, it wasn't as common on our table and was never something I requested.

The stew calls for ox-tail, which was never something that I was fond of, and would have taken hours to simmer it into soft and meat-falling-of-the-bones submission. So I found that I could improve upon a memory by making it the way I wanted it, with stew meat.

And that way, if I messed up, at least I could say that I never liked bo kho anyway.

After comparing three recipes online, I found this recipe from Nibbledish.com that seemed the most doable. I assembled the spices, which included lemongrass, ginger, and annatto seeds (not pictured, it's like little red seeds), all from the Oriental House of Syracuse (my savior in these rough, mother-less times). The star anise, I got a bag from my sister Thao during my visit to New York City (they sold it for $6 at Wegmans).

The whole process, from prepping to cooking took 3.5 hours. I made some modifications, which included beef broth instead of water and a splash of red wine (because why the heck not?). The product was a beautiful red, tomato-based broth that smelled like home (probably the lemon grass and ginger). I just couldn't stop inhaling.

And the first bite...

Slightly tangy, salty, and so so rich. The meat easily fell apart and the soup was warm and filling. Not too light but not too heavy. That's what I love about Vietnamese food, it doesn't weigh you down like a stone.

It was a bit too salty, not perfect yet but pretty close. If I was home, my mom would have served the stew with baguettes instead of flatbreads. A small deviation but at least this time around, I didn't impugn my memory of home. And I had one more recipe in my repertoire. From what I see, it's one step closer to the monolith: pho.

One of these days.

For now, I have two days worth of bo kho. And it tasted even better the next day. After, I went back to writing and reading textbooks, a little more content and a little less homesick. That's the thing about food, sometimes it serves as a pleasant reminder. A good, familiar dish can take you back home, if only for a little while.

Which is enough. Back to reading.