finefortips

This video recipe is my fairly weak attempt at the famous Vietnamese spicy beef noodle soup, Pho. As I shopped for the ingredients, I ha d a nice package of bee f oxtail in my hand, but since I was just making a s mall batch, and I already had two beautiful beef shanks in the basket, I decided to not get them. That was a mistake. While this beef noodle soup wasn't bad, it wasn't spectacularly great w hich is what Pho should be. The signature of this soup is a very rich, deeply flavored, collagen-infused beef broth. I overestimated the beef shanks, and it was lacking exactly what the oxtails would have added. Also, to add to this Pho's fauxness, I went pretty light on the spices. Real Pho has more of the aromatic spices you'll see in the video. I also didn’t add the extra sliced beef that is traditional, like brisket, flank, and thinly sliced, rare filet mignon. I also didn’t char the ging er, which is recommended. I also didn't pronouce Pho correctly - I say, "...

Balls have always been problematic for menu and recipe writers. You can't write "Pork Balls" on a menu, you have to write "Pork Meatballs." Even though there would be no possibility of confusing these Bison balls with the reproductive parts of a male buffalo, the "balls" would never be written without the "meat." Well, I think it's high time this practice is sacked. Are we still so immature as a nation that we can't just serve balls? Do we have to keep a dding those extra letters for fear some 15-year old can't control his giggling at Hooters? Besides, now that 72% of all information (my estimate) is transmitted via text message, I would think we'd all benefit from chopping off a couple letters, e.g., MMA Tonys 4 bison balls. This recipe is inspired by the retro classic, cocktail meatballs in grape jelly. I took that idea, along with my love of spicy orange beef, and came up with this combination. I chose bison as the meat du...

For many years hearing the word, "curry" was like fingernails on my culinary chalkboard. Where I'm from, "curry" meant a thick, greasy, bright yellow sauce made with copious amount of turmeric, covering chunks of mystery meat. I know, as good as that sounds, I still did n’t like it. All through culinary school, and on into my early career in California, even the smell of turmeric made me cringe. It was my Kryptonite. As the years went by, and my culinary horizons expanded, so did my understanding and appreciation of curries. I learned that the horrible yellow curry from my youth wasn't even really a true curry, and that curries came in almost every color, from countries all over Asia. My favorite curries today are definitely the Thai red and green curries. Even though it's one of my older, and cruder productions, the Red Curry Beef Stew is st ill one of my favorite video recipes on the blog. This green curry chicken recipe was filmed for About.com's...