faux pho

I have a friend from Southern China who makes THE BEST Pho. Really. It's delicious. But somewhere along the way I lost the recipe, and she is traveling so...

I needed pho.

I'm on GAPS intro diet and it's soooo boring, so I decided to "cheat" with a few subtle spices but aside from that I'm "in compliance".

Really, the pho should be slow cooked and I added the seasonings at the end because I wanted to save my broth for non-pho purposes, but really you'd use a star anise, some fennel seeds, cinnamon stick, knub of ginger, some garlic cloves....


anyways...

I chopped 1 yellow onion, 2 cl. garlic, a celery stalk and carrot (diced) and sautéed in very scant olive oil. I added salt and pepper.

I used a bone-in chicken breast and 3 drumsticks and added it to the veg.

I added hmm....8 cups water?  and a bay leaf.

oh and I added a chopped parsnip cause I can eat parsnip.

Cook until meat begins to fall off.

Take meat off bone, set aside, strain out veggies.

(here's where you put the half the broth in your to-be-pho bowl, and the rest with the chicken bones and a little more water and cook the heck out of it....just google bone broth for a recipe.)

to the pho broth, add some spinach. (the broth should include some of your saved veggies and chicken meat). Add a few splashes of lime. If you want to cheat, add cilantro - I was out of cilantro. Add a grind (on a microplane) of ginger, and a few fennel seeds and a pinch of chinese 5 spice.
Add a slice of jalapeño if you want to "cheat" and need the heat. Sadly I only put one slice in as a cheat and couldn't taste it.

But nonetheless it was edible.