Good pho me, good pho you

It didn't take long after leaving New York for me to miss the flavors of Chinatown. Almost any kind of Asian cuisine is available any time for very cheap, and the one I missed most was Vietnamese pho. For $5.00 or less, a gigantic steaming bowl arrives at your table in about 5 minutes, and it's just about the best thing on Earth. Sweet spices, sweet and bitter herbs and a hint of salty fish sauce all in a gelatinous, beefy broth provide the base for a flavor and texture explosion. Being in the heart of Ohio, I had no choice but to try and recreate it at home. Thank goodness for Jungle Jim's, a mammoth multinational market outside of Cincinnati that has just about anything you can imagine. I followed an excellent recipe from the web almost exactly, so I won't reprint it here. Follow this link for the recipe. I used top round for the slicing beef. Thorny cilantro (culantro) made an interesting addition, but it is optional. One thing I added to the equation was tripe. I had never cooked it before, but in my visits with Andy through little Chinese dives by the Manhattan bridge, I came to love its unique taste and texture. I took one honeycomb tripe and sliced it into 1"x2" pieces, scrubbed them well, blanched them in boiling water for 15 minutes, scrubbed well again, and added them to the broth to simmer for 3 hours. The pieces could have been smaller, but they took on great flavor and color from the broth, and they were still chewy but very nice. It took a long, long time to make the broth and prepare everything else, but in the end, I was completely satisfied with my home cooking taste of Chinatown. Once the Captain lands in his new home, this will be a regular addition to the dinner menu. New York, I miss you.