The Lotus Eaters and Pho

I have a thing for Vietnam movies - Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, Born on the Fourth of July and my favorite of them all, Platoon (remember when Charlie Sheen wasn't a punch line?)  The Lotus Eaters reads like a really great Vietnam movie.  The book follows three war photographers from the early days of the Vietnam War in the mid-60s to the very end, as Saigon toppled on the edge of collapse.  The main focus is Helen Adams - a young Californian woman who travels to Vietnam with no photography experience, but some unexplainable desire to become a war photographer.  Shortly after her arrival she meets Sam Darrow, a hardened war-zone photographer who is addicted to danger and his soulful but secretive photographer's assistant, Linh.   The book has both riveting accounts of the war and its horrors and captivating romantic entanglements - once it got started it was hard to put down.   The clear choice for a Vietnamese dish was the classic beef pho.  Helen savored many bowls of pho throughout the war, the broth serving as nourishment and as a way for her to connect to Saigon and its people.

The Lotus Eaters is Tatjana Soli's first novel and it is a really incredible debut.  The book is clearly very well researched - it never feels false or contrived.  The newsmen, photographers and soldiers that fill the book feel quite real.  The main characters also appear to be modeled on real people - Helen is a character clearly based on pioneering female war photographers Dickey Chappelle (who was killed in action) and Catherine Leroy (who was a sunny blond like Helen and who was the first photographer, like Helen, to photograph the Viet Cong).  Even the photos that are described in the book echo actual famous Vietnam photographs, like Eddie Adams' photograph of a Viet Cong being executed in the street (http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/alleyes/content/vietnam-war-ended-april-30-1975-23-images) - Helen has her breakthrough photographic moment in the book capturing a similar image.  By taking this photo Helen cemented her reputation and also pushed herself past a point from which she never returned.    Before this moment she was scared and unsure of what she was doing in Vietnam, more concerned about what Sam Darrow, her mentor and eventual lover thought of her than the photos she was taking.  After her groundbreaking photo, Helen lives on the other side of the edge - always putting herself in harms way to try to capture a shot that no one else could.  At the heart of what drives Helen is the death of her brother in Vietnam a few years before she arrived.  This is why she came to Vietnam, though what she was hoped to learn or achieve by coming is hard to understand.   I liked the way the book was set up - Soli starts at the end of the war, at the fall of Saigon, with Helen roaming the treacherous streets looking for images to shoot.  She arrives home to Linh, who has been shot and is ailing in bed.  They are preparing for their departure from Saigon - Linh is leaving his home to go the unknown, the U.S., but it is Helen that is finding it difficult to leave.  Sam Darrow, her former lover and Linh's friend and boss is dead.  So the book starts and to some extent we already know how it all turns out - Helen is with Linh and Darrow is dead, but then Soli goes back to the beginning, to Helen's arrival, and traces how Helen ended up in Saigon with Linh in the last days of the war.  The end of the book also carries forward from when this first chapter ends, and the suspense in the last chapter is intense.  Soli really shines in her depiction of Vietnam, the reader really feels a sense of place in every page.  In addition, she creates rich characters to surround Helen, Linh and Darrow  - from other reporters, to soup stall ladies, to the American soldiers they photograph.  She does not  glamorize the war or those that fight it.   Her depiction of the war is harsh and hard to take sometimes.  Although the romance parts of the book provide a needed change of pace and intensity, I prefer the "war" elements of the book.  I understand Helen's connection to both Darrow and Linh and their connections to her, but Helen's journey as a photographer and a witness to the horrors of the war are what this book is really about.  I highly recommend this book and can't wait to see what Soli writes next!

Pho Bo (Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup)
Adapted from the amazing "Hot Sour Salty Sweet" by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

 

In addition to highly recommending The Lotus Eaters, I also highly recommend Hot Sour Salty Sweet.  It is one of those massive (and expensive) cookbooks that is both a coffee table book and cook book - and both aspects - the photography and recipes - are amazing.  If you have any interest in Southeast Asian food or travel get this book!  It is pretty old now so maybe you can get it for a decent price!  This recipe was a bit time consuming for the broth, but it was a really special broth, much of it now happily sitting in my freezer, ready to use in a multitude of ways.

Ingredients

Soup/Broth

5 pounds oxtails or beef short ribs

6 quarts water

5 star anise

One 2 inch cinnamon stick

5 cloves

1 teaspoon black peppercorns (admission here, totally forgot these)

2 to 3 inch piece of ginger

2 medium onions, cut in half

1 pound stewing beef

5 tablespoons Vietnamese or Thai fish sauce

salt to taste

1 pound thin or medium dried rice noodles, soaked in water for 15 minutes and drained

Garnish and Accompaniments

2 cups bean sprouts, rinsed

Lime juice

1 pound eye of round or other boneless lean beef, very thinly sliced across the grain into 1 to 2 inch long slices

1/2 cup Asian Basil or sweet basil leaves (I ended up substituting mint)

1/2 cup coriander leaves

3 shallots thinly sliced

1 or 2 bird or Serrano chilies, minced

To make soup:  Place the oxtails or ribs into a large pot, cover with cold water, and bring to boil.  Boil vigorously for 5 minutes, then drain.  Rinse out the pot well, rinse off the oxtails or ribs and place back in the pot.  This is supposed to clean the beef.  As you can see, I used oxtails.

After you add the oxtails or ribs back to the pot, add 4 quarts of water and bring to a boil.  Add the spices.  Now, if you have a gas stove, you should (carefully!) char the outside of the onions and the ginger using the burner flame.  I unfortunately don't have a gas stove, so instead I heated up a fry pan really hot and charred the onions and ginger on that. I used a dry pan and just let the outside of the onion and ginger burn.  Once you char this stuff add it to the pot.

Let the broth boil gently, uncovered for about 30 minutes.  Skim off any scum/foam that rises to the surface.  Add the remaining two quarts of water, bring back to a boil and continue to gently boil skimming off foam.  After about another 20 minutes, lower heat and continue to cook for another hour.  Then add the stewing beef and fish sauce and cook, uncovered, for another 2 hours until the meat is tender.  Remove the beef from the soup and slice very tender.  (Note:  I did not end up saving the stewing beef for inclusion in the final pho, cause my beef looked gray and icky.  It is your call).

Remove the soup from the heat and remove all solids/strain.  Let the stock cool, then refrigerate, covered, for at least two hours.  This refrigeration will help separate the fat so you can remove it.  You can already see a layer of fat, below, before I even refrigerated it.  It is important to get rid of this stuff or the pho will be greasy.

When you are ready to serve the soup, take out the sliced meat if you use it and the stock and let come up to room temperature.   Skim off the visible fat from the stock.  Transfer the stock to a pot and bring to a boil to heat up.
To cook the noodles, bring a large pot of water to a boil, drop in the rice noodles and cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute.  Transfer to a colander and rinse with cold water, set aside.

Add the sprouts to the same broth and blanch for about 30 seconds. 
For the condiments, I created a plate with limes, herbs, shallots, sprouts and chilies. 

For each bowl, add the noodles and some sprouts, then some of the raw thinly sliced beef (tip, freeze the beef for a little while to make slicing thinly easier) and some herbs.   Ladle the broth over it.  The broth cooks the beef, pretty neat!  Pretty delish.