Pho Close

With the temperature dropping - well, sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes rainy, sometimes windy - I have been experimenting with making soup.
I don't profess to be better than Cambell's or Progresso but I was hoping it might be more convenient to make Pho than have to go out to a restaurant every time I wanted some.
It is certainly not as simple as opening a can and heating it up but it was a fair approximation of Pho, I thought. I used this guy's recipe and it was easy to understand and follow. We began with roasting the ginger and onions on the stove:

 

(Did not expect the skin to peel off and fly everywhere, or the juices to spit out quite so quickly.) After the roasting, the skins came off:

Chicken bits go in the water:

Add all the flavor ingredients:

And boil for a very long time:

Drain the liquid out and discard the solids:

Yes, this exercise was just for the broth.
For the actual eating, we use the broth and a lot of other items. There is a lot of preparation of ingredients for this thing:

Then we assembled the individual bowls by layering the cooked noodles:

Mushrooms:

Chicken:

Onions:

Scallions:

Cilantro:

Then add the steaming hot broth over it all:

Tasted totally awesome:

But it sure took a while. Can't say I'll be whipping that up on a regular basis.

This is me makin' soup.