10/10 Bo Kho

Alright, I'm back! Well sort of... After a week long (or more?) hiatus, and an overwhelming number of posts by my blog partner I decided it was time I post a little somethin'-somethin' myself. Much to my chagrin, weddings and several other things have essentially kept me away from the kitchen for the last couple weeks. Anyways, last week - I forget exactly when - I did cook some delicious beef stew. Of course this wasn't your average beef stew served over egg noodles, this was Bo Kho, which is a very traditional Vietnamese dish. Apparently, it's one of those dishes that every Vietnamese family has a different version of. So in that spirit I decided to take the recipe out of the same vietnamese cookbook i'd mentioned in a previous post and switch it up just a bit. Of course the end result was a brown beef stew, which frankly makes for a bad picture, so you'll have to forgive the photography on this one, and just take my word on it, it was good!

So what goes into Bo Kho? Well its a tomato based stew with Chinese five spice, star anise, lemon grass and ginger. Of course, there are a few splashes of fish sauce in there too (ask my roommates about that one...). the whole thing is cooked with some carrots and onions for about 3 hours. Now what I decided to change up was the cut of meat. I used short ribs instead of "stew" meat (whatever that's supposed to be). I think the bones gave the stew more flavor, and frankly few cuts of meat are better than a braised short rib. The whole thing fed me for almost all of last week.