Cracking more culinary codes

This is my year for finding out how to make things at home that are hard to find in restaurants out here in the boonies. We have a Vietnamese restaurant that makes a wonderful pho, but it's not open on the days I'm most likely to be in town. So I acquired a pho cookbook, followed the directions, and produced a fantastic stock. This one was redfish stock, made from the frames that our fisherman neighbor discards after filleting, but the same technique would work on chicken stock: just simmer it for a while with a chunk of ginger cut in half, a cinnamon stock, some anise pods, some coriander seeds, and some fennel seeds, plus a bit of salt and sugar.

The cookbook advised cooking the shrimp and the rice noodles separately in plain water, but I was disappointed in the results: too flat. With the other half of the fish stock today, I cooked scallops and a new brand of rice noodles right in the stock, then towards the end added the bean sprouts, a cross-cut Thai pepper (bushels of them coming from the garden now), and sliced mushrooms. Squeeze in a copy of lime wedges, add some cilantro and Thai basil if you've got it, and you're done.

Soon I'll try again, with chicken stock. My limited little local grocery store charmed me to my toes by stocking chicken feet this week. Chicken feet make great stock.