What the Phở?

Ha ha. I stole that hilarious title from a chain of Vietnamese soup restaurants, probably in California.

Yesterday I went to Fairway and found that the beef marrow bones were looking at once fairly cheap and somewhat meatier than normal. So I bought two packs. When I got home I realized that I had bought like eight pounds of bones that no-one but me would be interested in. I prepared them in the Fergus Henderson (by way of Mark Bittman) style, and even managed to convince the famously food-squeamish MB to eat some of them. Her mom was visiting and also ate a few. The marrow was awesome. It whipped the horse's ass.

With the leftovers, I decided to make some good old-fashioned beef stock. I did the whole bit, and boom, just twenty-four hours of concentrated effort later I had myself about half a quart of very fatty stock that I didn't know what to do with. (That's "...with which I didn't know what to do." for all the assholes out there.)

I alit upon the idea of making Pho, which everyone loves. I got pretty excited about it until I realized that I don't know what any of the famous main ingredients of it are: Omosa, Tendon, Navel, Eye of Round and Frank. Do you have to go to a Vietnamese butcher to get these special meats?

Come on guys, start filling your soups with American-style cuts of beef.