Discussion: FEU, je vous l'avais dit et vous le confirme

Chers forumvietnamiens,

Je vous avais donné l'étymologie du "Pho", avec "Pot-au-feu".
Voici aujourd'hui une confirmation; désolé, c'est en anglais, mais bon ...

Encore un argument pour ceux qui pensent que la colonisation a ses bons côtés

Bonne journée et soyez zen, discutez sans vous étriper ...

Pho (pronounce fuh)—from the French pot au feu—is the Vietnamese traditional beef noodle soup, which originated in Hanoi in the 1920-30’s. The Vietnamese cooks who worked for the French thought it was a good idea to use the pot au feu for their families. It could be done simply, cheaply, and in an appetizing way. While the French soup was laden with vegetables and beef, the cooks modified it by using beef bones, which still gave it a rich meaty smell and texture without the high cost of beef. In the cool northern climate, pho caught on like wildfire and became the regular household soup for the Vietnamese. Some people thought pho had a Chinese origin, although it seems unlikely because pho had never been used before by the Chinese until very recently..
The northerners brought the pho with them when they migrated South in 1954. However, consuming hot beef noodle soup in a hot southern environment was not exactly appealing, therefore pho lagged behind the other southern noodle soups like mi and hu tieu. It was only in the late 1960-70’s that the modified southern pho—with the addition of bulky portions of beef and vegetables—took an upward swing.
While pho was completely unknown abroad before the end of the 1970’s, its worldwide spread parallels the Vietnamese diaspora. Wherever Vietnamese would settle, they would open pho stalls—these restaurants that served only pho. Pho thus made its way to the U.S. , Canada , France, Germany , Australia , England , Japan and other western countries and metamorphosed into something completely different from the native version. The noodle and beef portions took on gargantuan sizes. Different types of meat were also used (steak, fatty flank, lean flank, brisket, tendon, tripe, chicken, meatballs, and now even seafood). One could also order a vegetarian pho. The variety of fresh vegetables like cilantro, basil leaves, bean sprouts, onions, coriander leaves, and lemon adds a new dimension to the pho.
Not to be outdone, the original northern pho had also migrated to other communist countries following the footpath of Vietnamese communist workers. Pho therefore could be seen in Budapest , Prague , Moscow , East Berlin and other eastern block countries.
In the late 1990’s pho returned to Saigon by way of a Viet Kieu who opened a Pho 24 restaurant—24 meant 24,000 dong for a bowl of pho (about $US1.60: which although cheap for foreigners, is about three times as pricey as the local pho) and it was open 24 hours a day—to serve foreigners mostly Viet Kieu. The place was also cleaner than the local restaurants. President Clinton when he visited Saigon in 2000 ordered a bowl of pho from Pho 24. He liked it so much, he ordered a second one. He then had a picture taken with the restaurant owner. Today, a large picture of Mr. Clinton and the owner presided over the dining place and the chair on which Mr. Clinton sat to savor pho had been encased in glass and displayed on the wall. Pho 24 had also expanded to Hanoi to cater an increasing influx of foreigners. This was how the pho formula, after circling the globe and being transformed through migrations and cultures and improved by various palates, returned to the city of its birth to the bewilderment of the natives. Sadly, it became so expensive ($US5) it was out of reach of the common Hanoians. Only foreigners and party officials could afford it.
There are as many variants of pho as there are Vietnamese and each variant is different from the other. First, there are the Hanoi , Hue , or Saigon brand of pho. It has been said that the Hanoi pho is much simpler, less elaborate, and has less meat than the southern one. Mint leaves, bean sprout, and a wide variety of herbs as well as wide-size noodles have been added in its journey to the South. Once it had crossed the Atlantic Ocean , the pho was notable by its size and meat portions. The pho in Paris is definitely different than the one in Westminster ’s Little Saigon, California . The pho in the former eastern block communist counties is closer to the Hanoi pho than its western European or American brand.
Imitation is a form of flattery. Buoyed by the success of the pho, Chinese and Japanese cooks jumped into the fray and also offered pho as part of their menu. Emeril Lagasse, the famous New Orleans cook, at one time showed the way to prepare pho on TV. But it is not the real pho. I once went to San Francisco ’s Chinatown and saw pho advertised in Vietnamese in a Chinese restaurant. The cooks and waitresses were all Chinese and although the pho served there looked like the original pho, its taste was not. Then there is mom or your other half’s pho. The latter is unique and cannot be compared to the store pho.. Since she had put a lot of love in its preparation, it transcends all the rest. I always remember this college student’s remark: “I can only eat mom’s pho. It has the right taste, the right amount of meat and the right ingredient.” Of course, she has trained his taste buds for the last two decades.
History does not progress in straight line but through convoluted detours. When the Vietnamese landed in the U.S. in 1975, the hardest thing to find was a bowl of pho. It was like looking for caviar in Vietnam . There was no pho noodle, no ingredients, no mint, basil leaves, hoisin sauce, and especially beef bones. There was nothing to make a good bowl of pho while people were salivating at the imaginary smell of the soup. They slowly figured out how to make the noodle, to gather the ingredients and to look for beef bones. Et voila the pho was born in a foreign land. At that time, the pho in its infancy did in no way taste like the present pho. The flavor was not there, the noodle was too thick or thin, and the meat was not right. But it was better than nothing. Three decades later, anyone could go to an oriental store, get pho noodle—either the dry or fresh kind—as well as the soup in its condensed form in a jar, bring them home and make a decent bowl of pho. In the 1980’s, pho was first served in restaurants only as one of the menu selections. Slowly, it had picked up steam and is presently served in ubiquitous pho stalls with names like pho Saigon , pho 75, pho 99 and so on...
Pho seems to appeal to a large clientele in part due to its low fat content, good portion of meat, and fast preparation. If it was used to cater to Vietnamese palates, it has now has crossed racial divides. Americans came in good numbers to taste it. They frequently ate the noodles and the meat and left behind the soup. Their Vietnamese friends would remind them that it was the soup that made the pho, not the meat or the noodle. They then started to savor the soup and to like it. Pho also appealed to Koreans and Chinese, since the latter also used other types of soup that are very close to pho. In Virginia , on sees a lot of Spanish people who came with their families to savor the pho. It is refreshing to see groups of four, six, or eight Spanish people come to a pho restaurant to enjoy it.
Pho in 2007 made its way into the Webster dictionary and has become a unifier of palates.

Pho (pronounce fuh)—from the French pot au feu—is the Vietnamese traditional beef noodle soup



Aaaaarrrrgggghhhhh....j'aurais jamais cru !!!

En tout cas, çà facilite drôlerment la prononciation , car d'après ce que j'ai compris et les exercices qu'on m'a fait faire sur place., il suffit de prononcer "feuuuuuuu " , en trainant un peu !!! (et non fuh).
C'est devenu beaucoup plus simple d'un seul coup.

Envoyé par Thanh Ba.ch

Chers forumvietnamiens,

Je vous avais donné l'étymologie du "Pho", avec "Pot-au-feu".
Voici aujourd'hui une confirmation; désolé, c'est en anglais, mais bon ...

Encore un argument pour ceux qui pensent que la colonisation a ses bons côtés

Bonne journée et soyez zen, discutez sans vous étriper ...

Merci Than Ba
Alors le "Pho" est une soupe quartérone? (hi hi)
De toute façon, pour moi, ce sera toujours" une spécialité hanoiënne"
Je suis trop fière de mon "pho"!
Chantalngoc

Le doute persiste toujours :

"Pho soup recalls my childhood's flavor"

The speeches published below are extracted from the press conference "Pho - Vietnam's Heritage", organized in Hanoi on November 29th 2002 at the offices of the Delegation of the European Commission:

Its birth certificate is packed full of question marks; where does Pho come from? When was this soup, together with nem (spring rolls), symbol of Vietnamese gastronomy, brought into the world? Nguyen Dinh Rao, a decidedly determined seventy-year-old man and president of Unesco's Gastronomy Club in Hanoi expresses his opinion on this subject; more than an opinion, he insists he knows Pho's true origins. He says that the birth place of Pho is in Nam Dinh city, which is situated in the southern Red River delta. Its birth's date? Beginning of 20th century he claims confidently "when a big industrial zone for textile was established there".

Rao continues: "Nam Dinh's population included, in those days, new city dwellers, workers, salaried employees, officials, as well as French and Vietnamese soldiers. All of them required a dish which was less "rustic" than the traditional soups of the delta's farmers, like chao (rice soup) or bun (fresh noodles made of rice)".

This mixed population turned to its culinary roots to "invent" Pho. A novelty which was simmered in the pot of traditions. "It perpetuates the traditional flavor" - Rao explains "Thus, the bouillon, made of bone and prawn, rich in amino-acid and sweetly perfumed, is inherited directly from old coastal roots of our civilization. Regarding popular fresh and soft rice noodles, called banh pho, cooked in vapor, they are definitely from Vietnam. Finally, to satisfy a modernized demand and to meet the taste of European people, they add beef among other ingredients, only once per year, in occasion of village's festival. It replaces aquatic products, like crab or shellfish." Rao concludes: "Pho combines a cultural interference and local ingredients, the traditional flavor blending with European taste. The whole blend creates a universal soup".

Poet Vu Quan Phuong shows himself more pliant in his views: "They may be right when saying pho comes from Nam Dinh; I often see the signboard "Nam Dinh recipe" in front of pho shops. However, the famous writer Tu Xuong, who was very devoted to Nam Dinh, fails to mention anything about Pho in his writings. Pho sustains certainly the influence of different countries, but its Vietnamese soul still remains. That's why, I believe, the most important thing is that Pho makes up half of Vietnamese national pride; the second half is the popular war."

More important than different questions related to the origin and the culinary crossings of Pho, which prevailed throughout its birth, is the acknowledgement of Pho as an element of Vietnam's heritage that nourishes the national pride. "We understand the Vietnamese culture is highly discerning to other foreign cultures" said Dang Huu Hung, deputy editor in chief of Sciences and Fatherland magazine, "Thus, there are interferences with French and Chinese cultures. But we also know how to "Vietnamese" a Pho soup. Today, Pho becomes a Vietnamese soup, which makes us proud, that is more important than the origin of Pho".

Furthermore, Pho's taste and the ingredients to make it have varied and developed with time. At the beginning, Pho is cooked with hard-boiled beef cut into nice slices, then also with rare beef poached in the bouillon (pho bo tai), with chicken (pho ga) and even with pork (pho lon) during hard times in the war. Some people don't hesitate to evoke the "secrets" of making Pho soup. An old Pho shop regular cites 3 secrets: the first one is the cleanliness, the bowl in which pho soup will be served should not have any smell, the second, is the way to prepare the meat, and the third, lies in the bouillon, its ingredients and the right moment to integrate them in the water.

Regarding the bouillon, Mr. Huu Bang, Director of Military Theatre also shares his opinion. He recalls that, when he was a child, a bowl of pho, without bouillon, cost one cent (xu), while the one with bouillon was 3 cents. "The bouillon should be simmered from the day before, in order to extract all of vitamins from the bone and the meat should be boiled together with the bone, both of them being plunged in cold water at the start of cooking. ".

Thus, is it right that a "standard" for Pho to be defined, giving exact details on quantity of herbs and condiments, the way to prepare the bouillon and perhaps, eventually leading a label guaranteeing the quality of Pho ? Poet Vu Quan Phuong adds the following: "We have to protect Pho on the one hand and give it a free development on the other. Pho is the soul of Vietnam and when I enjoy a bowl of pho, I recall firstly, the flavors of my childhood".

Synthesis of journalist Franck Renaud

Encore une autre piste :

Pho: International Food Vietnam's Gift to the World
Commentary, Vu-Duc Vuong,
Nha Magazine, Nov 05, 2005
It's now possible to find pho, the essence of Vietnamese cooking and the symbol of its food, on every habitable continent. From the tiny stalls in Ha Noi, the cradle of pho, to the shopping malls in America, to the Left Bank in Paris, one can now inhale the fragrant and distinctive flavor of pho. And it is no longer true that only Vietnamese eat pho, or that pho is breakfast food since it has now gained near universal acceptance, at any time of day or night.

Half a century ago, Nguyen Tuan, the famed writer and a gourmet, penned these words:

“Morning, noon, afternoon, evening, late night, anytime is a good time for a bowl of pho. During the day, having an additional bowl of pho is like brewing a second pot of tea when the company is enjoyable; almost nobody would turn down an invitation to a pho shop. And the beauty of it is that pho makes it possible for a poor man to treat his friends without breaking the bank.”—Nguyen Tuan, Canh Sac va Huong Vi Dat Nuoc (Scenery and Flavor of My Country)

What is this pho? Where did it come from? How to prepare it? And perhaps best of all in this age of jet travel, where to find the best pho?

Over the three months bridging 2004 and 2005, I had the unusual experience of sampling pho on three continents, talking with people who make and those who enjoy it, and looking into the origin of this signature dish from Viet Nam.

Pho: A New Vietnamese Specialty
Unlike the banh day and banh chung (rice cakes made from ground and whole grain, respectively), popular during the Teát season (Lunar New Year), which dates back to the legendary origin of the Viet people, some 4,000 years ago, pho came into being only at the start of the last century.

It is perhaps appropriate, as we approach the centennial of pho, to trace back briefly where it came from. Two schools of thoughts have emerged, both with influence from outside Viet Nam: China or France. Both theories, incidentally, are based on the pronunciation of the word pho.

Nguyen Tung, an anthropologist based in Paris who has researched Vietnamese food in all three regions, agreed with Georges Dumoutier that pho did not exist in 1907.(1)

Tung went on to suggest that pho derived from the Cantonese pronunciation of “fun” (noodle), and hence the source of pho probably came from the Chinese refugees flowing into Viet Nam in the late 19th Century and bringing with them a number of dishes which were later adopted by the Vietnamese: hu tieu, hoanh thanh, lap xuong, xa xíu, xì dau, pha lau, lau, ta pín lu, etc.(2)

R.W. Apple, Jr., a veteran New York Times journalist who covered Viet Nam during the war, and now occupies the enviable position of resident gourmet, advanced the theory that em>pho came from the French beef-based comfort food, pot au feu, brought to Viet Nam in the late 19th Century by the French colonial forces. (3)

To test this second theory, and no doubt to the chagrin of my dietician, I sampled a pot au feu at Tante Alice in Paris on the last day of 2004. It’s a huge dish, made with four types of meat and four types of vegetables, cooked in a broth for a long time. The dish I had contained ox tail, beef tongue, beef rib, and an end of a femur with plenty of marrow inside; along with cabbage, potato, carrot, leeks, and turnip. The portion would feed three people. I couldn’t finish it at lunch and did not eat for the rest of the day.

As of now, I’m still debating which theory comes closer. Each source lacks one of the key components of pho: Chinese noodle soup does not emphasize the quality of the broth while the pot au feu, with good broth, comes with vegetables rather than noodles. Can it be that the Vietnamese, once again, borrow something from each to create something new?

le lien ici

Envoyé par chantalngoc

" une spécialité hanoiënne"

Non, non, non ! C'est plutôt une spécialité de Nam Dinh !


BN

Envoyé par Thanh Ba.ch

Je vous avais donné l'étymologie du "Pho", avec "Pot-au-feu".
Voici aujourd'hui une confirmation; désolé, c'est en anglais, mais bon ...

Encore un argument pour ceux qui pensent que la colonisation a ses bons côtés

Merci Thanh Ba.ch pour ces précisions..

Juste pour titiller un peu, quelle crédibilité peut on donner à l'article que tu as cité ? est ce d'une source fiable, officielle ou d'un simple passionné qui l'a écrit ?

Merci

Envoyé par Bao Nhân

Non, non, non ! C'est plutôt une spécialité de Nam Ding !


BN

Ah bon ! en es tu sur?

Envoyé par chantalngoc

Ah bon ! en es tu sur?

Oui, car presque tous les vieux Hanoïens auxquels j'ai posé des questions pour en savoir l'origine, ils m'ont dit que les premiers vendeurs de phơ à Hanoi étaient des personnes originaires de Nam Định. Ensuite, l'année dernière, je suis tombé au hasard sur un article qui en parle lui-aussi.

BN

Envoyé par mike

Merci Thanh Ba.ch pour ces précisions..

Juste pour titiller un peu, quelle crédibilité peut on donner à l'article que tu as cité ? est ce d'une source fiable, officielle ou d'un simple passionné qui l'a écrit ?

Merci

Uno - Les investigations n'ont rien donné quant à l'existence du PHO avant l'arrivée des Français. Il existait par contre le HU TIEU, soupe de pâtes de riz cantonnaise, avec du rôti de porc (XA XIU), du porc haché, etc. dont le dénominateur commun avec le PHO (à base de boeuf, comme dans le pot-au-feu) est ces fameuses pâtes de riz (à ne pas confondre avec les pâtes de blé ou MI, ce qu'aurait rapporté Marco Polo, arrivé plutôt en Chine du Nord ?).

Deuxio - Alors qu'il y a un échange naturel des plats entre le Viêt Nam et la Chine, à travers les flux migratoires, notamment d'émigrés Chinois vers l'empire d'Annam (beaucoup de Cantonnais, mais aussi des Chinois de Hai Nan, de Teou Chew, de Fu Kien, etc.), le PHO tel qu'il est et était sans doute ? n'a pas d'équivalent comme "plats-ancêtres" (ou "plats-souches" - cf. par exemple les déclinaisons du NEM / CHA GIO, dans la cuisine cantonnaise, pékinoise voire, thaïe).

Troisio - Il existe un autre plat, plus connu dans le Sud, le HU TIEU THIT BO KHO ou simplement des fois BO KHO, qui pourrait lui aussi être une déclinaison d'un plat "made in France", le boeuf en daube. Mais bon, il n'en porte pas une quelconque réminiscence de filiation dans le nom de "boeuf en daube". A investiguer également, si ce BO KHO par contre n'a pas été à son tour bien adopté et adapté par la cuisine cantonnaise, alors que le PHO ne l'a jamais été et ne l'est toujours quasiment pas.

Bon, que cela n'empêche personne de dormir.

Il n'y a aucun problème à ce que l'on pique une façon de faire (en cuisine comme en art, civil ou militaire, etc. ) et de l'adapter à son goût, à son environnement, à ses besoins et selon son génie propre.
C'est bien au contraire, une démarche tout à fait "intelligente", bien loin du copier "plus bête que méchant" comme un coupé-collé sous word, du genre j'importe tout même les conneries avérées et déjà abandonnées par les autres (mais bon, ceci est un autre débat)

Chào à tous, en toute amitié forumvietnamienne, parlez et discutez, soyez en désaccord, ayez des doutes, mais de grâce, sans vous étriper ... même si l'on sait que certaines déclinaisons du PHO intègrent un peu de bonnes tripes !

°