Parmesan Stock and Fridge Diving Pho

So if you haven't gotten this month's issue of Bon Appetit yet, you're seriously missing out. Not only has it inspired my entire 48 hour Christmas menu, but is full of great little ideas for fridge diving and using odd bits from the fridge.

One of the ideas I picked up from this particular issue was the idea of "parmesan stock/broth" where you make a stock from your leftover parmesan rinds (instead of just throwing them out). Brilliant, right?!

Any good stock requires bunches of herbs, onions, salt, pepper etc. For my parmesan broth I stuck my rinds, salt, pepper, a large white onion (halved), an entire head of garlic with the bottom chopped off, a bunch of time sprigs, a bunch of parsley stocks, and leftover chicken bones in a large pot of boiling water. I let this boil for about four hours, until very fragrant and dark in color. The longer the better, really. It's a pretty spectacular pot of boiling goodness, but I forgot to take pictures. Whoops.

What I DID take pictures of was the resulting pho we made with the broth. I bought round udon noodles and boiled for seven minutes in hot water, removed and rinsed. I heated the broth back up to a boil, and poured the broth over a pile of noodles in each bowl.

For the toppings, I chopped up various vegetables and seaweed on the side, so that each person could tailor their bowl to their own taste. My options were fresh parsley, fresh basil, sliced fresno peppers (HOT), spring onions, leeks, seaweed, hard boiled eggs, and mushrooms. Hard boiled eggs are my favorite bit, especially with a bit of seaweed in there. My father did learn the lesson of adding too many hot peppers, as the broth adopts the heat and the whole pot turns into a firey broth from sweaty hell.

This was super fun to do as an easy family dinner, especially with the whole "add your own toppings" interactive bit. The broth was delicious and we could have probably just eaten it plain with the noodles, but there's no fun in that!

Finally have my Christmas menu down and can't wait to get into the city to start shopping for it. I'm doing a scandinavian theme, providing me the opportunity to cook all kinds of things I've been dying to try for ages! The one thing that I sadly will not have a time slot for is curing my own salmon (there would be far too much food....), but there's always a next time!!!

Until next time, stay warm!