The Beauty of Humanity Movement
Camilla Gibb
Doubleday Canada
<p><i>The history of Vietnam lies in this bowl, for it is in Hanoi, the Vietnamese heart, that pho was born, a combination of the rice noodles that predominated after a thousand years of Chinese occupation and the taste for beef the Vietnamese acquired under the French, who turned their cows away from ploughs and into </i>bifteck<i> and </i>pot-au-feu<i>. The name of their national soup is pronounced like this French word for fire, as Hung's Uncle Chien explained to him long ago. </i><br><i> </i><br><i>"We're clever people," his uncle had said. "We took the best the occupiers had to offer and made it our own. Fish sauce is the key--in matters of soup and well beyond. Even romance, some people say."</i><br><i> </i><br>--from <b>The Beauty of Humanity Movement</b> (p 5) by Camilla Gibb<br><br>Old Man Hu'ng has been making and selling pho to hungry devotees for nearly 70 years, continually adapting his recipe and the location of his food cart to accommodate the terrible demands of...</p></br></br></br></br></br></br>