Learning to Make Pho with My Mother-in-Law

My mother-in-law is Vietnamese and makes the best pho I've ever tasted. When I married her son, I asked her to teach me. She said yes, but only if I started at five in the morning.

Pho takes all day. We roasted onions and ginger over an open flame until they were black. We simmered beef bones for eight hours, skimming the broth over and over. She added star anise, cinnamon, cloves and fish sauce by feel, never measuring.

She told me stories while we worked: about her grandmother's noodle stall in Hanoi, about cooking for her family when she first came to America, about the first time her son, my husband, ate pho and spilled it all over his shirt.

By dinnertime, the house smelled incredible. When I served my husband the first bowl I'd made, he took one sip and looked at his mother. She nodded. "Good," she said. "Now you're family."