What puts the pink in Yen Ta Fo? [moved from Boston board]
Yen Ta Fo, the Pink wide rice noodle soup with seafood and pork bobbing about in it even has a Facebook page but it still doesn't explain where the pink comes from. S&I has a great version I enjoyed every bit of on one occasion last week. My friend Mai recently translated the Thai language menu there for me. It opens up a new world and serves as a practical language learning tool. A lunching teaching moment although I'm told by the owners that the menu is changing. Back to Yen Ta Fo. (Can you find the pink? Some have told me it is food coloring. Blasphemy.) Here are the classic ingredients:
rice noodles, chicken stock
dried cuttlefish, boiled
pork, boiled and sliced
fishballs or porkballs, boiled
slices of fried tofu
morning glory, cut into 2 inch long pieces, boiled
jelly fish, boiled
salted soybean paste
fish sauce
sugar
chili powder
vinegar or lime juice
vegetable oil
Perhaps the soybean paste and chilies turn the chicken stock pink? Either way...eye there way, I see the world thru rose colored broth. Tasty spicy piscine/porcine, crackly, verdant, gelatinous, and pink. L&Gs I offer you YenTaFo.
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S&I To Go
168A Brighton Ave, Allston, MA 02134
By EATTV
on May 17, 2011 03:19 PM
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Yen Ta Fo Sauce! I love it, too....
http://www.templeofthai.com/food/sauc...
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I think it comes from pickled red tofu. Tofu is brined with red yeast rice that provides the tofu with a reddish color. That tofu may then provide a pinkish hue to the broth. I'm not an expert though so hopefully someone more knowledgeable will chime in.
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I like this answer much better than red#4.
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