[food] experiments in phở chay

lo these many years ago I bought half a kilo of star anise (because it was about an order of magnitude cheaper by weight than doing it any other way), in order to attempt phở chay. I did not, at the time, have access to my own kitchen or ready funds to buy my own ingredients, and I was living somewhere which at the time had extremely limited access to such things as holy basil, so after my first attempt I gave up in some amount of resentment.

A couple of weeks ago I realised almost none of those constraints applied any more and had another go, having poked around several different recipes.

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