If I had a hammer...

A recipe for when you've had too much New Year cheer: cheat Pho

I posted Tabled early for New Year's Eve on 28 December when you might have had the zest to read it. So I make no apology for repeating the day before the birth of 2025 a Tabled I published 4 years ago when three supportive friends and some of my family were the only readers for my just-launched Substack adventure. As Happy a New Year as possible to every reader of Tabled. Thank you for supporting it.

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Photo by Joyce Romero on Unsplash

Wow! Was that a fabulous party! Whatsisname was there – you hadn’t seen him for years. And Thingamyjig was looking better than ever. There may have been a moment (and this makes you cringe) when you folded Whatchacallher whom you really can’t stand into a warm embrace. At least you didn’t start quoting reams of Kerouac or go through your Bette Midler impressions. You think. But you may have demonstrated step-by-step just how Fred Astaire tapped his way through ‘Top Hat’.

Great night. But now it’s head-swelling morning, full of bongo drums and referee whistles. As Robert Benchley observed, ‘There is no cure for a hangover, save death.’

The increased blood flow to the skin which first gave you that lovely party glow last night, this morning has brought on a mild case of hypothermia and you’re shivering with cold. The ethanol in alcohol has dried you out, so your brain has shrunk away from its casing and is now thudding relentlessly between your ears. Enzymes made by cells in the liver worked to convert that ethanol to mildly toxic acetaldehyde, then other enzymes changed that to acetic acid.

Basically, you’re thoroughly dehydrated. Not enough glucose is getting to your brain, and your blood sugar is low. What can you do to ease the pain, short of burying your head back under the sheets? Hair-of-the-dog or greasy fry-up?

Avoid the hair of the dog. Drink plenty of water. Raise your blood sugar level with something digestible to eat. Some people (the entire Scottish population and most journalists) swear by a fried breakfast, believing fat fights nausea. There’s no science to back that, but if it works for you…

What of pharmaceutical remedies?

A writer on a British newspaper was dispatched by his savage editor to get himself repeatedly drunk over a pre-Christmas week then test over-the-counter hangover cures. That this was a cruel assignment was confirmed by his throbbing discovery that not one of them worked.

Trials of conventional and natural cures by the British Medical Journal concluded only abstinence or moderate drinking were effective, and it’s now too late for that. Otherwise, it judged paracetamol (acetaminophen) should be avoided because it has the potential to cause liver damage. Non-steroidal medicines like ibuprofen and diclofenac taken before bed with plenty of water were less provocative. But any pharmaceutical solution mixed with alcohol swallowed shortly after the end of drinking has the potential to cause liver damage. For nausea the morning after, a humble over-the-counter motion-sickness or allergy medicine could work without danger.

Your safest cure is the chilli, the hotter the better.

Hangover sufferers the world over put their trust in them. Korean ‘Haejangguk’, a chilli-charged beef soup thickened with oxblood, even translates as Hangover Soup. The Senegalese swear by ‘Yassa’, a chilli, sweat-provoking chicken stew - although all sweat should be replaced by drinking plenty of water. Filipino ‘Sinigang’ is a pork-and-veg dish zinging with chilli, fish sauce and tamarind. ‘Menudo’ is Mexico’s hangover answer, a tomato-flavoured tripe stew so filled with guajillo chillies your spoon will shrivel. ‘Leche de Tigre’ is a Peruvian fish dish made from the chilli and lime-juice-flavoured marinade left over from ceviche. ‘Shakshouka’, North Africa’s eggs poached in a Harissa-heavy tomato sauce, is a solution that allows you to avoid confessing your suffering to your friends since it features on most brunch menus.

A cheat version of Vietnamese ‘Phô’, the beef, bean sprouts, rice noodles, herbs and chopped chillis soup, might do the trick. In this recipe, it’s been made from chicken stock, because if you’re depending on it you are probably in no fit state to construct the long slow-cooked, multiple-flavoured, beef bone stock.

Photo by Sharon Chen on Unsplash

Serves 1 hung-over individual with several bowlfuls until feeling able to face the new year - which looks like it could be a major challenge.

500ml/1 pint chicken stock
juice of ½ a lime
1 star anise
1 tablespoon Nam Pla fish sauce (optional)
1 small bunch fresh coriander/cilantro
½ small bunch fresh mint
250g/½ lb bean sprouts
250g/½ lb fine rice noodles
1 teaspoon sugar (preferably dark brown)
as much as you can take of 1 fresh red chilli pepper, finely chopped
Sriracha sauce (optional)
Hoisin sauce (optional)

Put the rice noodles in almost boiling water and leave to soften, about 4 minutes, then drain and set aside.

Bring the chicken stock slowly to a boil over low heat with the star anise and red chili pepper, then take off the heat and add the noodles, lime juice, fish sauce and sugar. Remove the star anise if it has infused the stock enough to your taste.

With a pair of tongs, put a good helping of noodles into a warmed soup bowl, pour over the chicken stock, then add the bean sprouts, breaking them up in your hands. Strip the leaves off the coriander/cilantro and the mint and add to the soup with the chopped chillies.

Spoon in the soup and slurp up the noodles with chopsticks. I learned at Pho 75 on Washington DC’s Wilson Boulevard, known locally as the Ho Chi Minh Trail for its numerous Vietnamese eateries, to dab my chopsticks into a side-serve of extra heat from a bottle of Sriracha sauce squeezed into a saucer of Hoisin sauce in a proportion 1 to 2. Slurp noisily as often as you must until you feel back on your feet and your brain is nestling comfortably once more.