09/01/2026
Episode 12 of the The Cinema Chefs is about blood, bones, and offal in Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom. To accompany it, I wanted to show you a few ways you might have encountered them (and perhaps didn’t know it).
One of my favorite soups from the Philippines is called bulalo. It is a simple soup with corn, bok choy, sometimes cabbage, and always bone marrow or a tender beef shank. The bone marrow melting into the homemade beef broth is what makes the broth so silky, slick, and satisfying.
If you want the recipe, search for bulalo on TASTE. I used sliced beef shank for this to get the big jewel of marrow. You can also use split marrow bones or use whole beef shank with the bone in tact.
Marrow and bones are important to pho. You parboil them and scrub them clean before making broth to get a nice, clear extraction.
Pho broth is an arduous task, but well worth the effort at the end. I mean, you get to have pho in your house! It is savory and nice, perfectly paired with fresh herbs like basil, cilantro, and mint.
I’m a big fan of bourride, a seafood soup popular in Provence and Languedoc (woefully under-sung as people mostly know bouillabaisse or chowder). Seafood broth is fortified with bone marrow and bacon to make a luscious fish stew.
Most banh mi will have pork or chicken liver in them. At some Vietnamese spots, you may also be able to add giò thủ or thinly sliced head cheese. I’m a huge fan of the minerality of chicken liver pate. Rustic pork pate has hammy bits and more fat. Beef liver pate has an irony taste, but all of them are excellent with any manner of pickle. Do chua, cornichon, pickled onions—mix and match to see what you like together.
Speaking of head cheese, my local butcher shop The Meat Hook sometimes has it in a loaf shape that you can enjoy on toast.
At Eataly, their head cheese looks more like culatello or lean prosciutto sheets. I like to put those on a warmed plate and sprinkle it with fennel pollen for a more spreadable, pate experience.
I save my bones in the freezer and when I have enough, I make broth in my slow cooker. Any broths with bones need about four hours and it’s best if you can roast them beforehand for extr
