This post was supposed to be about pho, the Vietnamese noodle soup. Unfortunately, my photos didn’t turn out, so I will leave you with two links for vegetarian pho:
Pho is traditionally a beef noodle soup, so the lack of beef is a pretty obvious change. Both recipes are pretty similar – vegetarian Vietnamese broth made with cinnamon and star anise to which tofu or seitan is added along with rice noodles and assorted toppings.
I didn’t have “clear vegetable stock,” just canned veggie broth. I used half broth, half water, but I think I would up it to 3:1 or even use all broth. The reason I didn’t use all-broth was because I was nervous that it would make the soup too salty with that plus the added soy sauce. It ended up being a little bland, but a little salt might make up the difference?
Also, both recipes call for one pound of rice noodles. Maybe they meant one pound cooked, but I used a 16 ounce package and fed three of us with maybe 1/3 of the noodles. That’s a lot of noodles! There are enough left over for another bowl of pho and to make pad Thai. I do enjoy rice noodles.
So, despite the photo failure, the soup itself was decent. It could use some tweaking, I think, but the first time through I try to follow the recipe before playing too much. So go make pho and tell me what to fix!
