To make today just that little bit nicer, I decided to make some vegan pho. For those not familiar with pho, it’s a traditional Vietnamese noodle soup, usually made with chicken or beef broth as the base. Hearty, warming, spicy and delicious, just what we needed on a bit of a dreary Monday.

For my vegan soup base, I used this great recipe from Emily at The Kitchn as my inspiration, but made a few changes to include some miso in the broth and make use of the spices I had available to me. I also simmered the broth for longer to allow the flavours to develop.

When it was time to eat, I loaded up my bowl with baked tofu cubes, bok choy, bahn pho noodles and thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms, then garnished with bean sprouts, cilantro and sriracha.

Perhaps not a traditional pho, but it certainly works as a vegan version! The only problem with this recipe is it only makes two bowls. You might want to double it if you want leftovers, or if you’re really hungry after a day of complaining about politics.

Vegan Pho
Inspired by The Kitchn

Broth (none of these ingredients need to be chopped perfectly, as most will be strained out of the final product):
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
1 2-inch piece of ginger root, peeled and chopped into 2 or 3 pieces
1 cinnamon stick
1 star anise or 1/2 teaspoon anise seed, if you can’t find star anise
2 cloves
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
4 cups water
2 tablespoons miso (use a rice-and-bean-based miso if you’re sensitive to gluten)
1 teaspoon soy sauce (gluten-free for those who can’t do gluten!)
4 carrots, washed well or peeled then chopped

Other ingredients:
1/2 pound pho noodles (dried flat rice noodles – you can use any width you like, even the ones packaged as ‘pad thai noodles’)
1/2 a block of tofu, cut into small cubes and baked or pan fried until lightly browned
3 baby bok choy, washed and ends removed, then lightly steamed
1/2 cup sliced shiitake mushrooms, steamed with the bok choy

For serving: bean sprouts, cilantro, sriracha (other things you could use include green onions, Thai basil, lime wedges, chile peppers)

To make the broth: put the chopped onion and ginger in a small pan and cook them under the broiler until they are browned but not burnt, 5-10 minutes. While they brown (keep an eye on them, the broiler can turn things from brown to black in about 2.2 seconds flat!), place the cinnamon, anise, cloves and coriander in a large pot and place on the stove over medium heat, stirring every so often to prevent burning.

Once your spices are nice and aromatic and your onion and ginger are ready to go, put the rest of the broth ingredients into the pot with the onion and ginger. Let come up to a gentle simmer, then cover and let cook for 1 hour.

Strain the broth, making sure to reserve the liquid and get rid of the carrots and other vegetable bits. I know usually we do the opposite in the kitchen, so I figured a reminder might be appreciated! Yes, I’ve nearly lost broth on more than one occasion because I was on auto-pilot, how did you guess?

When the broth is nearly finished cooking, you can prepare your noodles according to package directions. You want them to be a bit chewy – don’t overcook them to the falling apart stage.

To assemble: Place half the noodles into a bowl, and top with half the tofu, bok choy and mushrooms. Cover with half the broth. Make a second bowl exactly like the first. Let each person add in their preferred amounts of cilantro, bean sprouts and any other toppings you like.

Eat!

^*For those not catching what I mean, pho is pronounced like ‘fuh’ not ‘foe’. Ahem.

Rich got me the Paris Cafe cookbook for Christmas, and this seemed like a good time to pull it out. We decided on three dishes: a simple but hearty French onion soup, a garlicky omelette, and a classic crème brûlée. While we were excited about the entire meal, we were most looking forward to trying to make crème brûlée with the vanilla beans Rich had given me as part of my Christmas gift this year. However, dessert had to wait until we’d enjoyed our appetizers and mains!

The soup was very easy to make, requiring only some thinly sliced onions, butter, a touch of flour, white wine, water, and a bouquet garni. One it is prepared, you put it into oven-safe bowls with a piece of toasted baquette on top, and a liberal sprinkle of shredded cheese (we used Emmental). As you can see from the picture, the soup was so good that we forgot to actually take a picture until it was nearly gone!

The second dish was the omelette. Now, an omelette is a very simple dish and easy to make, although I think many people in North America try to make it more complicated than it needs to be. Our version required eggs, butter, chives, parsley, garlic, and salt and pepper. Each was cooked just until mostly dry on top. Do not flip or fold! Garnish with black olives and served with some more slices of baguette. This dish was also very good and I’d be more than happy to make it as dinner during the week, as it was quick to prepare and made for quick clean-up.

As for the dessert, we’d been looking forward to buying a mini torch all week and making crème brûlée with it. Unfortunately, a trip to several stores turned up nothing but large propane torches. It might have been amusing attempting to brûlée with one of those, but we decided it was probably better to just try using the broiler.

The first stage in making crème brûlée involves making a simple custard. Take your vanilla beans and scrape out the seeds into a pot of heavy cream. Toss in the vanilla pods and heat together just until boiling, then remove from the heat and allow to cool to at least 165F (cooler is ok too, just hotter is not, as it will cook your eggs). Then, beat egg yolks in with some sugar until lightened. Remove the vanilla beans from the cream mixture, and pour it, a little at a time, into the egg mixture, whisking very lightly in between additions. Then pour the mixture into ramekins and place in a pan filled part-way with hot water. Different recipes will tell you different amounts of water to use; we tried to make sure about a half inch was in the pan. The whole thing then went into the oven for 30 minutes.

After our custards were baked and cooled, we then topped them with sugar and stuck then back into the oven under the broiler. As you can see from the picture, the sugar did caramelize, but not as much as it would if we’d used a torch. Even so, we did have a nice crust and the flavour was still what we’d expected. So if you are unable to find a torch, don’t worry too much about it.

We finished the night off with a few small glasses of a 1999 German Pinot Noir ice wine we’d picked up last time we were in Montreal. We found this to be much less sweet than any Canadian ice wine we’d ever had, and think we’ll probably try to pick up another bottle.

Now that our cholesterol has been sufficiently raised by last night’s meal, we’re off to Bridgehead cafe to enjoy a little dark roast. Perhaps I’ll write a post about them sometime soon.

mmmsoup

Originally uploaded by nyxie.

Rich recently found this soup via a link from slashfood, and immediately decided we should try making it. It was very easy to make, and quite delicious indeed.

As the original author mentions, any sort of pumpkin or winter squash will do with this recipe; we opted for some of the butternut squash we found at our local Superstore. We also left out the chipotle pepper, because we would never end up using the remaining peppers in the jar before they went bad. Instead, we sprinkled in some red pepper flakes to give the soup a bit of a kick. I assume the chipotle peppers would give more smokey flavour to the soup, but it was great without them.

If you’d like to try making it yourself, the receipe is available here