I promised when I started this blog that I’d let you know about the ups and downs of cooking at home, so here I am, telling you about a culinary adventure that wasn’t all I hoped it would be. I got this recipe from an old issue of Vegetarian Times, which is typically pretty reliable–but sadly, while this soup looked great, it was a bit of a disappointment, taste-wise.
Pho is a traditional Vietnamese noodle soup, and authentic Pho is definitely not vegetarian. It typically uses a beef broth base, and some kind of meat. We made this one with vegetable stock and tofu–admittedly not the tastiest of ingredients, but there was enough prep that I thought it might turn into something delightful. In fact, the broth itself was a pretty lab0r-intensive process. I simmered for an hour in store-bought vegetable stock: a bunch of garlic, ginger, mushrooms, a cinnamon stick, fennel, basil and cilantro, soy sauce and a bit of sugar. After this was done, I poured off the solids and reserved the liquid, which did smell pretty nice. I then poured this broth over cooked rice noodles and the tofu (which Josh fried and sliced), and topped it all with green onions, basil, cilantro, and sugar snap peas.
The results were…well, bland. I tried adding a bit more soy sauce to my bowl, but this (unsurprisingly) just made it saltier. So, a disappointment. I’m trying to figure out what would have made it better (other than beef stock, obviously)…more sugar? More broth? Fewer basil leaves on top (which have a really strong and slightly overwhelming taste on their own)? What do you think? And while we’re on the subject, do you have a favorite vegetarian version of a traditionally meaty dish?
Recently, I had a hankering for tuna, but no mayonnaise (or, to be more precise, I had mayo that was suspect because of a previous incident that I won’t relate here in the interest of preserving your appetite). Fortunately, I remembered a way to make canned tuna delicious without the addition of egg products, and this tasty little sandwich was born.
As I mentioned 
When I first moved to Nashville and Josh was still in Boston, I became obsessed with Thai curries. At the time, I had no idea how to make them myself, so I became a regular at a Thai take-out place in town. In fact, I became such a regular that the workers seemed to recognize my voice and order on the phone, and I had to scale back my curry-consumption purely out of embarrassment. Scaling back, by the way, included the self-admonition not to order more than one curry take-out per week, which at times resulted in rather creative math on my part (“I just had it Tuesday, and today is Sunday, which is really 6 days if you think about it”).
We made an Asian-style slaw using some leftover bagged coleslaw mix, plus shredded carrots and broccoli stalks, frozen edamame, peanuts and cilantro. The dressing was actually an adaptation of something we once saw Paula Deen make, only without the butter (!). It’s pretty simple, using oil, cider vinegar, sugar and the seasoning packet from a package of Ramen noodles (I said cheap, right?)–but super tasty. I think the sweet and sour flavors are really fantastic with the peanuts and cilantro.
Using the Ramen noodles and broccoli crowns, we also made a Pad Thai-esque dish, with crispy tofu, egg and a delicious sauce I made out of store-bought plum sauce, Teriyaki, lime juice and a little vinegar. Not totally traditional, of course, but awesome to eat and constructed entirely out of stuff we just had lying around. Actually, I think this experience has given me a new-found love for Ramen, which I’d only ever had before in its awful salty-noodle-soup state. The noodles hold up well to stir frying (which has resulted in a sticky mess in some of my other ill-fated attempts with rice noodles), and with a little decent sauce, they’re well worth the 29 cents you have to drop in the grocery store.
