27 January 2012

Vegetarian Pho


St. Louis has a wealth of Vietnamese restaurants, and for years I've been irritated that there was no vegetarian version of pho, the national dish of Vietnam.  It always looks so appealing steaming in its big bowl with all sorts of fresh stuff on the side.  Then, I spotted this at Local Harvest Grocery, the coolest store in St. Louis, which I can walk to from my house!  The thing about making this soup is you have to buy the stuff and use it soon.  Bean sprouts and cilantro do not last long in the fridge.  I winged the recipe since the hard part was already taken care of with the stock.  I was pretty excited to find brown rice vermicelli at Jay's, but I doubt it will be there the next time I look for it.
 Above you see my beloved sriracha, pho stock, noodles, bean sprouts, cilantro, a lime, sliced jalepeno and sliced green onions.  After I took this photo I decided to throw in kale and seitan, but they are of course optional.  Rice noodles are soaked rather than boiled, so besides heating the stock, there's really not a lot of cooking involved.  To serve, place noodles, kale and seitan in a large bowl.  On the side, serve all the optional stuff to be added during the course of eating this incredibly delicious soup.

3 comments:

Shaheen said...

There are no Vietnamese restaurants in the West of Scotland that i know of, may be some in Wales when I move - so Iwill have to seek them out. Anyway, never had Pho - interested in your veggie version, esp as it contains one of my fave ingredients - yes Sriracha - I am so grateful to the Malaysian students at Glasgow Uni for introducing me to it. I love it with potato chips in place of ketchup!

e said...

It is the perfect sauce. I eat it with cold tofu on wasa crackers.

sechale said...

Ooh ... will also try this one ... :)