I’ve always been a soup lover, but I have definitely been craving soup more than usual all winter. Nothing makes me feel so warm all over as eating soup or drinking coffee — both just seem to radiate their inner warmth throughout my whole body in a way that no other foods do. I’ve been on a particular kick for pho dac biet because there just happens to be an awesome Vietnamese place not too far from my office, but I’m pretty open to just about any soupy suggestion.
I’m guessing that Old Man Winter is getting to a lot of people, because this morning I ran across not one, not two, but THREE soup recipes on the assorted food blogs I read.
This French garlic soup at FXCuisine looks just awesome. Roasted garlic is sweet and deep with the flavor of the caramelization, so it should make for a flavorful broth. The recipe says to use water or stock for the liquid, and in the photos it’s water, but I would go with vegetable stock and a splash of sherry. The critical thing is to get a good roux so that when you add the liquid you get a smooth but velvety broth. The next time we have guests for dinner, I am feeding them this soup, guaranteed.
At Too Many Chefs, Meg, the Paris-based half of the team, has a nice recipe for Chicken Soup With Rice. Drive all thoughts of Campbell’s Soup out of your mind once and for all with a simple recipe like this. Canned chicken soups are all far too salty and never taste like actual chicken. Home-made chicken rice soup should be a little thick and cloudy from the starch of the rice and taste like roast chicken. This recipe doesn’t include the process for making chicken stock, but using the carcass from a roasted chicken to make stock gets that deeper flavor into the liquid. If you have to use store-bought stock, don’t feel guilty, just promise yourself that another time you’ll make the stock yourself.
While pho is most commonly made with beef stock and sliced beef, it is also made with chicken and called pho ga. For pho broth, beef or chicken, you are better off making your own from scratch than trying to doctor up commercially-made broth, because the broth is light and delicate and infused with things like star anise and cinnamon. This post by Thy Tran on her food blog should convince you that ANYBODY can make authentic Vietnamese chicken broth with no trouble at all. To turn the broth into a bowl of pho, all you need are thin rice noodles and to shred the meat from the chicken you used to make the stock. Bean sprouts, basil leaves, lime wedges and sriracha are the typical garnishes, but she also threw in a recipe for vinegar-marinated onions that sounds very good. I might try to get my picky wife and child to eat this soup some Saturday night.
