Pho Bo soups are such a delicious, delicate and unique dish already, but adding a few extras like spinach and shiitakes makes it a touch more special. The usual traditional pho bo soup contains a few pieces of long cooked meat in it, but here I’ve simply used bones to make the broth and no extra meat pieces. The Shiitakes replace the meat pieces to perfection, in the resulting soup, only those thinly sliced raw pieces of meat remain in this pho version. The difficult part in this soup is to keep the broth clear, although fully packed in flavour. This means, pre boiling the bones at first and rinsing them, then never boiling, a good filter and really low coccion help with this. In my last pho recipe, I’ve add extra pieces of meat, during coccion which made my soup blurry, so as a perfectionist… I had to redo my broth,…
Banh Mi with Lemongrass Chicken is another one of those highlights from Vietnam. The sandwich got created back in Indochine, when the French were occupying Vietnam. That’s why it’s a baguette bread, although all the rest is Vietnamese flavors. I remember my first bite into a Banh Mi, it was in my college years back in Montreal, a sweet and sour, fresh crunchy cilantro and little touch of heat, the perfect bite for lunch. I would go for almost every lunch in this Vietnamese family owned restaurant. Then many years later, I’ve got the chance to visit beautiful Vietnam, a country hit by many wars, but the people’s attitude about it is so peaceful and forgiving, there are extremely resilient. Plus, this country is such a culinary paradise, they make an art out of noodles of all kinds, and their flavours are always done to perfection. There is many of those little food carts in…
Vietnam has some of the best gastronomic treasures on this earth, if you ask around which soup would be the most popular worldwide… I think the Pho soup would surely be in the top 5. The traditional Pho (vietnamese soup) is Pho Bo, the last 2 letters standing for Beef or there is also the Pho Ga which is done with chicken broth instead of beef. This recipe is a mix of both, with a 80% of homemade beef stock and 20% chicken. The result of this dish is a Pho Bo Ga. The origin of Pho isn’t clear, some say it’s from the occupation of the French in Vietnam, others say it from the Cantonese. Either way it’s a delicious soup, which you can eat for breakfast, to diner in Vietnam. I’ve visited Vietnam last year, and every single hotel would serve us pho for breakfast which is somehow…