The Cooking Critic

I wanted to like this soup. It had a lot of good qualities. It was good for me with all its veggies and tofu. But sadly, it just couldn’t hold my interest. The leftovers have been sitting in my refrigerator for a week untouched. I finally had some for lunch, and I was so uninterested that I got distracted while heating the soup and managed to burn it. I burned soup. I didn’t even know that was possible. The broth turned into a black layer at the bottom of the pan, so I poured more cold broth from the fridge over it, stirred it, heated it some more and ate it. It tasted better.

Adjustments/Assessment: I’m not going to even bother because I just don’t care.

I’ve been going to a lot of Vietnamese restaurants lately and eating pho. (That’s a brothy noodle soup for the uniniated. I didn’t know what it was myself until I moved to California.) Anyhow, I came across a recipe for Beef and Bok Choy Hot Pot, and while quite different from pho in a number of ways (broth is flavored differently, more vegetables, less fresh herbs), it held a similar appeal.

I was all set to use the replacement fettuccine, but came across the preferred rice noodles at Cost Market Plus. Score! I almost substituted some more beef broth for the water but with 1/3 cup rice vinegar and 1/3 of soy sauce, I realized the water was needed to dilute the broth, so the flavors wouldn’t be overpowering. They still were, actually.

I didn’t put in all the carrots and bok choy since I figure it will taste better to add them in one-person servings every time I eat the soup. Same with the noodles. This soup has too many additional components to freeze well. (I actually never freeze soup, even though I think it’s a good idea and wish I did.) I really liked that the carrots are added in the last five minutes of the cooking, so they retain some bite instead of turning into mushy orange disks. And I liked the use of ginger, which was nicely subtle. (I think ginger has a hard time being subtle sometimes. So attention-hungry that ginger.)

Adjustments: Full-salt beef broth instead of low-salt since that’s what I had in the house. I added another full cup of water to dilute the strong broth, and some people might prefer even further dilution. And I ran out of green onions! Now I know that the green onions wrapped in rubber bands at the grocery store equal exactly 1 cup. I needed a cup and a half.

Assessment: The hands-on time was probably only 30 minutes, but the simmer time was an hour and a half. If I’m going to wait two hours for something, it better taste pretty amazing. While this soup was good, I probably won’t make it again because it simply isn’t worth all the time. But I do have to say, on this rainy, cold day-after-making-the-soup, I’m really looking forward to lunch and my bowl of steaming broth and noodles. (Too much light reflecting in the pic. So it goes.)