{"id":683,"date":"2014-09-24T10:53:32","date_gmt":"2014-09-24T15:53:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pcandres.com\/?p=683"},"modified":"2015-11-06T11:09:40","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T17:09:40","slug":"vive-le-vietnamese-french-onion-pho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?p=683","title":{"rendered":"Vive le Vietnamese: French Onion Pho"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none\"><iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fthesoupblog.com%2F%3Fp%3D683&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=true&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;width=450&amp;height=30\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width: 450px; height: 30px;\"><\/iframe><\/div><div id=\"attachment_684\" style=\"width: 370px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/French-Vietnam.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-684\" class=\"size-full wp-image-684\" title=\"French Vietnam\" src=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/French-Vietnam.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"538\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/French-Vietnam.jpg 360w, https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/French-Vietnam-100x150.jpg 100w, https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/French-Vietnam-200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-684\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Three Colors or Pho?<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I have been wanting to cook my version of French Onion Soup for quite a while, and this week turned out to be the perfect time.\u00a0 Or so I thought.<\/p>\n<p>Now, in case you hadn\u2019t noticed, I\u2019ve been trying to make my soups accessible to meat eaters and vegetarians alike.\u00a0 As a result, I\u2019ve slipped into the habit of using vegetable stock as the base for all my soups.\u00a0 For French Onion that\u2019s a mistake.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, things started out well enough. I cut several pounds of onions into thin slices and, to my daughter\u2019s surprise, I did not cry at all.\u00a0 Perhaps it because I was wearing reading glasses, but I don\u2019t know exactly why.\u00a0 Anyway, I proceeded to saut\u00e9 the onions in oil until they were soft and sweet, and then added several cups of stock and some white wine.<\/p>\n<p>Traditionally, French Onion soup is made with beef stock, and I suspect that not using it was the problem.\u00a0 It could also have been the wine.\u00a0 I have had some success with vermouth, but sauvignon blanc should have been just fine.<\/p>\n<p>I placed toasted bread at the bottom of each soup bowl, ladled onions and broth on top and crowned the service with grated cheese that melted over the top.\u00a0 But after all that, the soup just didn\u2019t have any oomph.<\/p>\n<p>As luck would have it, I was serving the soup with leftover slices of rare flank steak.<\/p>\n<p>Now, if you\u2019ll pardon a small digression I want to say that I really like rare roast beef, always have.<\/p>\n<p>I know it\u2019s not good for me, and may even be dangerous given the all too frequent \u201cmix-ups\u201d in the beef processing industry.\u00a0 But it\u2019s just so fresh&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>When I was a kid my mom used to take us to this deli called the Wine Cellar where they would serve these bulging piles of thinly sliced, very pink roast beef sandwiched between slices of rye.\u00a0 Nothing else.\u00a0 No mayo, no mustard, no lettuce, no tomato. Just beef and bread. It was fabulous.<\/p>\n<p>I like Steak Tartare too, although it\u2019s a bit more rare than I\u2019m comfortable with, as it is, in fact, raw. But Steak Tartare is French, so it will serve as a very tortured segue back to my French onion soup.<\/p>\n<p>Recall that I was sitting at the dining room table trying to figure out how I could salvage a sweet and flavorful but rather ho-hum soup. \u00a0(What excitement!)<\/p>\n<p>The answer came, as you may have guessed, from the beef.\u00a0 But it wasn\u2019t just a matter of reinserting beef into the recipe retroactively, although that\u2019s a good guess. No, the inspiration came from a Vietnamese dish known as Pho.<\/p>\n<p><em>NOTE: It\u2019s not a completely inappropriate pairing, since Vietnam was once a French colony.\u00a0 (Yes, we lost a war to a former French colony.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When the waiter serves you Pho, he brings out a hot bowl of noodles in broth and a large plate of ingredients with which you garnish the soup.\u00a0 These include basil, lime, bean sprouts, peppers and, my favorite, thin slices of raw beef.\u00a0 Not to worry, the hot broth cooks the beef and it comes out really good.<\/p>\n<p>So that\u2019s what I did, and it was just the right thing to finish my French onion soup, only then became French Onion Pho.<\/p>\n<p>It was a rare treat, not raw, just rare.<\/p>\n<p><strong>French Onion Pho<br \/>\n<\/strong>(serves 6-8)<br \/>\n3 \u00bd lbs brown or yellow onions, sliced<br \/>\n1-2 T olive oil<br \/>\n5 cups vegetable stock<br \/>\n1 cup dry white wine<br \/>\nSalt &amp; pepper, to taste<br \/>\nToasted bread slices<br \/>\n4-8 oz beef, sliced very thin<br \/>\nGruyere cheese, grated<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Peel the onions and slice them as you would to garnish      a hamburger (again with the beef), large round disks.<\/li>\n<li>Heat the oil in a 3 quart stock pot, add the onions and      saut\u00e9 until soft and brown, stirring occasionally.<\/li>\n<li>Add stock, wine and seasonings, bring to a boil and      reduce to a simmer for 20-30 minutes (you know the drill).<\/li>\n<li>Serve by placing the toasted bread (your choice here,      we used leftover bagels, which is probably sacrilege) in the bottom of the      bowls, then spoon the onions and broth on top.<\/li>\n<li>Here comes the fun part.<\/li>\n<li>Put a few pieces of sliced beef into the soup (<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">NOTE:      you may want to use beef that you\u2019ve already cooked, but please make it      rare<\/span>).<\/li>\n<li>Last you strew grated cheese across the top of the soup      and serve.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><em>Image Credit: Beef Vietnam over Tricolor by the author. (No offense intended.) <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>As I sit here now, I\u2019m wondering where the term \u201crare\u201d came from with respect to cooked meats.\u00a0 Well done is obvious, rare, not so much.\u00a0 If you know the answer, write it in a comment.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be reading <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">and<\/span> responding, and would love to hear.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have been wanting to cook my version of French Onion Soup for quite a while, and this week turned out to be the perfect time.\u00a0 Or so I thought. Now, in case you hadn\u2019t noticed, I\u2019ve been trying to make my soups accessible to meat eaters and vegetarians alike.\u00a0 As a result, I\u2019ve slipped [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113,15,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beef","category-cheese","category-onion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=683"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1165,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions\/1165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}