With all the craziness we’ve had, schedule-wise, the last
couple of weeks, I completely forgot to tell you a story about our latest round
of vegetarian pho! It’s a cautionary
tale, so beware.
I’ve made this pho recipe a hundred times, all with great
success. When you get right down to it,
it’s an easy meal to make – the only time-consuming part is the hour spent
baking the tofu strips to add in at the last!
And this instance was no exception.
The tofu baked beautifully, the noodles cooked up as they should, and
the broth was as tasty and flavorful as ever.
The problem, we learned too late, came with our mix-ins.
Upon serving the pho, LeeLee and I always add lots of fresh
vegetables to the top of the dish.
Basil, bean sprouts, jalapenos, and Sriracha are mainstays, and last
Sunday was no different.
What was different – again, we learned this much too late –
was the spiciness of our jalapeno.
Without thinking twice, LeeLee and I each put four or five
slices of the pepper into our bowls, then (and this was another mistake) doused
the whole dish with a liberal helping of Sriracha sauce. Then we dug in … and that’s when we saw,
crystal-clear through tear-streaked eyes, the error of our ways.
The HEAT! The
SPICE! The cough-inducing, grabbing-for-water,
can’t-breathe PAIN!
This was perhaps the hottest jalapeno either of us had ever
eaten in our lives. It was so hot, in
fact, that after a few more minutes of attempting to gamely choke down spoonful
after spoonful, we threw in the towel, threw out the pho, and served ourselves
some leftover noodles from the colander, topping them with more baked tofu and
vegetables – but not the jalapeno.
So our planned pho became an unplanned tofu-with-noodles
dish, with a sinus-clearing intermission.
It could’ve been worse! And we’ve
learned a valuable lesson: Always, ALWAYS check the heat of your chilies, even
those you’ve used a thousand times. You
never know when a pepper will jump up and slap you in the face.
:)
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