Spicy Vietnamese Soup

SoupAddict is really, really, really ready for official soup season to begin.

SoupAddict knows what you’re thinking: How can someone named SoupAddict not eat soup all year ’round?

[Leans in]  Well, let SoupAddict tell you how.

It was hot this summer, People.

Hot.

SoupAddict rarely ventured outside, except to make sure the irrigation lines were working and to pick the occasional vegetable or herb. Even though SoupAddict has substantial gardens, weeding wasn’t necessary: it was too hot for even the weeds. SoupAddict and air conditioning were BFFs.

Just thinking about consuming hot liquids made SoupAddict’s brain go gooshy. So, she went the soupless, iced-coffee route, June through September, when more days than not, it was over 90° and extremely humid.

Pity poor SoupAddict. She was hot and soupless all summer long.

Until now. October kicked summer out on its butt, and soup is back on the menu. For today’s edition of French Fridays with Dorie, we have Spicy Vietnamese Soup, a nice, simple chicken soup with Asian leanings. SoupAddict is a veteran of many, many chicken soups, and took several shortcuts to make this a one-pot deal. The effort was a relaxing return to a familiar and beloved cooking routine. Viva La Soup!

SoupAddict was really excited to use star anise (center — you know, the star-shaped things), which she rarely remembers she even has. She was also happy to use her home-grown cilantro, lemon grass and coriander seeds (lower right). Per Dorie’s suggestion, SoupAddict made the curry version of this soup. SoupAddict highly recommends it. Which is why Dorie suggested it. Because Dorie is really smart. Not because SoupAddict recommended it. Dorie doesn’t know from SoupAddict, even though SoupAddict still talks to Dorie’s picture as though she does.

(Which, by the way, SoupAddict will deny admitting to that if ever asked. And there will be no proof because this is the interwebs, and the interwebs is safe and private, and information never falls into the hands of people who will use it against you. Like the picture of the shrimp tree incident at the open-bar office xmas party. No, sirreee. Safe as houses.)

SoupAddict has a large collection of dried peppers, so she grabbed a cascabel instead of the regular ole chili pepper called for in the recipe. If she had been more on the ball (it’s a given, of course, that she wasn’t), she would’ve forgone the pepper and instead used these awesome chili threads, which she recently purchased and utterly adores, as a soup topper.

SoupAddict was stunned at how difficult it was to find appropriate noodles for this soup. Cincinnati isn’t necessarily a food metropolis, but most everything can be found. Only Fresh Market had the right noodles, and the lone package was misshelved and unpriced, even in the store’s computer system.

Cilantro and lime — SoupAddict’s very favorite flavor combination. It’s true. As she’s said elsewhere on this site, SoupAddict would bet today’s paycheck that lime grows on cilantro plants, so companionable they are, if it weren’t for the fact that she grows a lot of cilantro and never once has a lime been produced from the effort.

SoupAddict has enjoyed this soup every day at lunch this week, making her grateful that she’s never sought help for her one and only vice. (Yes, one. And only. Don’t make that scrunchy face at SoupAddict. She only tells the truth.)

(As far as you know.)