Traditionally, pho is a seriously beefy soup – beef bones and meat are simmered for a few hours along with charred onion and ginger, toasted star anise and cloves, and other aromatics, and thinly sliced sirloin is cooked in the hot broth at service – and there’s really nothing like it. Still, sometimes you want something cleaner and lighter, or something you can make with just what you have on hand. (And it’s surprising how few of the ingredients here are at all difficult to find. Even the rice noodles, dried shiitake, and star anise aren’t too hard to track down, especially if you’re near an Asian market, natural foods grocery, or even just a slightly above-average supermarket.)

This recipe – based on one from Mai Pham’s Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table (essential if you’re interested in cooking Vietnamese food) – uses shiitake mushrooms and lightly fried tofu in place of the beef, though the tofu is hardly essential – you could add sauteed fresh mushrooms, thinly sliced and sauteed collard greens, or anything else you have on hand. (The shiitakes are the real workhorses of this recipe – they flavor the broth and provide texture in the finished bowl.) This recipe isn’t – and isn’t aiming to be – a substitute for beef pho, but with the charred onions and ginger and toasted star anise and cloves (which, along with the beef, are the defining flavors of traditional pho), it has the flavor of the real thing, and it’s plenty delicious in its own right.

Ingredients

1 ounce dried shiitake mushrooms

2 medium yellow onions, halved

1 2-inch piece of ginger, washed but unpeeled, cut in half lengthwise

3 carrots, peeled and cut into 2-inch segments

1/4 cup soy sauce

1 tablespoon salt, or more to taste

1 tablespoon sugar, or more to taste

4 whole star anise

4 whole cloves

1 pound dried rice noodles (1/16-1/8-inch wide; sometimes labeled "banh pho" or "pad thai noodles")

1 tablespoon neutral oil (canola, vegetable, grapeseed)

8 ounces firm tofu

1/2 onion, sliced as thinly as possible

3 scallions, cut into thin rings

1/2 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped

5 sprigs basil

1 pound bean sprouts

2 jalapeño chiles, sliced into thin rings (or any other chile you want)

1 lime, cut into 6 wedges

Method