As promised - the Faux Pho recipe 
You will need:
- 4 cups water
- Chicken stock powder to taste
- handful shallots
- Finely chopped onion
- Five spice powder, cumin and cinnamon to taste
- Pho (flat rice noodles)
- 400gm thinly sliced beef
- two handfuls of fresh basil
Throw chicken stock powder into hot water - taste carefully to check if you need to add more. Add shallots and onion. Add five spice powder, cumin and cinnamon to taste. Cook over slow heat until the onion starts to soften. Add half a packet of pho (flat rice noodles) and a handful of holy basil. When the noodles are nearly cooked, add beef. Add more basil to serve and consume while it is still warm.
This is definately not as good as a proper stock made by boiling beef bones for hours and hours. But it is good enough for a lazy slightly hung over brunch.
This recipe is adapted from one originally posted on Facibus Reviews.
There is a wonderful Easy Beef Wellington recipe over at cooks.com - they call it “Individual Beef Wellington Steaks”. If you are carnivorous and like steak slathered in mushrooms and don’t mind the taste of pate you’ll probably love it. Here is my faux cuisine version.
You’ll need:
One sirloin/tenderloin steak (200-300gm) per person
One sheet frozen puff pastry per person
Two tablespoons tinned mushrooms in butter sauce per person
Butter to seal
Pate - equivalent of one tablespoon per person (use more to taste)
Salt and pepper
- Grab trimmed steaks, season with salt and pepper,
- Cook the steaks in a hot (200 degrees Celsius) oven for ten minutes,
- Chill the steaks (I wait until they are a little cool then put them in the refridgerator).
- Onto a thawed sheet of puff pastry, put a couple of tablespoons of cooked mushrooms (being lazy I used tinned mushrooms in butter sauce, it worked fine).
- Put the steak onto the mushrooms then slather the pate over the steak
- Wrap the puff pastry around the whole lot, seal with butter, bake at 200 celsius until the pastry is brown and puffy, eat. Mmmm
Note: This recipe is adapted from one originally posted at Facibus Reviews.
If your mileage varies, tell me. Like all faux cuisine, experiment, but experiment with friends before trying a given variation with people you are trying to impress.
