Delicious History

There is nothing better as a home cook than demystifying food that seems complicated. I like to experiment on Sundays with new dishes that might serve as excellent lunches during the coming work week. I double or triple the recipe without adding additional meat for some recipes. If it happens to be healthy, then all the more reason to eat it.

I have to earn a living, but i do not have to eat Subway or Lean Cuisine. I love life too much!

Last week’s featured lunch was not especially healthy, but it wasn’t evil, either. I love Thai chicken soup with coconut milk, lemon grass, and cilantro. I adapted this dish from America’s Test Kitchen. I boosted the garlic and added red bell pepper.

The soup begins with a base of shallots, lemon grass, and cilantro.  Soften the vegetables over medium high heat.  Add coconut milk and low sodium chicken broth to start your base.  This is some seriously concentrated flavor.

Strain the base and enjoy the fragrant steam.  Add more coco milk, mushrooms, and chopped chicken.  Thai chilies liven up the party. Add the red bell pepper and curry/chili paste and simmer.  The and chili heat is mellowed by the rich coconut broth. The sharp lemon grass and citrus heighten the flavors.

For lunch, I packed along a slaw with a simple dressing of rice vinegar, fish sauce, lime juice, and a little sugar. Pork and cabbage dumplings make the salad a small meal unto itself. In the future, I’d rather have a few small shrimp on the salad instead of the dumplings.

Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the soup for lunch and a couple dinners that week. Since I tripled the recipe, I had plenty to share with friends and co-workers. Best of all, a seemingly exotic dish was demystified.

Thai chicken and coconut soup

Sautee 1 tsp vegetable oil, 3 stalks thinly sliced lemon grass (approx. the bottom 5 inches), 3 large chopped shallots, 1/4 cup chopped cilantro, 1 tbl fish sauce.

stir in 32 oz low sodium chicken broth and 14 oz of coconut milk. Simmer over high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer 10 mins. Strain broth.

stir in another 14 oz coco milk and i tbl sugar. Bring to simmer. Reduce heat to medium, add 1/2 pound white mushrooms, 3 chopped Thai chilies, and 1 diced red pepper. Cook 2-3 minutes. Add 1 pound chopped chicken breast and stir for 2-3 minutes. Remove soup from heat.

Whisk 3 tbl fresh lime juice, 2 tbl fish sauce, and 2 tsp Thai red curry paste. I used one made specifically for Thai (hot and sour/Tom Yum Kung) soup.

garnish with diced cilantro, scallions, thinly-sliced Thai, jalapeno, or Serrano chilies, and more lime juice.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 7:03 pm and is filed under Cooking and Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.