Sometimes you just HAVE to make soup. Despite being about 35C today here in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Miss 16 has been sick with fever and been in bed for a couple of days. Yes, we ARE staying home away from others and No, we have NO intention of getting tested for anything. It's quite obvious to this experienced mom that she has a basic dose of teenage post-exam tonsillitis and is having some trouble swallowing. So a SPICY 🌶 healing vegan soup was on the menu for Sunday brunch.
After 18 years living in Thailand I've learned enough of classical Thai cooking to be able to break the rules well, and create authentic tasting fusion that suits our health priorities better.
Preparation time: about 20 mins
Servings: Serves 2
Ingredients:
- 1 red onion
- 2 large cloves garlic
- 1 teaspoon Thai red curry paste
- 2 tablespoons rice bran oil
- 1 cup coconut milk
- 4 cups water
- 1 teaspoon mineral or Himalayan salt
- Mushrooms - 2 to 3 big handfuls - I used a mix of shitake and straw mushrooms
- 1 bunch of either broccolini or bok choy
- 2 small Thai chilis
- Rice noodle - enough for 2
- Fresh Coriander leaves
- Spring onions
- Half a juicy lime
Before I start cooking, I often like to simply LOOK at the gorgeous fresh abundance spread out on the kitchen bench and visually SAVOR it for a moment. I mean, we are sooo blessed! The fresh ingredients here in Thailand inspire me to cook constantly!
Method.
I basically start by chopping the garlic and slicing the onion finely. DON'T use a boring white western onion if you can help it - zero flavor. A yummy, crisp and pungent hom daeng (as we call red onions here in Thailand) is definitely the better option. Heat the oil in a good stainless steel saucepan (see - told you it was fusion - a Thai person makes soup in a wok! 😆) and stir fry the onion, garlic and the red curry paste. Stir till it starts to brown.
Add the coconut milk, water and salt and bring it to the boil.
Why salt? A Thai person would add fish sauce at the end and never add salt. Me? I prefer good mineral salt for nutritional purposes and we also don't eat SOY (so no soy sauce) - due to the nasty GMOs and chemicals it contains. So if you add salt, add it now. If you prefer fish or spy sauce for your salty flavor, add it at the very end.
Next we add the mushrooms (chopped, sliced or whatever), the BOTTOM part of the greens and the chopped chili.
A quick word about the chili. I generally use middle of the road Thai chili - the bigger Thai chilis are, the LESS spicy they are. I used 2 chilis not quite as big as my little finger, and we had a spicy soup that cleared the cobwebs but didn't burn or overwhelm the dish. If you use the tiny Thai priki-nu chilis, you might want to consider only 1. 😆🌶 Remember that the red curry paste in our broth already has a weeny kick to iit.
Bring it all to a rolling boil for about 10 mins, till the crunchy part of the greens are cooked but not soggy.
Your kitchen will smell like a Thai restaurant right about now. 😋 For extra authentic Thai flavour, we suggest you toss in the washed roots of the coriander - boil them with everything else and pull them out when serving.
If your green bottoms are starting to look tenderish, it's time to toss in the green tops. Today I used regrown broccoli greens which are super cheap at our local Thai market and not remotely bitter. Broccolini is good too, and bok choy or pak choy are both great too. Notice the grubs have been at them?? ORGANIC for the win. Wash well and rehome any living critters still munching.
Submerge the greens and you need to work quickly - you don't want to COOK the greens, just pleasantly wilt them. So have everything prepared before you start!
Next in goes the rice noodle. Today I used a slightly thicker rice noodle than normal (it was all the local market vendor had over the Thai New Year long weekend) but it doesn't matter - anything from a glass noodle up works.
AS SOON AS THE RICE NOODLE HAS WILTED into the soup, turn off the heat. With bigger noodles, this may take 1 minute. With glass noodles (woon sen) this will be instant.
Add the coriander and sliced spring onion.
And a generous squeeze of fresh lime.
Cover and let it rest for 5 mins for the noodle to absorb the flavours, and the flavours to meld. Thai food is never served really hot! - that's considered rude.
To serve, use tongs to place the noodle in your bowls first. Then a spoon to pile the mushroom and veggies on top. And then pour the yummy spicy coconut soup over.
And YES, in Thailand we eat noodle soup with chopsticks!! 😆 And an Asian style spoon for the broth. Interesting cultural note: many Thai people NEVER eat the broth at all, and leave it behind! 😲
ENJOY your kitchen moments.
COOK for the ones you love.
Don't be afraid to EXPERIMENT & IMPROVISE.
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Yummy yummy, great meal
It truly was!! Looks like you're brand new to Hive @zoetech - WELCOME!! And congrats on starting out with a great engagement habit form the get-go.
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Actually I see you're struggling to find your feet on Hive - WELL DONE YOU for sticking with it!! Post ORIGINAL content most every day & engage freely with others and it will happen and work for you!!
Thanks, I make original posts, thou needs more encouragement, then am joining contest as well
ENGAGEtoday.My mama @buckaroo says that you always make yummy food! She loves soup. She also loves coriander. Mama uses whatever she can find in the garden to make salads or soup. My favourite is when she adds sun dried tomatoes. Yours with the spicy and mushrooms sounds delicious @artemislives
Always nice to see a second account popping up!! Welcome to Hive little one! 😍 Your mama, @buckaroo, sounds like a wise woman indeed!! Sun dried tomatoes are AWESOME things! Truly!! But hard to make in the tropics without molds getting involved. One day it will happen here when my solar dehydration system is happening.
Off to check out what you're up to, @buckaroobaby
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ENGAGEtoday.This is really delicious food! ..!wine
It's a simple, easy Sunday lunch but yes, it WAS really delicious! 😊
Hope you are learning to cook Asian in Suriname with what you have too... the fusion cuisine is, to me, always where the magic is to be found.
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ENGAGEtoday.Oh wow! This really looks delicious. Hope Miss 16 feels better soon.
It was pretty darn good! Definitely at the fusion end of Thai food but managed to impress even Miss 16. She's a little perkier tonight - I like to think the soup helped.
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ENGAGEtoday.Drooling over here, I love Thai soup and have done it a few times myself thou yours is on another level so I'll be looking at your recipe next time I make one 😁
Drool away, Mr!! It's so easy to make once you grasp the basic way Thai cooking achieves it's flavours. I'm guessing lemongrass is not a "thing" as far south as you are in South America - but thank goodness for packaged, inexpensive Thai curry pastes, right??
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ENGAGEtokens.I don't mind a rulebreaker, for I'm quite fond of culinary rebels. Looks like a delicious preparation, especially those straw mushrooms, which I haven't seen in ages. Thanks for sharing.
@NaturalMedicine supports wellness of body, mind, soul and earth on HIVE.
Come say hi via Lotus Chat or drop by our Hive Community - we'd love to have you!
I'm guessing Suriname doesn't grow rice then? 😆 You MUST have some awesome local mushrooms tho?? - I mean, tropical = steamy = mushrooms! Any mushrooms being cultivated locally? If not, I see a niche business for you!! So easy in a bamboo or coconut constructed mushroom house with a small solar powered water system.
Hope you guys are doing well.
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There is rice grown here near Guyana, but I've never been. We've hardly been anywhere in the two years we've been stranded here, things are just so expensive and a car is needed to get most things done, so it's just out of our reality. We've done a bit of catering here, but ultimately Hive is our full-time job. I hate to admit Pov and I both aren't interested in doing any kind of business here, and we've only had leaving on our minds since the day we arrived. We've got lots of love to see us through though, and good food.
Love & food go a long way to helping most things resolve. The mindset of leaving is going to kill any opportunities that are there, that's true. Any idea of when you will be able to leave, and where are you headed next then?
ENGAGEtoday.This soup looks delicious and I'm sure your daughter must have liked it and it sure helped her recover from her tonsillitis. As I always say, I love soups, they are one of the dishes that I never tire of eating, and although I live in a very warm climate, I still prepare and eat them. I love how you explain everything: Your story and introduction to the recipe, the one that you indicate that you make certain variations on Thai cuisine. On the other hand, you place the ingredients with their respective amounts, (this is very important in any recipe), and an impeccable step by step. Good result. Greetings.
Esta sopa se ve deliciosa y estoy segura de que a tu hija le debe haber caído muy bien y de seguro la ayudó a recuperarse de su amigdalitis. Como siempre digo, a mí las sopas me encantan, son uno de los platos que no me canso jamás de comer, y aunque vivo en un clima muy cálido, igualmente las preparo y las como. Me encanta cómo explicas todo: Tu historia e introducción a la receta, el que indiques que haces ciertas variaciones con respecto a la cocina tailandesa. Por otra parte colocas los ingredientes con sus cantidades respectivas, (esto es muy importante en toda receta), y un paso a paso impecable. Buen resultado. Saludos.
I mean RIGHT - how can anyone tire of soup??!! I eat FAR MORE HOT SOUP since I live in Asia than I ever did in cold, windy southern Australia. And Asian people get it that hot, spicy food is a wonderful way to balance and nourish the body when it' a sweat-box outside.
I rarely use recipes so documenting the way I cook is somewhat of a challenge - grateful it made sense to someone other than me. 😆
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ENGAGEtoday.Yum! You have been curated @sirenahippie on behalf of FoodiesUnite.net on #Hive. Thanks for using the #foodie tag. We are a tribe for the Foodie community with a unique approach to content and community and we are here on #Hive.
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Aaaw - thanks for the foodie boost, @sirenahippie - let there be more cooking, more happy eating and more sharing of yummy recipes!
Hi! I would love to see more recipes made by you, this one is great. Greetings.
I DO regularly publish cooking/recipe posts from time to time and have done through my whole 2.5 years on Hive. 😊 Actually I should pause and give a tribute here to @eco-alex who started me on cooking posts with the very first @ecotrain "Medicinal Cooking Challenge" way back when.
Following you from Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand and appreciating the reblog. Thank you.
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ENGAGEtoday.