Is that lemon in your soup?

May 6, 2008

Posted in: Cooking

Tags: Chicken, coconut, coconut milk, Cooking, fish sauce, flavor, ginger, hobby, juice, lemongrass, lime, milk, recipe, THAI, tom kha gia

I grew up learning to cook from my mom. One of those guys who could cook better then most of the girls I’ve ever known (in fact a lot couldn’t even boil water…lol).

At any rate, I love cooking - it’s one of the ways I get rid of stress. There’s been times when I thought I’d make a career out of it, one being a bad idea when I was 17 and it involved the Navy. But I figured that like all my hobbies, it I turned it into a career I’d end up hating it. So I kept it as a hobby.

What I learned from my mom is that you only use a recipe as a reference or starting point. What I mean is, if you were to ask my mom how to make something that you happened to have for dinner one day, she’d tell you “Well I didn’t write it down”. Or you could always count on the it doesn’t taste like it did last time phenomenon. But I Love my mom, and her brand of cooking - and what kind of cook it turned me into, how else would we end up with such classics as green curry cottage cheese eggs.

So what am I up to today? Well it just so happens we’re having a get together (while this isn’t a remarkable thing, we have them quite often) for my sister in law’s graduation. She wanted a THAI theme. So I said I would make my famous tom kha gai. I first encountered this at a local Thai place and fell in love, just not with the prices so I decided to make my own version.

Now I like simple recipes, I’m not a big fan of fractions either so I make things according to taste a lot of the time. The recipe I’m about to offer, is simple in my mind, but may not be to a non-experimenter.

1 32oz Chicken broth
2 can coconut milk
~2 lemongrass stalks / lemongrass paste
grated ginger (2 Tbsp)
1 lime juice
2 chicken breasts
chives (green onion/salad onion)
1 can straw mushrooms
3 Tbsp fish sauce

Take the brother, lemongrass, ginger, fish sauce, lime juice and put it in a pot and bring it to a boil. The lemongrass cut down into 2 inch pieces and bruise it up a bit to bring out the flavor. I like to turn it down to a simmer and cook down a little, so go for about 20 minutes or so.

Get a cheese cloth or fine strainer and move the liquid from one to pot to the other, strain out all the little bits of stuff and the lemongrass. Now we add the 2 cans of coconut milk and the chicken. Turn the heat up so it can boil, but stir it so it doesn’t skin up. Give it a taste, it should have a lemony, salty milk flavor. You can modify accordingly, if you think it needs it. I tend to lean on the lime/lemon side so I add a bit more lime juice - but it’s all to taste. Add in the mushrooms.

I suggest boiling this for another 10 minutes and then setting to simmer for 20. This give you time to get some jasmine rice cooking. Depending on your serving time, you can add the green onions in about 5 minutes before you serve - that’ll keep they’re green color too. Then server in a bowl with some rice - it’s ever so good!

Posted in Cooking