Thai soups are perfect for cold season. They're warming, easy to sip, and they'll clear your sinuses. The balance of spice, tart and salt can cut through even the most stuffed up palate. In my parents' La Puente backyard, we have lemongrass, a lime tree, and a kaffir lime tree that grows completely out of control. A couple of years ago, my parents decided to hire a gardener to take care of their thirsty plants out back. When the gardener lopped the tops off the unruly bushes hiding our house from the main road, the lone kaffir lime tree got a little haircut to even out the levels. My mom kind of freaked out about the loss of all of the fragrant kelly green leaves, so the gardener was told to keep his shears away; now the tree grows wildly above the tops of all of its neighbors. I miss having the ingredients fresh and handy, but Bangkok Center Grocery has everything you can't get at the normal markets. You could easily subsitute chicken for shrimp in Tom Yum Goong (which would make it Tom Yum Kai) if you've got something against crustaceans -- just add bone-in chicken bits at the same time as the lemongrass and skim the broth as it cooks. This soup is fairly easy to make, but it doesn't keep very well, so eat up and get well!
Tom yum goong
8 cups water
2 stalks lemongrass
2 inch piece of galangal, sliced into 1/8" pieces
5 smashed cloves of garlic
3 shallots, sliced thinly
5 double-leaves of kaffir lime leaves
2 handfuls oyster mushrooms, cut into large 3" pieces
(you can subsititute enoki mushrooms or canned straw mushrooms, which I am very fond of)
12 shrimp, peeled and deveined (or 8 shrimp, head-on for authenticity and more seafood flavor)
1 tbsp. nam prik phao, roasted chili paste in oil
Whole Thai chilies, optional (for spice fiends)
1 tbsp. fish sauce, plus more to taste
2 limes, juiced, plus more to taste
1/2 cup roughly chopped cilantro
Boil the water. Cut the lemongrass into 4 inch pieces, and smash each piece a couple of times with a mortar and pestle or the back of your knife. Drop them in the boiling water, along with the galangal, garlic, shallots, and lime leaves. Add 1 tbsp. fish sauce. Boil on medium heat for 20 minutes, until the broth is fragrant. Add the oyster mushrooms and optional fresh chilies, cook for another 3 minutes. Add the shrimp and cook until the shrimp is just opaque. Remove from heat. Add the lime juice, nam prik phao, cilantro and more fish sauce to taste.
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A note on kaffir lime leaves: as you can see here, the kaffir lime leaf grows with two leaves attached on top of each other on a single spine. This is what I refer to as a double-leaf; when I was a kid, my mom sent me out to the garden to get ten leaves from the kaffir lime tree. I came back with five double-leaves, and was promptly sent back out to get five more. The tree has a built in defense system against plunderers, with sharp, inch-long spines growing along every branch, so it can be a tricky, scratchy job. I remember one of the parents at the Thai temple had a blood-red splotch in the whites of one of her eyes. I asked her what happened (being the nosy and insensitive inquirer I was/am) and discovered that one of those needle-like spines had flown into her eye during a kaffir lime leaf snipping. Think about that should you feel like griping about how expensive they are...
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