Thai Coconut Chicken Soup

Posted March 15, 2010

Find more about dinner , chicken , thai , soup

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This is so good, it's crazy.

I know, it's a lot of ingredients. But go to the supermarket with a scavenger-hunt attitude and it will be fun! I've been able to find blister packs of kaffir lime leaves at Whole Foods. I buy one and store it in the freezer, and the leaves keep great that way.

Can I haz fish sauce?

Freshly harvested goat intestines, human leg meat, or chicken?

Noodle spa.

Prepped ingredients.

The aromatics fry in the coconut fat, and first they look like this.

Then they look like this.

Despite the children's lukewarmness, this soup *thrills* me.

"I can't believe I made this!" I cry, and they say, like good little robots, "That's great, Mama."

Michael and I spent two weeks in Thailand years ago, and my memories have organized themselves into a kind of sensory scrapbook: the smells of the night market (fish sauce, grilling meat, river); the chanting of monks that blurred, at dawn, into the revving of motorcycles; the delightful curved roofs of the houses and buildings; the surprising weight of the heat whenever you went outside--like a wet monkey dropped onto your head from a great height. We were evacuated by canoe from an island during a typhoon; we watched saffron-robed monks play poker; we petted stray cats against our own better judgment; we hitched a ride in the back of a truck full of chicken; we saw a hundred multicolored wooden phalluses at a fertility shrine in a cave by the beach; we saw pickled criminals at a forensic museum in the basement of a hospital; we tried to figure out the payphones (you dial the number and hang up and a bit later the phone calls you back and tells you how much it will cost); we removed our shoes outside of dozens of temples; we smiled and smiled and made awkward, enthusiastic conversation, and also, sometimes, regretted our own shyness; we stared at each other in alarm as train stations were announced in muffled Thai: Is this our stop? We had no idea.

But it's the food I recall most longingly: a plastic baggie full of crisply rubbery, basil-scented, bottle-cap-sized fish cakes that we bought (and then bought twice more) from a train-station vendor; grilled skewers of squid and steaming, herby bowls of noodles from the night market; the lip-tingling som tum, a spicy-sour shredded salad that was cleavered out of a green papaya while we watched; airport-cafeteria coconut green beans that were so addictively scrumptious I returned to the steam table for another plate; and a spiny-lobster green curry in a tiny restaurant at Bangkok that may be the single best thing I have ever eaten in my life: wildly fragrant and velvety-rich, full of green peppercorns still on the branch and bobbing eggplants the size and color of peas, and so spicy that the laughing waiter ended up taking a picture of us with all of our empty water bottles, tears pouring down our faces. Oh delicious, delicious Thailand.

And now Ben and Birdy are really starting to like Thai food, and I'm thrilled. Those fish cakes for instance (order tod mun if you ever see it on a menu), which are way too spicy for Birdy, but which Ben will scarf down, along with noodles and curries, in between great gulpings from his water glass. But the more tender-palated Birdy will simply savor a bowl of this coconut-chicken soup while the rest of us are sharing dishes and trading bites and sweating. It's called tom kha gai, and it's just about the perfect gateway food for anybody new to Thai flavors: silky from the coconut milk, fragrant with shallots, lemon grass, and curry paste, a little spicy, and just the tiniest bit funky (maybe keep the fact of the fish sauce to yourself). The children find intriguingly subtle ways to communicate the inferiority of my version ("Isn't the kind at the restaurant more yellow and less orange than this?" "It might be." "I thought so."). And whatever is lost in translation seems to diminish their enthusiasm significantly (Ben, for instance, politely declined to take leftovers for his school lunch). But still it's completely delicious and surprisingly Thai tasting and, once you've assembled the ingredients, very quick to put together. Let me know how it goes over.

Thai Coconut Chicken Soup
Serves 4-6
Active time: 25 minutes; total time: 40 minutes

You can make all kinds of substitutions here: if you can't find kaffir lime leaves, for instance, then use the grated rind from one of the limes; use veggie broth and substitute cubed tofu for the chicken; skip the mushrooms entirely; use regular ramen instead of the rice vermicelli, or skip the noodles altogether (the noodles aren't traditional; I only add them so that I can serve a single bowl of food and call it dinner). But do get some Thai red curry paste: most supermarkets carry the Thai Kitchen brand, and it's excellent and comes in a nice small jar so it won't hog up your whole fridge.

2 cans coconut milk (not low-fat, not shaken)
3 lemon grass stalks, tough outer leaves removed, bottom five inches halved lengthwise, smashed with the side of a large knife, and sliced thin crosswise
1 large shallot, chopped
A large handful of clean cilantro, leaves removed and reserved, stems chopped coarse
4 kaffir lime leaves (optional)
2-3 teaspoons Thai red curry paste
3 tablespoons fish sauce
1 quart chicken broth
1 tablespoon sugar
6 ounces (2 small bricks) rice vermicelli
1/2 pound white mushrooms, sliced
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, halved lengthwise and sliced crosswise into skinny strips
2-3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice (from 2 to 3 limes)
1 serrano chile, sliced thin (optional)

Open one of the cans of coconut milk and scoop all of the solid cream from it into a heavy soup pot; the cream will look like shortening, and will end abruptly about halfway down the can, where there will suddenly be thin liquid (leave this liquid in the can for now). Heat the coconut cream over medium heat until it melt and begins to simmer, then stir in the lemon grass, shallot, cilantro stems, lime leaves, and curry paste. (Let's say that something went wrong and your coconut milk isn't like this--either because it got shaken, or was thing to begin with: go ahead and heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil in the pot and proceed with the recipe).

Stir and fry the aromatic ingredients in the coconut fat until they are wildly fragrant, and a reddish oil is separating out from the mixture--around 5-10 minutes (if you used oil, then stir and fry for just a couple of minutes before adding the liquid ingredients).

Now stir in one tablespoon of the fish sauce, along with the broth and sugar and the rest of the coconut milk from that one can. Bring this mixture to a boil, turn the heat down to low, cover, and simmer 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, cover the noodles with hot water and leave them to soak.

Pour the simmered soup through a fine strainer into a boil (press on the solids with a spoon to extract all that delicious flavor), then wipe out the pot and pour the strained broth back into it. Add the remaining can of coconut milk and bring it back to a simmer over medium-high heat. Lower the heat to medium, add the mushrooms and noodles, and cook for 2 minutes, then add the chicken and cook, stirring constantly, until the chicken is cooked through, 1-3 minutes. Turn the heat off, stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons of fish sauce and the lime juice, and serve, garnished with cilantro leaves and, if you like, sliced chile.

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Thai Coconut Chicken Soup

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Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Thai Coconut Chicken Soup

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