Yesterday it came down to either cleaning house or going food shopping and making a fabulous dinner. You can guess which one I wanted to do, but necessity won out. So, rather than order pizza, I did a little improvising with what I had and made a very loose interpretation of Tom Yam with carrots and celery instead of mushrooms and scallions, tomato paste in place of tomatoes and parsley for cilantro. Luckily I had the building blocks: lemongrass, ginza, kaffir lime leaves, thai chilis, fish sauce and frozen shrimp in my larder and thusly, was able to pull off a reasonable approximation, right it time for Dexter’s season finale. 

Just because it’s hot out doesn’t mean that we should forsake soup. I’ve heard that eating something hot when you’re hot is supposed to cool you down anyway. So, soup it up all summer long, using Noodlr, the Noodle Soup Oracle that will give you great ideas for soups with the touch of a button…or, let the Soup Nazi Man entice you with his line of frozen soups until the real deal reopens on 55th in about a month.

Or try one created by this Soup Lady right here: Tom Yam made with tofu, asparagus and radishes, which quickly cooks in 10 minutes or less, so your kitchen doesn’t end up feeling like a swamp.

links via Bon Appetit, UrbanDaddy and New York Times

The food in Thailand is awesome, obvees. Spicy and satisfying with fresh Southeast Asian brightness, and not much like the Thai food I’ve had ‘round here, save for SriPraPhai. My favorite dish was Tom Yam, which loosely translates to ‘mixed boiled’—and that’s really all the skill it takes to recreate this hot and sour soup at home. The hard part is tracking down the ingredients. Luckily, Kalustyan’s has it all: frozen galangal (a/k/a ginza or blue ginger), fresh kaffir lime leaves, tamarind paste, Thai chili and fish sauce. The Coop carries fresh lemongrass, along with the other basics needed to make this at home (lime, cilantro, tomato, mushroom, garlic, shallot and shrimp). I gathered the goods and got to mixing/boiling. 

This is a quick-cooking soup, so make sure to have everything prepped before you begin. Then it’s all downhill: Boil chicken stock or water, add garlic, shallots, lemongrass, tamarind and galangal. Bring it back to a boil, add tomatoes and mushrooms, then add in your chili, limes leaves and fish sauce, then shrimp. Finish with lime and cilantro and you’re done—and it’s just as good at home as it is in Thailand, seriously.

A big difference with real Thai soup versus what’s served here is the amount of inedible stuff left in the bowl after you eat—the lemongrass, lime leaves, chilies—they infuse a powerful aroma to the food that you just can’t get unless they’re left in. It took some awkward chewing and spitting out for me to figure this out. I toil so you won’t have to learn the hard way. You can thank me later, like after you have some of this fab soup.