Tom Kha Gai
As part of my “I want to cook more things” push that I’ve imposed on myself this year I made dinner the other day. This might not strike most people as strange, but as I’ve been living on sandwiches, takeaway, bags of grapes and packs of sugarsnap peas in the evenings of last year it’s a push in very much the right direction.
So, a recipe. Hopefully the first of many. This one’s easy though.
Ingredients:
- 2 Chicken fillets
- 2 portions of udon noodles (mine came handily tied up with a paper band in one person bunches)
- 2 big handfuls for prawns
- 2 handfuls of sugar snap peas
- 2 handfuls of baby corn
- 800ml water
- 400ml coconut
- 8 generous heaped teaspoons of Thai red curry paste
Firstly stick your curry paste and water in a pan and bring up to a simmer. I used a jar of specific ‘Tom Yum’ paste (which listed the volumes of liquid above, which worked quite well) but normal curry paste will work just as well – adjust quantity of curry paste depending on your immunity to its fearsome powers.
Stick in the chicken breasts and leave to simmer for 10-20 minutes or so until cooked all the way through (I pulled out the larger of the two, chopped the end off and had a look, but that was mainly because I hadn’t poached chicken for ages and didn’t remember how quickly it cooked). (And because I was hungry).
Add the coconut milk and bring back to a simmer. Then add the udon, baby corn and sugar snaps, pausing between each and adding them based on how long you want them to cook – the packet said the udon should take 8 mins, so I did (I guess…I just threw things in when there were scene changes in The Wire) udon, 2 minutes, corn, 4 minutes, sugar snaps. When the noodles are pretty much done, throw in the prawns.
Turn off the heat, extract the chicken and slice. For ease of serving (and an obsessive attempt at portion control to give me EXACTLY half for my lunch the next day) I strained the soup into a measuring jug, shoved half of the remaining tastiness into a bowl, poured on half of the soup and then placed my sliced chicken on top.
I took photos while waiting for it to reach a temperature that would not cause permanent scarring and then ate it. Luckily my well known self discipline kicked in and I saved the second half for work the next day, where it worked well and drew gazes of jealousy from the queue of cow-orkers with ready meals standing by the microwave. Transporting the soup in a cocktail cherry jar (empty of cherries and washed) was an unintended stab of genius which confused many.
Next stop – attempting to make something (other than glazed carrots) from one of St Heston’s gospels or maybe a small step down to my shiny new French Laundry cookbook, as inspired by the slightly mad (in a good way) Carol Blymire.
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Posted: January 16th, 2009 under blog.