April 16, 2007
Tom Yam: ต้มยำ
With the weather being fantastically beautiful in Germany, it's hard to think about soup. Especially one that makes you sweat! But I can't pass up giving you this recipe that I learned at the Thai Farm Cooking School in Thailand. Tom Yam is one of the most popular dishes in Thailand. You have no doubt seen it on other food blogs or come across it at your local Thai restaurant. It is typically described as a "hot and sour" soup, and is bursting with Thai flavors. Tom Yam Kung is Tom Yam with Shrimp.
Cilantro On Speed
This was my introduction to an herb that I immediately fell in love with: Thai Parsley (Pak Chee Farang). It is not even slightly like Italian parsley. It is often described as similar to cilantro but is so much more potent. It's like cilantro on speed. Sawat, our instructor, said it is also called the "saw tooth herb", because the leaves are narrow and serrated. It looked more like a weed to me but when I crushed it in between my fingers, the powerful aroma told me this was no weed. I snagged this image from the Thai Farm website. If you can't get Thai Parsley at your Asian store, you could substitute more cilantro.
HOT!
Sawat had a little joke going; when he handed out our chilies, he'd ask if you wanted your dish to be "baby farang" or "Thai". (Farang is what they call foreigners.) Take my advice. Suck it up and be a baby. Their hot chilies will blow your skull off. The hottest chilies, Prik Kie Noo, are tiny guys and very misleading. Experiment with one or two in your soup - you can always add more. The way to use these chilies is to lightly crush them before adding them, whole, to the soup.
Tom Yam Kung
Serves 1-2
1-5 crushed hot chillies (depending on how insane you are)
1/2 cup of sliced straw mushrooms
1 stalk of lemongrass (sliced into 3 cm long pieces)
1/4 cup of sliced onion
1/4 cup of sliced galangal (aka Siamese ginger)
1/4 cup of sliced tomatoes
3 kaffir lime leaves
2 tsp. of lime juice
2 tbsp. of fish sauce or soya sauce
1/2 tsp. of sugar
1/2 tbsp. of shrimp chili paste
2 cups of water
5 shrimps (heads removed and reserved)
1 tbsp. of chopped spring onion
1 stem of coriander plant
1/4 tsp. of salt
2 leaves of Thai parsley
Heat the water in a pot until it is boiling. Add lemongrass, galangal, shrimp chili paste, shrimp heads and onion. Cook until fragrant. Add tomatoes, shrimp meat and mushrooms. After 3 - 5 minutes, flavour with fish sauce, salt and sugar. Stir thoroughly and finally add lime juice, spring onion, Thai parsley, coriander, and lime leaves. Cook for a few minutes more. Taste. If it is not spicy enough, add more chilies. Serve with rice. (Optional: you can remove the shrimp heads if you like.)
Notes: Nam Prik Pao is the Thai word for the chili paste used in this recipe. It's unclear if we were using specifically a chili paste made with shrimps or just a straight chili paste, but you could use either.
