cook: thai green curry (soup)

I loved the chicken and vegetable red Thai curry I cooked last week, but this week I wanted to make a green one and one that is a soup with rice noodles rather than a viand to spoon onto steamed rice. I suppose this dish might be close to what is a laksa with Malaysian influences though I used the typical Thai flavoring of fish sauce rather than dried shrimp and I didn't cut the noodles shorter to make for easier slurping. Just as with most of my cooking, I start with my usual aromatics, this time garlic and shallots. I also grated lots of ginger and took out my Asian condiments of fish sauce, lemon grass, green curry paste, coconut oil as well as kaffir lime leaves and Thai chilies.                            

 

I wanted to load this soup with vegetables: red bell pepper and zucchini. 

And to make it even greener: a tender kale. I also added to the vegetable arsenal: bamboo shoots and straw mushrooms. I couldn't find the six pack of coconut milk I bought recently at the time (it was placed next to my boxes of bubbly water) and had to do with lite coconut milk on this soup.

 

Per Pai Chongchitnant recipes and instructional videos I watched, I sweated the aromatics and the green curry paste in the little bit of coconut oil I had left. And I had also taken out of my fridge chicken thighs and tempeh.

  

Before I burned the paste and the aromatics which were starting to stick to the bottom of the pan, I hurriedly cut the chicken into bite sized pieces and threw them into the pot. And then as quickly, cut the tempeh and put that into the pot too.

 

Next I put the coconut milk and chicken broth and a few tablespoons of fish sauce into the pot. And next ALL the vegetables including the canned ones. While my pot simmered on low, I boiled the rice noodles.

I decanted the soup into two containers, one for me and one for Cecilia and then divided the boiled rice noodles also into two containers.   

Campbell’s chicken noodle for the husband and Anna’s Asian chicken noodle for me comprised our Saturday lunch,

which I’m eating outside unmasked, sequestering myself from the husband who has COVID.