Tom yum
The traditional spicy and sour soup originated from Thailand, usually made with shrimps. This soup is made often using especially fresh herbs and mushrooms. If there is no possibility to get fresh herbs in the supermarket, you can also use dried leaves and herbs, but as much as possible make the soup from fresh material. There is a number of recipes where this soup is made using chicken broth base, but I managed to find some older recipes where the broth was made from shrimp shells and heads, which tastes so good. I prepared this soup for my co-workers for lunch. Raini, who traveled in Thailand in autumn 2018, brought me a special chili paste (Nam prik pao) to make this soup much more authentic. I can imagine how Raini fought with all difficulties and customs officers during his traveling to bring me this paste, not knowing that exactly the same chili paste is available in Tartu, in Umami store :). This, of course, does not diminish at all my joy receiving such a gift.
Preparation time: 45 min
Difficulty: Moderately Easy
Quantity: serves: six or eight
Ingredients:
1 kg of fresh shelled shrimps
1 medium ripe tomato cut into the pieces
1 bigger red fresh chili sliced
10 cm piece of fresh ginger (the original recipe if with fresh galangal, but unfortunately it didn’t succeed to find the fresh)
2 fresh roots of lemongrass
300 g of fresh oyster mushrooms or 300 g of fresh Shimeji mushrooms. You can put both.
5 tablespoons or Thailand fish sauce
2-3 tbsp or Thai Chilli Paste
juice of 4 lime
8 leaves of Kaffir lime
2 medium onions
100 ml of cream
Salt and some sugar for seasoning
Freshly chopped coriander for garnish
Preparation:
Instructions 1 Remove the shrimp heads and chorus ones. Don’t throw away the choir, just make a broth of them
2. For the broth, pour the shrimp heads and shells into a pot and heat continuously with stirring until a brownish layer appears on the bottom of the pot.
3. Pour hot water on the shrimp shells and boil in the pot. Add water as much as you plan to make soup. About 2,5L of this ingredient. Boil for 10 minutes on high heat.
Pour the broth through a sieve to remove the shrimp heads and shells. Pour the broth back into the pot and boil.
5. Cut ginger into slices, chop finely chili, lemon slices gently softer and chop 2-3 cm. Chop the mushrooms and cut the onions into sectors.
6. Add the chopped vegetables to the boiling broth, boil for about 15 minutes. Season with salt
7. Add chili paste and fish sauce. Add cream, mix well.
8. Squeeze the juice out of four slices and add to the soup with continuous stirring. Boil for a few more minutes
9. Finally, add the shrimp. Do not boil the shrimp. Continue from 1.5 to 2 minutes. They cook anyway until the soup is hot.
10. Chop the fresh coriander and shake the serving soup.
Ready !!!
