Recipe: Thai Green Curry Soup

Home cooked dinners have been a challenge lately. Between working fiendishly on paintings for the Winter Bazaar of the Bizarre, writing reviews for all the awesome shows and albums I’ve enjoyed this fall, a new found love of jogging AND my full time job, I just don’t have enough hours in the day.

I still try to indulge in home made food simply because I like knowing what’s in my meals – even when they’re bacon wrapped nonsense or booze filled milkshakes – and because it’s economical for both my financial and nutritional budgets.

My solution has thus been big batch cooking. I make enormous pots of chillies, soups and stews which I can get 3-4 meals out of with minimal effort towards tossing a side salad or cooking a cup of rice. Since I’ve been craving Thai food all month I decided to experiment with green curry.

 

This soup came out delicious!

It’s hot and creamy, a quick serving is all it takes to defrost me after a chilly run, and a big bowl fills me for the whole evening. Plus the ingredients are no surprise – simple things you can get at your corner store, and you can toss in more fresh veggies while reheating it to make each meal more substantial.

Give it a try!

Ingredients (serves 4-5 portions)

• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, finely sliced
• 200g sugar snap peas, tips cut
• 150g pack bamboo shoots julienned
• 500g pack skinless chicken thigh fillets cut in thin strips
• 1¾ l chicken stock
• 2 tbsp fish sauce
• 400ml can coconut milk
• 1 cup of peanut butter
• 150g green curry paste
• 1 bunch green onions, sliced diagonally
• 250g bean sprouts
• 4 crab meat sticks
• juice 2 limes

Optional (ideally made fresh with each serving)

• 1 cup cooked and cooled ramen
• 1 tilapia fish fillet
• 2 tbsp of garlic chili sauce
• splash of lime juice
• a handful of fresh bean sprouts
• a green onion sliced diagonally

Preparation:

Heat 1tbsp of the oil in a large pot on medium high. Quickly fry the chicken until no longer pink and remove.

Add the other tbsp of oil and stir fry the onions and garlic. Once softened, add the bamboo shoots, bean sprouts and the sugar snap peas, cook for a couple minutes. Add the chicken back in and mix together. Add the chicken stock and bring to a gentle boil.

Take a cup of the hot stock, and whisk together with the fish sauce, coconut milk, green curry paste and peanut butter, until they dissolve. Mix back in with the main stock pot, add the crab meat, green onions and lime juice. Turn down the heat to a simmer, stirring continuously for the first few minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and line a baking pan with tinfoil. Rub down the fish fillet with a chilli garlic paste, and a squirt of lime on each side. Bake for 30 minutes.

*

Boil ramen separately, and douse in cold water to stop the cooking process.

*

Ladle the soup in bowls, add the ramen in the centre, place the baked fish filet on top of the mound, and top with fresh bean sprouts and green onion.