I treated myself to Chrissy’s 2nd book, Cravings, Hungry for More and, of course, started out by making one of the most difficult recipes in it. In fact, she cites that this one is ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT RECIPES IN HER LIFE.
It’s in the Thai Mom chapter, which makes sense if you’ve ever seen, smelled, or tasted Tom Yum. There are some “weird” ingredients, but I contend that if you know where to find them and have them in your kitchen, you may think of a whole new palette of food to which you can add some oomph.
The weirdish ingredients are lemongrass, Thai chiles, galangal, fish sauce, and kaffir lime leaves. They are worth the scavenger hunt if you’re not in a city with a Thai bodega or somewhere not a traditional grocery store. Although, the lines are blurring with “traditional” and “ethnic” stores. I prefer, however, to go to Viet Hoa under the guise of needing lemongrass and leaving with that, a cleaver, and yet another soup bowl.
Thankfully, I already had kaffir lime leaves saved in the freezer from some other very adventurous dish, and the fish sauce never (?) goes bad. Woodman’s has started carrying Thai chiles, and you can substitute ginger for galangal. So, really all I needed from Viet Hoa was the lemongrass. Oops!
After the chopping, the dish is pretty simple to put together except for the Thai chiles… I didn’t want to have to wash the food processor, and super-fine-knife-chopping isn’t my forté, so I got to pull out the mortar and pestle, which I’m pretty sure has been used one time. Ever.
A very brief time later, it became obvious that I wasn’t going to make a paste, and did it really matter? Who knows. I was tired of wearing nylon gloves.
Happily, I had some leftover noodles from a box of Costco soups that we just didn’t get around to finishing. So, as Chrissy suggests, I saved the flavor packets and used the two bags of noodles. The peeled shrimp get thrown in at the end and cook for a couple of minutes.
Now we feast!
Get her book and treat yo’ self to this dish. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!
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