thai dinner | Hungry Mungries !

Since I moved in my Mom’s been bugging me about cooking her dinner. I barely settled in from my move but on Mother’s Day I couldn’t say no to the lady who’s been cooking for me for almost 30 years. So I cooked dinner for my mom on Mother’s Day.

It was also the weekend where I’m hosting a thai dinner party with a group of friends. Si I decided to kill two birds with one canon by cooking Tom Yum Soup. After an hour of researching recipes online, I discovered the core ingredients for Tom Yum soup. I think the key is preparing the fresh ingredients in a relatively short amount of time. At least from The Tom Yum soup I’ve had at my favourite Thai places before the richness and freshness makes the soup stand out.

For our thai dinner party I had to make a vegeterian soup. This meant cutting out meat products like fish sauce and fish and putting in more fresh ingredients like bok choy. A friend also helped me prepare the dish and I liked how she neatly chopped up certain ingredients to make them appropriate for consumption and to draw out the flavour.

The next day as I prepared the soup, I threw in the fish sauce and added shrimp to the soup. Because Nanay loves the seafood.

Even when I told her to sit and relax, she found a way to clean something in my place.

In rough proportions I’m quite sure this is how the recipe turned out:

5-6 cups organic vegetable stock

2-3 stalks of lemongrass (cut into dime-sized rounds)

6-7 kaffir lime leaves (I was fortunate enough to find fresh leaves!)

1 package of frozen shrimp (omitted for vegetarian version)

2 tbsp. fish sauce (replaced with salt for vegetarian)

2-3 thai red chillies (minced)

3 cloves of garlic (minced)

1 1/2 cup of cherry tomatoes

1 cup of button mushrooms (thinly sliced)

2 cups of baby bok choy

1 can coconut milk (1/2 can extra handy)

1 tsp brown sugar

hand full of thai basil

juice of 1 lime

In a medium heat hot-pot pan (or deep cooking pot), heat the stock and lemongrass to a boil.

Reduce the heat to simmer. Add the garlic, chili, kaffir leaves, mushrooms to the broth. Simmer for no longer than 10 minutes.

Add the shrimp. Cook till the shrimp turns pink (approx 8-10 minutes).

Add the cherry tomatoes and bok choy.

Stir in the coconut milk, brown sugar, fish sauce (or salt , and lime juice.

Taste the broth and adjust. If it needs more salt add fish sauce (or salt). If too salty add lime juice. Add sugar if too sour. Coconut milk to keep the soup creamy and lively and to make it milder in case the chilis were too hot.