Thai Chicken Soup

Tuesday 3^rd July – Thai Chicken Soup

This is a brilliant dinner if you’ve had stodgy English stuff for the last couple of days (I had beef stew yesterday, AMAZE). It’s not quite enough of a dinner for me on its own so I like to have it with a pudding, usually crème brulee or something else sweet  as your mouth should be a bit alive from chilli after the soup. It uses up roast chicken leftovers very nicely too.

Got home at about 1630h today and had the phones on divert to here so used the extra time to experiment with making my own ham. The idea came from seeing gammon really cheap in Tesco and converting KG of gammon to packets of ham and working out how much I was being ripped off for sandwich fillings. Only slight problem was that I went shopping in Waitrose and the gammon wasn’t that cheap... but if it works then it’s one for the future and I’ll keep you updated.

Time from start to finish for preparing: 60 minutes (but 40 of those I was doing other things!).

Cost of dish: Depends on how much stuff you already have in the cupboard but about £3.50 a head is a fair average.

Ingredients:

A chicken (small one is good, or leftovers from a large roast)

A lemon or a lime (whichever is handier, I’m using lime tonight left over from overbuying them to put in Corona)

Chicken stock cubes (or Knorr stock pot is better)

Garlic

Coconut Milk (or what I prefer is “Bart’s Creamed Coconut” which is dried stuff and costs less than a single tin of the milk for four servings).

Chillis (dried or fresh, as many or few as you like)

Lemongrass (either fresh or dried)

Fresh Ginger (amazingly cheap keep loads at home)

Kaffir lime (if you’ve got it)

Some cabbage, spring greens, summer greens or pak choi (depending on how middle class you are)

Spring onions (if you’ve got them)

Thai Red Curry Paste (this lives in the fridge well although not so well that it can last six months like the jar I pulled out today, solid mould).

A red pepper (if you like)

Some noodles

Method:

If using a new chicken:

1.       Turn the oven to its highest. Put the chicken in a roasting tray (use one as close to the size of the chicken as possible) stab the skin with a fork, cut the lime or lemon in half and squeeze the juice of ONE half over the bird. Pour a bit of olive oil over the chicken add some herbs (thyme is good if you have it) and put it in the oven, turn the heat down to 180 degrees. A smallish chicken will need about 45 minutes in a fan oven (Google Chicken Cooking Times to be more precise). You can either use this time to go for a pint, have a bath, make dessert or any or all of the above (I used it to make Creme Brulee and have a bath). If sticking around then you can baste the chicken if you can be arsed but it’s not that important as you’re eating it in a soup so you also don’t need to bother with tin foil or anything.

2.       When it’s cooked whip it out and leave it to cool a little bit.

If using leftovers start here:

3.       Pull the meat off the chicken. You can save the best breast meat if you like for use in sandwiches the next day, or you can do what I do and forget to make them in the morning and leave the chicken in the fridge to go mouldy.

4.       Put the chicken bits in a big saucepan with about a litre and a half of cold water and your stock cube / stock pot. If you’ve got posh chicken stock then use that instead of the water and cube combo.

5.       Chop up the cabbage like you would normally, the red pepper into thin strips, the lemon grass into slices as thin as you can get if it’s fresh and big chunks (so you can remove them later if dried  EDIT: Always leave it in big bits and take it out before you eat it, even the fresh stuff tastes like wood), garlic into little bits, ginger into thin slices and chillis as small as possible.

6.       Throw them all in and bring to the boil, turn down to a simmer.

7.       Add the red curry paste and the dried coconut stuff (or coconut milk if you posh) and bubble for a bit. Taste it, add salt and pepper as needed.

8.       Cook the noodles as per the instructions on the packet, put them in bowls and then ladle the soup with stuff on top of it. FIN. Unless you have creme brulees (they'll be up tomorrow).