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Hot & Sour Soup | DonalSkehan.com, Not your average vegetable soup...
  • light-meals

Hot & Sour Soup

January 16

You might think that as I grew up in Ireland hot and sour soup wouldn’t necessarily be on my radar, but I have been drawn to these Asian flavours for as long as I have been cooking in the kitchen. A welcome break from the norm, I loved experimenting with recipes found in Asian cookery books and this soup became a regular.

 

 

 

  • serves Serves 4
  • time 40 mins

Method

  1. 1. Place the chicken stock, lemongrass, ginger, lime rind, half the chillies and spring onions, and the brown sugar in a large pan. Bring to a steady simmer and cook for 10 minutes until the broth is infused with the aromatic flavours. Strain the soup, discarding the ingredients.
  2. 2. Return the broth to the pan and bring back to a steady simmer. Add the pumpkin and simmer for 10 minutes or until the flesh is just tender. Add the mushrooms, lime juice and fish sauce and cook for another 5 minutes, until the mushrooms are tender.
  3. 3. Gently swirl the soup with a wooden spoon and slowly trickle the beaten egg into the soup to form thin, silky ribbons.
  4. 4. Serve the soup topped with the fresh herbs and remaining chilli and spring onions.

Ingredients

1.25 litres chicken stock

3 lemongrass stalks, smashed with the back of a knife

Large thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, thinly sliced

Pared rind and juice of 2 limes 2 red chillies, thinly sliced

6 spring onions, thinly sliced

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 small pumpkin, peeled and cut into cubes

125g oyster mushrooms, ends trimmed

1 tbsp sh sauce

1 large free-range egg, beaten

Large handful of fresh coriander, Thai basil and mint, leaves torn

You'll Need

Large pan

 

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This is very similar to a Thai green curry but it’s a lot lighter in terms of spices, sticking mainly with the fresh ingredients like ginger and lemongrass. I use Kaffir lime leaves here, which some supermarkets carry in the herb section, Asian markets are also bound to have them. Improvise with finely grated zest of lime. If you haven’t used lemongrass before it’s a fantastic little ingredient which is responsible for giving this dish that wonderful light and fragrant flavour. To prepare, slice off the woody ends and the root, you should be left with about 2-3 inches. If you don’t have a food processor, just chop the paste ingredients until they’re as fine as you can get them.

 

 

In small handblender blitz the ginger, lime leaves, garlic, red chilli and lemon grass until finely chopped.

 

Heat a frying pan over a high heat and add a little sunflower oil.

 

Season the chicken pieces and brown off in the pan until you have a nice golden colour on either side.

 

Remove the chicken pieces from the pan and place on plate with some kitchen paper.

 

Pour the remaining oil and scrape any crispy bits into a medium sized high sided pot and place over a medium high heat.

 

Add in the blitzed ingredients and stir-fry for 2-3 minutes until the they release lots of great fragrant smells!

 

Add the chicken back in along with the coconut milk and fish sauce.

 

Cook over a gentle heat for 10 minutes until the sauce has reduced a little and the chicken is thoroughly cooked through.

 

While the chicken is bubbling away, get the rice on.  Rice can get people a little panicked but the easiest way to think about it is that it is 1 part rice to 2 parts cold water.  What I do is measure the rice in a glass and then use the glass to pour in the water, that way it’s easy to see the volume you need to add.

 

Add the rice and water to a pot, cover with a lid and simmer over a medium heat for about 15 minutes or according to the instructions on the packet.

 

Serve the chicken over the rice and give a generous sprinkle of spring onions and coriander.

 

Devour the dinner! 🙂