Thai chicken noodle soup.

Now this is the sort of soup that once again you just make up fresh and you are ready to eat. If you do not like it to hot do not use so many chillies or more if you like the heat and spice. The thing is you just use this as a sort of base take out the coconut cream and just use stock. Use prawns not chicken, or all vegetables.  The truth is that this kind of soup is very versatile and it is up to you how you make it, no hard or fast rule just used the best fresh ingredients and experiment.

Ingredients

2.5cm/1in piece of galangal or ginger

2 red chillies,

2 stalks lemongrass, tough outer layers removed, roughly chopped

3 garlic cloves, peeled

1 bunch of fresh coriander

1tbsp vegetable oil

1tsp of ground coriander

A good pinch of ground turmeric

500ml/1plit chicken stock, veg stock or water

150g/6oz rice noodles

 400ml/14floz coconut milk

226g/8oz raw chicken, 50/50 white and brown meat mixed

A few bean sprout to garnish with

 Thai fish sauce, to taste

To start with you need to make your spice base not this is like most Thai dishes you should smash thing up in a mortar and pestle to get all the flavours really working. Or you can do what I do and use a small hand blender and a simple blow. Start by peeling and roughly chopping your galangal or ginger, chilli, lemongrass, garlic and two thirds of the fresh coriander. Add them to a bowl and blitz them together.  Now make sure that your chicken is nice dice and the rest of the leaf coriander is just roughly chopped.  And finally pour some boiling water over your rice noodles let them sit in the water for about 3 to 4 minutes until they go soft, then drain them off.

Now in a pan add the oil and let that heat up then add the ground coriander and turmeric and let then fry off for a moment, then tip in the raw chicken. Just brown the chicken on in the oil then add the blended fresh spice mix. Let this just cook letting all the aromas and flavours build in the soup base then add the stock or water.  Bring that to the boil.

Once that has got to a boil then add the coconut milk and bring that back to the boil, then let it simmer for about 2 0r 3 minutes. While it is simmering divide the noodles in to your serving bowls then season the soup with a few splashes of fish sauce. Ladle the soup over the noodles and scatter the rest of the chopped fresh coriander and a few bean sprouts over the top to finish.

Just think in about it this really works well with just mushrooms as well, use dry as well as fresh to get a really deep taste to the dish.