Avocado ginger coconut soup

 This is a recipe based on this month's Fine Cooking magazine. The result was very good, but I used too much lime juice, so it got the "We can serve this to people if you reduce the lime juice" accolade from Madame. The texture is very thick and creamy. It is best served cold - after being in the fridge overnight. 

We had it for dinner one evening, and then I had it for lunch the next day - where I tweaked it to tne down the lime juice. The tweaks will be in the description at the end, not in the main recipe

Ingredients

2 Cans full fat coconut milk (equivalent amount of home made - i.e. 3 1/2 cups #1)

1 stalk of lemon grass, roughly chopped

1 Makrut leaf (Thai Lime) roughly chopped

3" knob of ginger, washed and sliced very finely. No need to peel as it will be discarde

Handful of basil leaves

1 Thai hot pepper

Juice of 4 small limes

4 Avocados - dual use

1 Peach, diced

Salt to taste

Croutons or other crispy things to garnish

Method

Place the coconut milk, lemon grass, makrut leaf, and ginger into a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Simmer for a couple of minutes, and turn the heat off. Add the basil and allow the mixture to cool (ideally at least an hour).

Strain out all of the solids and discard them. Slice the hot pepper and add to the liquid. Peel and deseed the avocados. Mash 3 1/2 of the avocados and add to the coconut liquid, along with the lime juice. Blend until smooth. Add salt to taste at this stage. Chill the soup in the fridge for at least an hour, preferably 2 or ovrnight.

Serve the soup garnished with the remaining avocad, diced and the diced peach and coroutons.

The Promised Tweaks

If, as ours was, your soup is too acidic tasting (i.e. too much lime in our case), then that can be mitigated with some mirin and (surprisingly) balsamic vinegar. Even though balsamic vinegar does add some extra acidity, it also adds sufficient sweetness to counterbalance the lime. Weird, I know. 

Thom Yum (Chicken)

I was given a copy of Chef McDang's terrific book on Thai cookery (http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Thai-Cookery-Chef-McDang/dp/6169060107) by Chef David Gilbert . Combine that with the arrival of my Satay grill (ordered from here http://importfood.com/satay_grill.html ) and a Thai feast was in order. Of course it was all experimental, so we weren't sure how any of it was going to turn out. We invited the neighbors (Guinea and Pig) over for the experiment. It turns out that the most impressive dish on the menu was the simplest. It took 7 minutes start to finish and used minimal ingredients This recipe is almost straight from Chef McDang's Principles of Thai Cookery, but I substituted chicken for the prawns - since I can't eat shellfish.

Ingredients

6 cups water
1 stalk lemon grass - cut into short strips and bruised
5 kaffir lime leaves (preferably fresh)
3 silver dollar sized slices of galanga (sometimes called blue ginger)
4 bruised Thai chilis (left whole, but with the stalks removed)
1/4 cup fish sauce
Juice of 3 Persian limes (or 6 Key limes)
1 chicken breast cut into 1/2" cubes (slightly smaller is better)

Method

Bring the water to the boil. Add the lemon grass, kaffir lime, galanga, chilis and leave to infuse for a minute or so. Add the fish sauce and then the lime juice until the desired degree of sourness is achieved. Simmer for a few more seconds. Add the chicken pieces and turn the heat off. Allow the heat of the broth to cook the chicken. To serve, spoon into small, hot bowls. Garnish with a sprig of cilantro.

Simple chicken soup

I have been feeling under the weather - with a cough/cold/sore throat. Unimaginably grumpy - poor Madame. So I thought maybe some chicken soup might help. As you can imagine preprepared chicken soup doesn't do it for a variety of reasons. So I needed to make some. This is an unbelievably simple way of doing it - and surprisingly good given the amount of effort involved. As Madame would say, "the taste to effort ratio makes this worth doing". Not quite as high praise as "we can serve this to people", but still worthwhile. The vegetables and chicken aren't browned, so there is no flavor from caramelization. It's just chicken/aromatics/stock/water. It looks like a lot of ingredients, but the prep time is very short. As you will see from the method you just bung them all in the pot.
Ingredients
1 whole roasting chicken (this one was about 5lbs)
2 medium onions sliced pole to pole
6 medium carrots cut into 1 inch pieces
6 stalks celery roughly chopped
2 Fennel bulbs washed and quartered
3 Kaffir (Thai) lime leaves
3 inches lemon grass cut on the bias into 1/2 inch pieces
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups (or so) water
1 Chipotle pepper
3" piece of fresh ginger peeled and roughly chopped
Salt/pepper to taste
Method
Clean out the cavity of the chicken and remove the silly pop up timer (if present). Place the whole chicken into a large dutch oven. Sprinkle the flavoring ingredients (except the salt) into the pot, add the liquids. Bring to a simmer over a medium flame and then simmer for at least 90 minutes with the lid on. The chicken will make its own broth while it cooks. If you cook it for longer than 90 minutes (and it does get better with time), then discard the vegetables 1/2 an hour before the end of cooking and put in fresh vegetables. The old vegetables have given everything up so you will need fresh to get them to taste of something.