Food Porn: Thai Rice Noodle Soup

For me there are 6 major food groups: carbohydrates, protein, dairy, fats, fibre, and soup. 

I consume soup by the bowlful when the weather's horrible, I feel rough, and the reading on my weighing scales makes me scream in horror. It's also the ultimate in diversification food: you can put anything you damn well like in soup (within reason of course, I'd avoid including poisons, body parts, or precious minerals). 

So today the weather is summer-awful and I only had 2 hours sleep last night, so something hot, sour, and spicy is called for: Thai Rice Noodle Soup (naturally gluten free, boom). 

Ingredients to serve 4: 

1 litre of chicken stock (either fresh or from 2 GF stock cubes) 

375g of rice noodles, fresh or prepared according to pack instructions

1 inch of fresh ginger, peeled

2 cloves of garlic

2 sticks of lemongrass

1 large red chilli

2 tbsps of fish sauce

3 spring onions, finely chopped

Juice of 1 lime

1 kaffir lime leaf

2 tbsps of coconut cream

160g of oyster mushrooms, sliced

125g of shitake mushrooms; fresh or dried and soaked, sliced

2 pak choi, leaves separated 

2 tbsps of chopped coriander

Firstly make the basic paste; either use a pestle and mortar or a mini electric chopper. Chop and then bash together the ginger, garlic, lemongrass, and chilli. Add to a large saucepan and fry gently for a couple of minutes. 

Add the stock, kaffir lime leaf, lime, fish sauce, spring onions, and coconut cream and simmer for 10 minutes to release all the flavours, stirring occasionally.

Then add the shitake and oyster mushrooms; if you've soaked dry shitakes then also add the soaking liquor, and continue to simmer for 4 minutes. Add the pak choi, coriander, and the noodles and simmer for a further 3-4 minutes until the pak choi is tender. Remove the kaffir lime leaf before serving!

And that's it; in 20 minutes you have a steaming bowl of spicy and sour loveliness to cheer you up. 

Like I said before soup is a diverse beast so you can add whatever vegetables or noodles you like really. You can substitute the mushrooms and pak choi for broccoli, beansprouts, or snake beans; really it's entirely up to you.