Tom Kha recipes and wisdom (Thai soup with coconut-milk base, lemongrass-galangal-keffir spicing)

Cafe Society
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I loves, loves, loves me some Tom Kha soup. Sometimes when I can’t eat anything else, I can eat some jasmine or basmati (white or brown) rice plus this soup.

My Wonderful Husband knows this, and a) tries to bring me some Tom Kha soup from various local (small town) restaurants when I’m feeling crappy; b) recently tried to MAKE me some Tom Kha soup. He got it about 90% right.

Even more recently, I tried to make it back at 'im. I was pretty successful, though I didn’t have all the most authentic ingredients (no Keffir leaves, only dried powdered galangal). I may order some of those for next time (look here; scroll down to the Tom Kha starter set).

Apparently, Tom = boiled, and Kha = galangal. The most common variety we see in the US is “Tom Kha Gai” in which “gai” = chicken. As a tofu lover, I loves me especially the version without chicken chunks and with extra-firm non-fried tofu chunks instead. But I digress.

I used an amalgam of various online recipes, especially this one. I used about 16 oz. chicken broth plus two cans (13 oz ea) coconut milk, which was much too rich, though not at all non-tasty. I added sliced vegetables: around a pound of crimini mushrooms, a sweet red bell pepper, a carrot. I added both a pound of “chicken tenders” (boneless breast meat) in large pieces for mr emilyforce and a half-pound of extra-firm tofu for me.

Lime juice, fish sauce, sweet Thai chili sauce, and sriracha sauce added flavor. Also, all the fresh ginger-root we had, plus a stalk of lemongrass and some leftover holy basil (Thai basil would have been better of course). Cilantro on the bowls of soup to garnish/finish.

It was pretty good, but it wasn’t quite exactly right…

Do YOU have any loved recipes for Tom Kha soup?

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I have all the fixings for that recipe, I’ll try it tomorrow. Thanks for the idea

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I’ve taken classes from this teacher for a while. All of her recipes are really good. She also has advice about ingredients and online sources.

This is the seafood version of Tom Kha.

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If you don’t have lime leaf (and honestly who does?), you can add lime zest in addition to the lime juice.

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Me! When the Asian grocery has it in, I buy a bundle and freeze it

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I keep mine simple. Chicken, ginger (an acceptable substitute for galanggal), kaffir lime leaves, 1 can of coconut milk, some lemon juice, fish sauce, one or two teaspoons of sugar, and sambal to spice it up (I almost never have any of those small chili peppers). Perhaps a bit of water, though I prefer mine more saucy than soupy anyway. Set to boil, then let it simmer until the meat starts coming off the bones. Ta da, done. Perfect over rice, although I can’t imagine eating it by itself anyway.

Really, I find that a lot of Asian recipes given in “Oriental cooking” cookbooks either over-complicate preparation or fetishize the authenticity of ingredients (“this is what real Thais use!”). I have, for instance, used spam several times in stir fry. Authentic Chinese people in China do this, so elitist snobbery on ingredients will get you nowhere.