Oh January, you most unholy beast of frigidity! You cruel month of nostril icicles and forced baby steps on frozen sidewalks! I smite thee! You Siberian slut of icebox misery! Ahem….right. So, let’s get on with it. As this most ungracious month nears its end, this girl right here has been forced to stay in all weekend due to the cold outside, and the cold I’ve contracted from my cohorts at my 9-5 (thanks for nothing, jerks). While I sound as though I’m a chain smoking lass in Ireland with the consumption during a potato famine, I feel quite fine. Nevertheless, I decided I would remedy myself with a weekend away from civilization, aside from a little grocery shopping.
When I started getting sick a few days ago, all I knew is that I needed a spicy soup and to keep it coming. With inspiration from one of my favorites, a little hole in the wall Cambodian/Thai place in Columbus, ironically named “Siem Reap” (typically found in Cambodia on a map, not Columbus), I decided to get busy on a Curry Soup this weekend. So I googled a glut of curry soup recipes, and then I was like, “where the #%^&* am I going to find these ingredients?”. Lemon grass, lime leaves? After some additional googling and a tip from a co-worker/foodie, I found not only a great Asian grocery at Westgate Imports Market (in the ‘hood), but a great little hidden take out place for Thai food.
Let me tell you, as a 30-year-Ohioan with zero experience in a foreign country, shopping at an Asian grocery was as close as it comes to the real thing. I caught myself whispering “this is so hard” on more than one occasion. First, it wasn’t my typical marathon sprint around the store in 10 minutes flat. I was in there for 35 minutes! PS: It only had four aisles! Do you know how many types of fish sauces exist? There were so many things I never knew existed. So much choy, so little time! I also needed curry paste. Do you know how many kinds of curry paste there are? Thank god they listed ingredients in English. I finally settled on the only one that didn’t have monosodium glutamate (it’s found in most processed American foods too. It’s not a flavor, it’s a chemical. steer clear!). Anyway, how about pork blood? Get yer pork blood here! Only $3.39/lb for the holy blood of swine! I don’t even want to know what those solid masses are in the pork blood. Just walk away, and no one gets hurt….except for porky here, he’s a goner.
So I gathered my ingredients, grabbed some phenomenal takeout to hold me over, and made my way home in arctic temperatures. Happy as a clam, I got to work on my curry soup. I forgot the chicken, but to hell with it, it’s 15 degrees outside. Ain’t nobody got time fo dat. That said, I very loosely followed a recipe by a blogger named Chef Michael Smith (link below). I didn’t use chicken, but I did roast some sweet potatoes and tossed those in for some flavor. So here is the spread to the right. I added the bok choy since there were so many choys at the grocery, then lime, dried lemon grass (they were out of fresh), dried galanga, cumin, lime leaves, green onion, bean sprouts, rice noodles, fish sauce, coconut milk, chicken broth, ginger, garlic, chili paste, onion, and boom. It took about an hour to prep and cook. You have to consider the little things like peeling and grating ginger, chopping garlic, onions, grating lime rind, grating carrots, yadda yadda, you get the idea. It gets to be pretty time consuming. The only thing I’d suggest contrary to the recipe link below, is that I would steep the rice noodles in a separate pot. When you add them directly to your soup, they soak up all the soup, and it becomes a rice noodle reservoir, rather than a steamy, cold curing soup.
Nonetheless, it was delicious, spicy, and did the trick. Take out might be faster and cheaper in the long run, but now I fully appreciate the labor that goes into my “$7.95 pint of amazing-sauce” from that little hole in the wall across from the casino. As much as cooking equates to therapy for me, with this dish, I think I may opt for take out next time. Despite the time and effort involved, the end result hit the spot. However, with the rice noodles absorbing all liquid left in the pot, all I could hear in the end was “No soup for you!”.
Credits: http://chefmichaelsmith.com/recipe/thai-coconut-curry-soup/#.UuXC_WQo6CQ
Will Paint for Food 