Thai Coconut Curry Soup

During my maternity leave I was super blessed by our church’s meals program for new moms. Basically, people sign up and bring you food. Heaven on earth. During those days when it seems like all you are doing is feeding an insatiable infant (lovely and wonderful, but dang do they eat a lot in those early days!), having a hot meal brought to your very doorstep is glorious.

It was especially glorious because of the number of incredible cooks in our congregation. We got fabulous lasagna from Traci. A savory and comforting brussel sprout and chicken sausage roast from Peter and Jamie. These awesome slow cooker pork chops from Jana that fell apart practically as soon as you looked at them. You can believe that I sent email after email asking for recipes during that time.

First up for recreation in my own kitchen was this fabulous Thai soup from Sarah. The soup has zip without being too spicy. It’s a burst of awesomeness on the palate that also sits lightly in the stomach–you won’t be going to bed with a rock in the gut after eating a bowl of this. And the lime juice–oh the lime juice. So bright! So zesty! In my mind, fresh lime juice is just another finger pointing to a loving Creator, and I’m not kidding either. (Any other lime juice fanatics out there?) And Sarah amped things up by adding shiitake mushrooms, which I happen to absolutely love. After emailing her and asking for the recipe, she said it came from America’s Test Kitchen Quick Family Cookbook. Irony of ironies, I had that very cookbook from the library sitting in my living room (also the source of the amazing Cajun Corn Chowder that I’ve already made three times in the past two months). So go Sarah! Go America’s Test Kitchen! And with some of Sarah’s modifications plus some of mine, here’s the recipe.

(Serves 6)

Ingredients

1 TBS vegetable oil
1 large boneless, skinless chicken breast
2 large shallots, minced
4 cups chicken broth
2-14 oz cans coconut milk
2 TBS fish sauce
1 TBS soy sauce
1 TBS sugar
8 oz white or cremini mushrooms, sliced
8 oz shiitake mushrooms, sliced
2 carrots, sliced on the diagonal into thin ovals
8 oz snow peas, strings removed, cut in half
Juice of 2 limes
2 tsp Thai red curry paste
1 bunch green onions, minced
Salt, pepper, and more sugar to taste

1. Pat the chicken dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper.

2. Heat the oil in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium high heat. Just when it starts smoking, add the chicken breast and brown on both sides. Set the chicken aside.

3.  Add the minced shallots to the pot and cook over medium heat until softened.

4. Add the broth and coconut milk to the pot along with 1 TBS of fish sauce, the soy sauce and the sugar. Stir everything together, scraping up any browned bits.

5.  Add the chicken breast back in, cover the pot, and simmer the soup for about 10 minutes.

6. Remove the chicken breast to a cutting board and dice or shred into bite-sized pieces.

7. Add all the vegetables to the soup and simmer for 3-5 minutes, until just tender.

8. In a small bowl, whisk together the curry paste, lime juice and remaining fish sauce. Add it to the soup along with the chicken.

9. Taste, re-season if needed, stir in the green onions, and serve hot!

Thank you Sarah and thank you church friends for bringing such great food and being such a blessing to our little family!

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Creamy Thai Lentils with Sweet Potatoes

With the holidays behind us and only two weeks left of my maternity leave, I feel like I’m spinning uncontrollably towards a Big Unknown. Which I am. What will it be like to take my baby to work? Will I feel invigorated by getting out every day, or exhausted? Full of purpose or drained of emotional resources? And more importantly, what will it be like to have to put away the gauchos I’ve lived in for the past 3 months and actually wear *shiver* real pants? Like, pants pants? (Know what I mean?)

It’s hard to say . . . so why keep thinking about it? What will happen will happen, so in the meantime I’ll keep gazing at my baby . . .

. . . (and putting lotion on her poor dry skin!), reading on the couch, doing my morning coffee/devotional/Pilates routine, and I’ll even write a couple blog posts. But before posting recipes for 2 fabulous soups that I’ve discovered, I bring you these lentils. I don’t even remember when I made this dish–in fact, I had this post ready to go and saved to my drafts from some time last spring or summer. It’s appalling how long it sat there, and I’m happy to finally resurrect it, because it was really awesome.

I really loved this dish, modified from Lindsay’s already-fabulous recipe. Because I misread the recipe though, I used 1 lb of lentils instead of 1 cup, so it was much more of a lentil-heavy dish than she intended. But I didn’t realize my mistake until I referenced the original recipe before writing this post, because it was fantastic even with my flub!

I also was wary of the cabbage she included, mainly because I intended this dish to last as leftovers through the week, and cold leftover cooked cabbage really tends to . . . well, it stinks, folks. So I went with spinach instead.

It’s truly delicious, a meal that can be made fairly cheaply, and pretty darn healthy to boot. And it’s almost vegan–fully vegan if you skip the butter.

Enough said–let’s cook!

Ingredients

(Serves 6-8)

1 lb lentils, rinsed
5 cups vegetable broth
2 large sweet potatoes
1 tsp turmeric
3 TBS oil
1 TBS butter
5 cloves garlic
1 onion thinly sliced
1-9 oz bag spinach
2 jalapeños
1 TBS fresh minced ginger
1-14.5 oz can diced fire roasted tomatoes
1 1/4 cups coconut milk
Salt and pepper, to taste
Cilantro, to garnish

Peel and dice the sweet potatoes, and add them to the pot along with the broth and rinsed lentils.

Bring it to a boil, then simmer over low heat for 30-40 minutes, or until the lentils and potatoes are just done cooking (soft but still holding their shape). Stir the pot a few times during this cookination to make sure the lentils don’t burn to the bottom of the pot, and add extra water as needed.

Add the turmeric, tomatoes, and ginger, mix it all about, and cook for another 10 minutes, adding a little more liquid if it looks dry (or another can o’ tomatoes if you want to walk on the wild side!).

Slice the onion, mince the garlic, and de-seed and mince the chilies.

Like zees!

Heat the oil and butter in a large skillet. Cook the onion, garlic and chilies until softened.

Add the spinach, and stir until just wilted (sorry, a little short on step by step pics today). Add the spinach/onion combo to the pot of lentils along with the coconut milk. Stir until evenly incorporated and heated through.

Excellent! Looks like a pot full of gross mush. Exactly what I was hoping for.

But your taste buds will tell you otherwise! Yost clois yor ais and troist me.

And don’t ask what accent I was trying to speak in–it’s entirely of my own making.

Taste and season, and serve garnished with cilantro (by itself or over rice).

You will love these flavors!

At least I did.

Now dig in!

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