Stardew Valley #24: Tom Kha Soup

Ingredients: Coconut, shrimp, Common Mushroom

Item Description: These flavors are incredible!

Looking forward to this one, ngl. I'm pretty prepared! I've looked at a bunch of recipes to cobble together something hopefully good enough. For the coconut we've got coconut milk, for shrimp we've got some frozen pre-cooked king prawns, for the common mushroom we have dried shiitake mushrooms. Then we've got onion, garlic, fish sauce, thai red curry paste, coconut sugar, chillies, and I found a jar of galangal paste! Yes! But I didn't get lemongrass or lime, hopefully a lemon will do, plus there's lemongrass in the curry paste.

Gonna start by browning the onions, garlic, and a chopped chilli.

Been looking for an excuse to use up these dried mushrooms truth be told. I'm slicing them up to hopefully make them hydrate and infuse faster. This is a weekday soup after all.

This lidl coconut milk is so insanely thick. This seems like pure cream to me, crazy. I'll top it up with plenty of water too, and we can just throw in all the dry things now as well.

In goes the fish sauce, coconut sugar, mushrooms, 2 generous tablespoons of red curry paste (because it looks kinda thin and unconcentrated to me)... and 2 big teaspoons of galangal because i bought it specially for this so we BETTER make it count!

Now we let it simmer for ages, topping it up with water if needed. The prawns can go in in the last 10mins or so because they're pre-cooked and we dont want them to get rubbery.

Prawns are looking thawed and everythings looking kinda tasty. I quickly checked my herb garden to see if I had coriander, but it turns out I didnt actually, so i picked a bit of parsley to garnish. Close nuff.

*****

Y'know at first spoonful I felt a little oversold by its description. I was like its a tad weak, its just fine... but as i kept eating the flavour really grew on me, it has a really pleasant heat that never gets too spicy but feels perfect to warm you up and clear your sinuses. And that wonderful sour, fruity flavour comes through the more you eat. Maybe I could have gotten more depth with some extra stock and that lime and coriander... but as it is this is still easily a great soup that id happily make again.