Serves: 4
Cooking time: 30 minut
Ingredients
- 800 ml water
- 1 stalk of lemongrass, lightly smashed, then cut into length of 4cm
- 4 thin slices of Galangal (Blue ginger)
- 6 cloves of garlic, smashed, then minced
- 2 hot chillies, finely chopped
- 4 shallots or 1 onion, thinly sliced
- 4 kaffir lime leaves, hit lightly, but don't break them
- 600 g any seafood or boneless chicken or beef (sliced)
- 2 tomatoes, cut into wedges
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 pinch salt
- 2 tsp fish sauce (Nam Pla)
- 2 tsp light soya sauce
- 1 lime or lemon, juice only
- 10 fresh coriander leaves (optional garnish)
Method
1. Pour the water into a pot, add the lemon grass, galangal, garlic, chillies, shallots, kaffir lime leaves, and heat over high heat.
2. Add the seafood or meat when the water is boiling and cover the pot.
3. Turn the heat to medium after 5 minutes if you are cooking chicken or beef.
4. When the seafood or meat is cooked, add tomatoes, sugar, salt, fish sauce, soya sauce and simmer using medium heat for another 2 minutes.
5. Remove from heat.
6. Stir in the lime juice, coriander leaves and black chili paste. Serve hot.
Did you know...
Tom Yam, an exciting concoction of hot and sour with citrus overtones, is the most famous of all Thai soups.
Instead of serving the Tom Yam soup with plain rice, you can put Kuay Teow (flat rice noodles) or cooked rice vermicelli into the soup.
Southern Vietnamese and Thai kitchens would never run out of their clear yellowish fermented fish sauce.
On the east coast of peninsular Malaysia, sweet dark fermented fish sauce is all time favourite.
To enhance the flavour, sometimes Nam Phrik Phao (roasted chilli paste) is added into the soup before it is removed from the heat.