Thai Chicken Soup

This is a recipe that I have come up with over the years using bits and pieces out of other recipes and is a favourite January girls weekend lunch, though of course it is never quite the same, as it depends on available ingredients.  Sunday Morning when I got up this is what it looked like out of my front window.

A winter wonderland in Port Moody

My thoughts turned to soup, chicken soup, fortunately the day before I had gone to TNT and bought some lime leaves, lemon grass and Thai basil so Thai chicken soup.

I had a rather sad lonely looking boneless skinless chicken breast in the freezer so I covered it in water and simmered it for about 1/2 hour quick and easy chicken stock. I added a little more stock to make about 4 cups in total. then I added:

4 or 5 lime leaves (or grated rind of one lime)
A bunch of thai basil (you could use regular)
1 stick of lemon grass chopped (or grated rind of a lemon)
2 garlic cloves sliced
1 inch of fresh ginger sliced (or galangal which is what I had)
1 chili pepper sliced (or less if you don't want the soup too hot)
1 bunch of cilantro

Throw all the aromatics into the chicken stock and simmer for about 20 minutes until they have given up all their flavour.

Chicken stock and aromatics mingling.

Strain out all the aromatics and throw them away they are all washed up.

Now add the following to the stock

Cut up the chicken breast in to small chunks
1/2 red pepper cut up
4 green onions sliced
2 tablespoons of chopped cilantro
2 tablespoon's of chopped basil
1 tablespoon of cane sugar (brown sugar would do)
3 tablespoons of fish sauce
1 tablespoons of soy sauce
1/3 cup of jasmine rice (or basmati)

Simmer until the rice is cooked about 15 minutes.

Serve to a grateful family especially to those that cleared the driveway of snow.

warmth in a bowl