Tom Yum-Style Soup Recipe
Aloha Friends!
My introduction to Thai food when I was growing up was a plate of dry and rubbery pad Thai from an eatery at a nearby strip mall. It wasn’t until my freshman year in college when I worked as a waitress at a small, family-run Thai restaurant on University Avenue that I discovered the good, authentic, Thai food that could be both so simple and so complex in flavors.
You know about Freshman 15, don’t you? It’s supposedly the weight a freshman gains that first year of school. Well, I gained that and more when I acquired a penchant for eating pad kee mao and tom kha three times a week, sometimes more, after nine in the evening when the restaurant closed. I fell in love and found my one and only soulmate several times that year, but none was everlasting as my love for Thai food.
One of my favorite experiences outside of navigating school and young adulthood took place in that little kitchen where I watched the one-woman chef, Saichai, magically work her wok and mortar and pestle in between chopping vegetables, shredding green papaya, and tossing herbs and spices here and there, while she painfully lamented about her long lost love, the one that got away, Michael. I wondered if this heartache was what made her food taste so good. The romantic in me wants to keep believing this, but the realist in me knows it was the ingredients she used and her kitchen goddess culinary skills.
For me, there’s a sense of simplicity in Thai food, but maybe that’s just me ignorantly relating simplicity to inexpensive, unassuming ingredients. Something like a hot and sour bowl of Tom Yum soup always confused my mouth with so many flavors and fragrances that though it gave me so much belly joy, I never dared make it myself because of how complex it tasted.
Our resident chef and friend Martha Cheng created a very approachable Tom Yum style recipe for lazy fools like us. If you’re like me, this will be my first attempt at making this soup and I can’t help but wonder if I should be listening to sad love songs to channel Saichai’s heartache to ensure a delicious outcome, but I think I’ll just shop our marketplace for fresh, local ingredients instead.
Consider doing the same! Shop our marketplace now for Tom Yum style soup ingredients and for the freshest inventory. Good luck with your culinary adventures and let us know how it goes!
Cheers,
Laarni
“This is a tom yum style recipe made with what’s often available on the Farm Link marketplace. (When galangal is available, use that instead of ginger—otherwise, ginger will do.) You can easily make it vegan, or make it more like tom yum goong with the addition of local shrimp. For a creamier version, add some coconut milk to the soup.” —Martha Cheng
Tom Yum-Style Soup Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 stalks of lemongrass, tender centers only, roughly chopped
- ½ Maui onion
- 1-inch piece of ginger, peeled
- 4 makrut lime leaves
- 1 jalapeno, deseeded (or Hawaiian Chili Pepper)
- 1-inch piece of turmeric (optional)
- 1 tablespoon palm sugar or raw sugar
- 1 hapa eggplant or another thin eggplant, cut into 2-inch lengths and then quartered lengthwise
- 3 Roma tomatoes or 2 Beefsteak tomatoes
- 8 ounces cremini or oyster mushrooms, sliced
- Fish sauce to taste (or shoyu, if you want to make it vegan)
- Two limes, juiced, or more to taste
- ¼ cup cilantro
Optional additions:
- Coconut milk
- Kualoa shrimp
- Tofu
Preparation
- In a blender, combine the lemongrass, onion, ginger, lime leaves, jalapeno, and turmeric (if using). Blend to a paste. Transfer to a medium saucepan.
- Fill the blender with 8 cups of water, swish to dislodge all the paste, and pour into the saucepan. Add the sugar and bring the water to a boil.
- Add the eggplant and tomatoes and simmer for 10 minutes, until the eggplant is cooked through.
- Add the mushrooms and simmer for a minute, just to warm through.
- Take the saucepan off the heat and add the fish sauce (or shoyu, if using) and start with half the lime juice—add more fish sauce and lime juice to taste.
- Garnish with cilantro.