Thai Shrimp Coconut Soup

I have poor months and rich months depending on how many field trips I’ve made to H&M and how many Penguin Modern History books I feel the need to buy (two this month- a healthy amount I feel).

What’s great about soup is that it can be customized. If you’re feeling out of pocket, be thrifty on the shrimp dosage and up the vegetable stock take!

I went to a Thai restaurant a couple of weeks ago and there were exactly three pieces of chicken in my Thai Chicken Curry. If a restaurant can do it, so can you. The most important thing is to have bread to sponge up the soup because that is just delicious.

If you’re a rich cream cat this month you can go crazy on the shrimps. If you’re feeling spare, just add water! (your soup will be a little less creamy and proteined but it’ll still be super flavourful. That is the beauty of spice.)

This soup is a mix of sweet, sour, hot and salty. It’s reaaaally good.

You will need: (for two healthy portions)

1 tsp butter
3 garlic cloves
200 g of shrimps
1/2 red pepper
coriander

1 tsp of powdered ginger
1 tsp of paprika
1 T of brown sugar
1/2 lemon
1 T fish sauce (if you don’t have this just add a tsp salt)

500 ml of vegetable stock ( 1 stock cube in 500 ml of water. Again, if you need to stretch the meal add some more water)
200 ml of coconut milk

How?

1. Decorticate and behead your shrimps. Off with their heads! Think of it as a political act.

2. Roughly chop up the garlic and place it with the butter and decorticated shrimps in a saucepan. (don’t you love the word decorticated?)

3. Place the shrimps, butter and garlic on a low heat. Let the mixture sizzle and crisp for a little while you thinly slice the red pepper and then toss the slices in.

4. Now is the time to add all the different spices. I’ve given you an indication but the more spice, the more flavourful so please go mental if the mood takes. Its ok to leave everything sizzling while you’re finding ingredients. 10 min, 20 min. Just keep the low heat.

5. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon and add the tablespoon of brown sugar and fish sauce. (the sour, the sweet and the salt all at once!)

6. Boil 500 ml of water and disintegrate the veggie stock cube into it. Throw it into the saucepan!

7. The last step is to pour in the coconut milk and leave for another five minutes before serving. Add the coriander at the last minute and dish up into two bowls.

Serve with lots of porous bread. I used Baguette King of Bread, who now reigns supreme since the recent beheadings of the King Prawns.