Thai Food Recipe: Tom Kha Pak (Vegetable in Coconut Soup) 🍲🙅

Hello everyone, It's been a week since my last post. Today I bring you a very famous Thai dish and of course it's vegetarian. The taste of this soup is a little bit sweet and sour. The infusion of galangal (Kha), lemongrass, and kaffir lime leaves in the coconut milk brings out the herbal flavor. It also makes your house small really good after all.

The original recipe of the dish is "Tom Kha Gai" which chicken (Gai) is used. I adapt the recipe in order to make it vegan by replacing the chicken with mushrooms. 🍄 🍄 Now if you are not vegetarian, feel free to use chicken or any of your favorite meat instead of the mushrooms.

💓 Ingredients: 💓

✡ 4 dried chilies
✡ 1/4 teaspoon vegetable oil (any type is fine)
✡ 2 stalks Lemongrass
✡ 2 inches piece of fresh galangal
✡ 5-6 kaffir lime leaves
✡ 2 fresh red chilies
✡ 1 big onion
✡ 1 tomato
✡ 1 cup of mushroom (I use mix king oyster mushroom and oyster mushroom)
✡ 1 cup of carrot (half carrot)
✡ about 2 tablespoons of lime juice (adjustable as you like)
✡ 2 plants culantro
✡ 250 ml. coconut milk
✡ 2 teaspoons coconut sugar
✡ a teaspoon of salt
✡ a teaspoon of mushroom sauce

And here is how I prepared them....

💓 Directions: 💓

✡ In a small pan, fry the dried chilies with vegetable oil in low heat until the chilies are black and smell and set aside.

✡ Divide the coconut milk into 2 equal parts. Bring half of the coconut milk to boil in a saucepan on low heat together with lemongrass and galangal. Mix the other half of coconut milk in a bowl with an equal amount of water.

✡ When the coconut milk is boiled, add mushrooms and kaffir lime leaves into the saucepan, and stir for 1 minute.

✡ Once the coconut milk start to boil again, add onion, carrot, tomato, fresh chilies and the mixture of coconut milk and water (another half of coconut milk). Turn the heat to medium high until boiled then turn down to low heat.

✡ Add coconut sugar, salt and mushroom sauce. Simmer the soup for about 5 minutes then turn off heat. Add lime juice and stir.
✡ Put the soup in a bowl. Top with fine chopped culantro and fried dry chilies. Serve with steamed rice.