Tom Kha Gai

Cooking time: 20mins

Serves: 4-5 people

Ingredients

4-5 chicken breasts boneless (cut into bite size)
1 cup chicken stock or water
2-3 young galangal thumb size, sliced
1 lemon grass cut into 3 and bash
2 kaffir lime leaves
1 onion chopped
3 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp palm sugar
400 ml coconut milk
1/2 cup mushroom
3 shallots, peel and bash
1 tsp sea salt
1 lime, use the juice
2 red chilli (seeded and sliced, or keep the seeds if you like a little spicy)
2 spring onion (cut into 2 inch)
1/2 coriander chopped
Fried dry chilli (optional for granish)

Tom Kha Gai is a famous Thai dish and it have straight meaning itself in the name, Tom = boil ,Kha= galangal, Gai= chicken. So all together is Chicken soup with galangal ,make from the simple herbs full of goodness. And one more main ingredient is coconut milk. In my house in Thailand, we use fresh coconuts from the tree in our back garden, my dad will prepare all of the ingredients which is very easy to find from around the house and my mum takes care of the cooking. We even grow the galangal in our garden over there. So no need to wonder why the taste is so good because of fresh products straight from the house factory and of course my mum is a good cook :). But not to worry, since I been here I have find all ingredients we need and cook this dish a few time and the taste is still good. Let’s do it!

Method

Boil water/chicken stock in the pot on medium heat and add all of the herbs, kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, shallots and keep it boil for 5 minutes to bring out the aroma smell.
Add in chicken to mix with all of the herbs and now the chicken is smell good too, let the chicken cook for 10 minutes then add the coconut milk (the reason we not put the coconut milk first because we don't want it to be bubble or oily when it boil too long).
Now it's seasoning time, add sea salt, palm sugar, fish sauce, lime juice (adjust your own taste, make it how you like).
At last throw in the mushroom, onion, chilli and spring onion, let the mushroom cook and turn off the heat.
Put in a bowl, garnish with coriander and fried chilli if you have and serve with Jasmine rice.