My first foray into Thai cooking

As you know I took a cooking class while in Chiang Mai.  I cam home with a full belly and a recipe booklet, which I figured would sit in my suitcase and then on a bookshelf back home.  Well now that I have a kitchen (sorta), I figured I would try my hand at cooking some of the Thai food.  So I settled on tom yum kung, or spicy and sour soup with shrimp.

The ingredients weren't too hard to get.  Some shallots, garlic, tomatoes, lime, straw mushrooms, chilis, lime, lemongrass, Thai ginger, Kaffir lime leaves, shrimp, chili jam, and fish sauce.  All easy to get at the evening market.  The only frustrating part is that the mushrooms go bad immediately, a fact I only discovered right as I was about to begin cooking (and after I had already made my daily market trip).  So I had to go back for a new batch, since the old ones were a day old.

My ingredients

Also, peeling shrimp with a knife is an odious task.  I always love peeling shrimp...weird, I know, but it is my favorite menial kitchen job.  But without a peeler, it actually felt like a chore.  If I hadn't needed the shells to make a shrimp stock, I totally would have bought them shelled.  

Even more irritating with a dull knife

Anyway, you cook the shells in some boiling water to make a stock, and then pretty much remove the shells and add everything else except for the lime and shrimp.  This cooks over medium (difficult setting--the pan is either on or off it seems) for a couple minutes until everything seems cooked, then the shrimp go in briefly.  At the end the lime is squeezed over and voila!  Dinner is served.

Cooking

Well, when I tried it I realized how bland it was.  None of the spice I remembered!  I had gone really light on the chili because I was scared of making it super spicy, but this was nowhere near hot enough.  So I added a ton of chili jam.  This definitely helped, but next time I will start with more chili peppers.

MUCH more chili jam

Not bad!

In the end I think it was a success.  Definitely not bad for a first try.  I look forward to trying this and other dishes in the future!