It's Time for Tom Yum Goong!

Yesterday afternoon I accompanied the Professor to campus. The plan was for her to teach her Saturday afternoon class while I hung out in her office and did some winemaking research, hit up the gym for a bit (I haven’t been working out much since my job moved downtown and I’m starting to feel funny) and then meet her after class. Before she ran off to class she complained that her stomach was feeling funky. This announcement of course meant that one thing was for certain. I was making tom yum goong for dinner. Or, to be more accurate, she would have tom yum goong for dinner while I had a few bites and prepared another, less intense dish for myself.

I’m a huge fan of tom yum goong, the spicy thai soup made from lemongrass, galanga root, tamarind and chili pastes, thai chili peppers, shrimp, straw mushrooms, onion, tomato, fish sauce, lime juice and cilantro. When done well it’s a wonderful dish that bursts with flavor and possesses a nice kick from the chili and galanga root. The recipe I’ve been using really kicks, which is the problem. Not for the Professor, of course. She LOVES spicy food. I like spicy food as well, just as long as it’s not too spicy. Unfortunately for me the morning after enjoying a wonderfully spicy Indian or Korean meal I usually suffer the consequences to one degree or another. The key concept for me when consuming spicy food, like with drinking, spending and spreading democracy, is moderation. Too much of a good thing is, well, too much.

This time around I wasn’t going to worry about the ramifications of making a soup too spicy for me to eat. This was all about the Professor after all. She wasn’t feeling well and I wanted to make her something that would make her feel better. Being a native of Korea she grew up eating the often fiery foods of that nation’s cuisine. Her taste for hot foods only escalated when she started working with other spicy food eating comrades from Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and India. For me an intensely spicy soup is tasty but painful. For her it’s comfort food. When she’s feeling sick or finds herself in a generally not so good state of being she loves tom yum goong. She always feels better after having some.

So now I’m the designated spicy soup maker. The recipe I’ve been using can be found here. I do most of my shopping at the Whole Foods at Columbus Circle when it’s tom yum goong time. They tend to have lemongrass stalks available when I stop by. They don’t, however (at least when I’m there), carry the galanga root, kaffir lime leaves or the Thai chilis that the recipe calls for. I instead substitute fresh ginger, some extra lime juice and jalapeno peppers (I use 2 in place of the 12 Thai chilis) for the missing ingredients. Sometime soon I’m going to have to make a trip down to Chinatown to pick up the real ingredients and see how much of a difference it makes in the end result. This last time around I couldn’t find straw mushrooms so I used white mushrooms in their place. The white mushrooms didn’t at all mind filling in for the delinquent straws. I can tell you though that even with the substituted ingredients the soup comes out really, really good. The Professor was certainly happy with it.