ABC Soup ala Lyn

Well, looking at the weather that October brings to London, soup is normally the best remedy to a cold and dreary day.

I was intending to make mushroom soup and realised I had to purchase a ton of other ingredients before I could actually make it, so I decided to dive into my fridge and see what I had in stock. What did I find? A tube of Japanese egg tofu, snow peas, a stalk of lemon grass, red chillies, prawns, brown button mushrooms, an egg and a left over vegetable stock cube. I even found lemon sitting amongst the fruits, so I decided to make something almost similar to tom yam soup without the lime leaves and galangal.

ABC Soup ala Lyn

Voila! The end product was certainly delicious and I did not have to purchase any additional ingredients to make it. What was the recipe again?

1 whole             red onion - chopped roughly

1 packet            prawns - you can marinate them if you want with sesame oil and some fish sauce

1 tube                Japanese Egg Tofu - sliced and cut into cubes

1 stalk               lemon grass - banged, first two leaves removed then sliced finely

2 stalks              red chillies - remove seeds and sliced finely

1                       medium sized egg

1/2 cube            instant vegetable stock

1 packet            now peas - ends removed and diced

5 - 6                  brown button mushrooms - diced

1 whole              lemon - for the juice

1 medium bowl   water

Method:

1. Add in oil in pot, when hot, add in chopped onions and salt. Saute till onions are fragrant and then add in the lemongrass. Continue stir frying.
2. When lemongrass and onions turn pale and the smell is whiffing about, add in the chillies and continue frying. Then pour in water and bring to boil. Add in vegetable stock cube whilst waiting for the water to boil.
3. When broth comes to a boil, add in prawns and wait till it slowly cooks. Soon after add in diced snow peas, mushrooms and let it boil further. Bring it down to simmer for a bit.
4. Before completely switching off the gas, add in the egg and stir to create the stringy effect within the soup. Finally add in the lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. As an alternative you may decide to use fish sauce to replace the salt.
5. Dish it out and serve it with a bowl of white flat rice noodles or even white rice.

Whilst this might seem a tad longer than usual in terms of preparation and cooking, the end result does come up with a good tasting hearty soup with lots of bits in it to constantly munch on. Very much like the minestrone soup except I have prawns in it :)

However, this recipe does not mean you need to follow it to the T. You can opt to put in diced carrots, diced potatoes, diced celery and take out the prawns and replace it with meat. It just depends on what you have in your fridge. You can use other kinds of stock to make it so you needn't stick to vegetable stock.

So for hearty soup lovers who like soups with a twist, this may be your option. It is not thick like a creamy soup but extremely healthy if you use actual vegetable / chicken / meat stock to cook it in. I love both versions of the soup and since halloween is coming up, I will be looking into preparing a hearty pumpkin and ginger soup. But till that happens happy experimenting!

Love,
The Innovative Baker!