Southern Thai Gaeng Som Recipe Sour Fish Soup

SOUTHERN THAI SOUR CURRY RECIPE

Steps:

• Bring broth or water to a simmer and add 1 TBSP of paste at a time. Mix, stir and taste. Continue adding additional TBSPs to your preferred taste. 3 TBSPs is what I like but that's REALLY spicy! You could even add more.
• Add 2 TBSPs lime juice and then add more to desired taste. If you're cooking for more than yourself, you can leave out the lime juice and let each person add it to his/her individual bowl.
• Add veggies and simmer a few minutes.
• Add fish or shrimp and simmer a few minutes until cooked through.
• Adjust flavors to your taste with lime juice, fish sauce or salt or even sugar.
• Serve with a side of steamed jasmine rice.
• Enjoy!

SWEET-AND-SOUR THAI FISH SOUP

Steps:

• In a large pot of salted, boiling water, cook rice until tender. Drain, set aside, and keep warm.
• In a food processor or blender, combine shallots, garlic, chopped cilantro, ginger, tamarind paste, anchovy, and brown sugar and puree until smooth.
• In a soup pot, combine puree, cayenne, fish sauce, and clam juice and bring to a boil. Add fish and let simmer for 5 minutes. Add rice and simmer for 2 minutes. Remove soup from the heat and stir in lettuce, radishes, and snow peas. Ladle soup into bowls and serve sprinkled with scallions, cilantro leaves, and cucumber.

KAENG SOM (THAI SOUTHERN STYLE SOUR CURRY)

Steps:

• Using a mortar and pestle (food processor), grind all of the curry paste ingredients together very, very finely (it is important to do this well so you won't happen upon any large bits of chili in your soup!).
• Put the curry paste aside and prepare the soup ingredients. Thinly slice sour, slightly unripe pineapple. Dice the sour papaya into 1 inch cubes. Clean and cut some fish into bite-size pieces until you have about 1-1 1/2 cups.Set all of these aside. For your mise en place, you'll need a bottle of fish sauce, 4 sliced limes ready for squeezing, and some sugar.
• Bring about 4 cups of water to the boil, add about half of the curry paste and stir and simmer until the broth is fragrant. Add more curry paste if necessary, but don't add it all at once as it may be too much! Add the pineapple and the sour papaya. Simmer until they begin to soften, 3-4 minutes, and taste the curry. The pineapple and papaya should add a slightly sweet and sour flavor to the broth.
• Squeeze a few limes' worth of lime juice into the broth until you reach a tolerable state of sourness. Remember, it is called "sour" curry, so there should be a definite sour taste, followed by spicy, salty and sweet. Add some fish sauce if it isn't salty enough.
• Add your fish. Simmer until the fish is just done, 2-3 minutes, remove from heat, and you're done! Serve with rice.