Thai Hot and Sour Shrimp Soup

Tom Yum Goong

Fragrant with lime juice and lemongrass, this hot and sour soup is served throughout Thailand, with subtle regional variations in heat, sweetness, and pungency. Pictured are Wai Smitaman and his wife, Kiew Krislas, a home cook in southern Thailand who provided the recipe upon which this one was based.

3 large stalks fresh lemongrass

4 cups chicken stock

12 fresh or frozen Kaffir lime leaves

1 cup canned straw mushrooms, drained

2-4 tbsp. roasted Thai chile paste (nam prik pao)

8 oz. medium shrimp, peeled and deveined

1½ tbsp. fish sauce

4-6 Thai chiles, stemmed and smashed with side of a knife

3 scallions, cut into 1-inch lengths Juice of 1 lime

2 cups cooked rice (optional)

Serves 2

1. Trim tip and root ends of lemongrass stalks and remove and discard tough outer layer. Using a meat mallet or the side of a knife, smash lemongrass to flatten it; tie stalks into a knot; set aside. Pour stock into a 2-qt. saucepan and bring to a boil. Add lemongrass and half the lime leaves, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer until fragrant, about 5 minutes.

2. Remove and discard lemongrass and lime leaves and increase heat to high. Stir in mushrooms and chile paste, to taste, and boil for 1 minute; add shrimp and fish sauce and cook until shrimp are just cooked through, about 45 seconds. Combine remaining lime leaves with chiles, scallions, and lime juice in a serving bowl or tureen. Ladle soup into serving bowl, stir, and serve immediately, with rice, if you like.

Big World

For my 13th-birthday dinner, my parents and I drove from our home in Falmouth, Massachusetts, to Boston to eat at a popular Thai restaurant called the King and I. This was a big deal. We didn’t go to Boston often and we’d never eaten Thai food. In small-town Massachusetts at that time, the brick oven pizzeria was as urbane as it got. The place was bright and loud and packed. The waiter came over and we each ordered pad Thai—the noodles were enough like pasta to assuage my father, who would rather have been at a red-sauce joint—plus a bowl of tom yum soup for me, which I chose because it included shrimp. The soup arrived first, a brown crock of cloudy broth with a few mushrooms, a sprig of cilantro, flecks of chopped something (lemongrass and Kaffir lime leaf, I would later learn), and just one pink shrimp. No matter; it was the broth that floored me. It had an unfamiliar sourness that was round and sweet, but it also had an intriguing fishy flavor and a beautiful citrusy fragrance. Then the pad Thai arrived, a heap of rice noodles tangled with stir-fried egg and scallion, sprinkled with peanuts, all of it strange to me and addictive. I remember looking around to see how the other diners used chopsticks, and then back at my quiet family who twirled our noodles around forks. After that meal, I’d sit in algebra class and dream of tom yum, the memory of its tartness making my mouth water. I’d spend weekends making pad Thai for my friends, once I realized that the “international foods” section of the Stop & Shop carried fish sauce. That soup made me lust for places like New York City, where surely everyone ate things like Thai food every night. And when I finally moved there—and realized that they didn’t—I felt at home anyway.

—Sarah DiGregorio