Wednesday Wind-down: Thai Vegetable Broth

Consumed by Consommé

On the way to pick up free tickets to an Elvis Presley and The Beatles reunion gig in the Olympia last week I started to thinking about making an Asian broth. So I went into the Asia market on Drury St and I picked up some ingredients what for to make some sort of veggie broth after the gig.

As I walked towards the venue I couldn’t stop thinking about how great the night was going to be. I really couldn’t believe my luck that I was going to get to see something as incredible as a hot broth on my kitchen table.

So I gave the two concert tickets to the richest-looking people I could see and then ran home to make this broth.

Snack Box Spicy Vegetable Broth.

Serves 3-4

Ingredients:

• 1/2 packet of Pak Choi, roughly chopped
• 1/4 packet of beansprouts
• 1 carrot finely sliced
• 1 red pepper finely sliced
• 1/2 packet of mange tout
• 1 stick of lemongrass, hammered and knotted
• 1 inch of root ginger, sliced into five strips
• 1 litre of vegetable stock
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar
• 1 tbspn fish sauce
• 2 bird’s eye chillies

Garnish

• 1 bird’s eye red chili, chopped
• 2 scallions chopped
• 100g crushed salted peanuts
• Sprig of coriander
• 1 coffee mug of jasmine rice

Method

Dry fry (sounds dirty, doesn’t it?) two of the chillies in a pan. This is so you reduce some of their potency while also bringing out their natural flavour. Put the stock, the hammered and knotted lemongrass stick, the ginger, and the fried chillies into a large pot. Cover and cook on a low heat for 20 mins.  Then add the fish sauce and the sugar. Cook for a further 5 mins.

In the meantime put on your rice and cook for about 8 mins (many rice brands give cooking instructions for a rice cooker, which seems to this Caucasian as completely moronic, so just say 1 1/5 cups of water to every cup of jasmine rice).

Add the carrots and the mange tout and cook for another 2 mins before adding the remaining vegetables and taking the pot off the heat.

Put a cup of rice in the middle of the bowl then pour the broth over the rice adding the veggies as you see fit. Serve with the garnishes in little dishes on the table. Not everybody will need more spice to be added to this so approach the chilli garnish with caution.