Food Buzz

Foodbuzz

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Shrimp and lemongrass soup

I just made a really delicious Thai dish called Tom Yum Goong (shrimp and lemongrass soup).  I got the recipe from Quick and Easy Thai by Nancie McDermott.  You can also find the recipe online here.  The hardest thing about making this dish was finding lemongrass!  I also substituted regular ginger for the galangal and omitted the wild lime leaves. I went to three grocery stores before heading to Whole Foods and finding some pretty sad looking lemongrass at a whopping $2.49 per stalk!  So I only used one stalk and added more ginger to provide some punch to the flavor of the soup.  It definitely had a kick to it! 



I paired the soup with a Zaca Mesa viognier purchased this past summer on a wine tasting trip with Marcy and Kathy.  The subtle sweetness of the wine really balances the heat from the jalapeno and chili paste. If you ever head up to the Santa Ynez valley I highly recommend this winery - their wines are quite tasty and their outdoor seating area is so pretty (see below)

.
Does anyone in the LA area have any favorite ethnic markets that they would like to share with me?  My every day grocery store continues to fail me (I recently had to go to a number of grocery stores before I was able to find Chorizo sausage!  That is shocking to me). 

Anyway - off to clean some dishes....

Chow for now! :)
Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. Nat ZappiaFebruary 23, 2010 at 8:38 PM

    Great blog chef! Congratulations on the class and the new endeavor. I love Tom Yong Goong too! As for great ethnic markets, there's the fantastic LA Asian market chain, Mitsuwa:

    (http://www.mitsuwa.com/english/index.html)

    It's a real treat to walk through the aisles. It's mostly geared to Japanese cuisine, but you could definitely find lemon grass cheaper there! We got our first rice cooker there which lasted for years.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)