About a month ago I had a serious craving for Chicken Coconut Curry Noodle Soup from York Street Noodle, only I wanted to learn to make it myself. I considered heading on down to that hallowed noodle joint, sidling up to the counter, and asking if they'd let me have a short-lived unpaid internship, but then I realized that I didn't want to ruin the magic. And I need to work on my sidling technique.
Anyway, I had been thinking that this soup was some sacred in-house concoction, but then I remembered that there is the internet. A vast uncharted sea of recipes. In any case, I looked it up found a bunch of recipes. The great thing about recipe-hunting on the internet is that you can find about a hundred different (or completely the same) ways of cooking any given thing, which allows you to sift through about five or six and figure out a) what's essential to the recipe, b) what's completely not essential, but that some idiot just threw in anyway, and c) what's maybe not essential, but just a really good idea.
I finally stole most of a recipe from another blog (http://thelightersideofme.blogspot.com/), changed a few things around, and the ingredient list ended up looking something like this:
1 lb. chicken breasts
4 cups fresh bok choy
1 (6 oz.) package Udon noodles
1/2 cup frozen peas (they don't need to be frozen, I suppose)
2 tbsp. sesame oil
1/8 cup onion, minced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp. ginger, minced
3 tsp. red curry paste
2 1/2 tsp. curry powder
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. coriander
6 cups chicken broth
1 can coconut milk
1/4 cup green onions, chopped
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. fish sauce
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper
As much cilantro and lime as you want
First, bring some water to a boil, add the bok choy and peas, and boil for a a couple of minutes before removing them. Then, cook the noodles, just until tender, and then transfer them to cold water.
Chop the chicken into stir-fry size pieces. Heat the sesame oil in a wok, and cook the chicken until cooked through but still tender. Remove from the pan. Then sauté the onions, garlic, and ginger for about a minute. Add the red curry paste, curry powder, turmeric, and coriander, and sauté for another minute. Then add the chicken broth and coconut milk and simmer for a few minutes before adding the sugar, fish sauce, and red pepper. The soup should smell like coconut curry soup now! Simmer for a few more minutes, and then just before serving, add the bok choy and peas back into the mix.
To serve, put a heap of noodles in each bowl, and spoon soup over them. Garnish liberally with cilantro and lime. The cilantro and lime are very important. I can't stress that enough. If you take leftovers with you to work or school, don't forget the cilantro and lime.
BUT there's more. I didn't make this perfectly the second time I made it. I used too much fish sauce, and not enough spice (the recipe above is adjusted). It still tasted good, but not exactly how I wanted. So the next day, I decided I would change it up a little. I diluted the leftovers with a bit more chicken broth, added a bit more curry and curry paste, and added two large potatoes, chopped. I simmered this for about 15-20 minutes (until the potatoes were soft), and then had a great inauthentic Thai-Indian curry soup. It was fantastic. If you wanted to forgoe the noodles the first time around, you could add the potatoes, use less liquid, and serve over rice. That would be awesome, too. The second-day finished product is pictured at the top of the post.
The last piece of advice I have concerning this dish is to have all of your ingredients measured out and ready to go ahead of time. As with any stir-fry, the wok component of this dish is done pretty quickly, and things can get messy in the kitchen if you're not ready. But that's easy. Enjoy!
