Tom Kha Gai (Thai Coconut Soup)

Since it seemed like I had most of the ingredients to make this soup, I attempted it for the very first time for dinner tonight.  I've had it at Thai restaurants before, and it seemed easy enough to make.  Well, I thought my first attempt was successful.

most of the ingredients

palm sugar

What I used:

• 2-3 cups baby bella mushroom (cut into sixths since they were good size mushrooms)
• 1 cup sliced pork loin (I would have preferred chicken breast but pork was thawed & ready to use.)
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 can chicken broth (2 cans would have worked.  I had to add 2 cups of water to thin out the broth to my liking.)
• 2 limes (I used the zest from the two limes since I didn't have kaffir lime leaves.  The juice from both limes were used also.)
• 1 lemongrass (sliced)
• 1 clove garlic (diced)
• 1 chunk of palm sugar (which is about 1 tablespoon)
• 2 tablespoon fish sauce
• 4-5 pieces of dried galanga (Fresh galanga could be used also but I didn't have any.)
• cilantro
• salt & pepper to taste

tea ball with ingredients

tea ball strainer in pot of coconut milk, water and chicken broth

I put the lemongrass, lime zest, garlic and galanga in a tea strainer ball and added it to the pot with water, chicken broth and coconut milk.  The soup was brought to a boil, and I let it go for about 5-10 minutes.  (It can boil longer to get the fragrant from ingredients in the tea strainer.)  At this point, I added palm sugar, fish sauce and lime juice.  You can add more or less of those three ingredients according to your taste preference.  Then I added the pork to the pot.  Once the pork was cooked, I added the mushroom and let the mushroom cook before turning off the heat.  I added salt and pepper and enjoyed the soup with cilantro.