Thai Tom Yum Soup and Beetlebean Salad

Yesterday I was walking through the store, trying to decide what to make for dinner, when I came across a little bundle of lemongrass, red chilis, kaffir lime leaves, and some other indistinguishable ingredient that I later learned was Thai ginger (galangal). I knew it must be a collection of flavoring agents for some kind of Thai dish, but I didn't know which, although I suspected it was a soup. I love a good food mystery, so I bought the bundle of exotic ingredients and decided to figure out how to make something with them at home.

After close inspection, I realized that there was a tag on the back of the package that said "Tom Yum Set." I looked up Tom Yum and discovered that it is a very well-known and popular soup in Thailand. It's usually made with fresh shrimp, straw mushrooms, fish sauce, and the ingredients of my Tom Yum set.

I found a highly-rated recipe on the Food Network website and decided to make the soup for dinner. I had some smoked trout, which I decided to use in place of the shrimp, and all I really needed to buy were the mushrooms, fish sauce, and some basil for garnish. I bought button mushrooms instead of straw mushrooms, because the only straw mushrooms you can find in the stores are canned, and I am not a big fan of slimy canned mushrooms. Basically, all you have to do is cut up the ginger, chilis, and lemongrass, and toss them in an oiled pot with the lime leaves. I let this mixture infuse the oil for a few minutes, and then I added some chicken stock. After the stock boiled for about 15 minutes, I strained out the Tom Yum set ingredients (most of them are inedible) and added the fish, sliced mushrooms, fish sauce, and some torn basil.

The soup turned out nicely. The lime leaves, lemongrass, and chilis work together to produce a spicy and citrusy-sour flavor. Next time I probably would use the shrimp, which would pair better with the delicate flavor of the broth. I fear that the smoked trout flavor might have slightly overpowered the rest of the flavors of the soup. I will just have to play around with different ingredients. I've never had authentic Tom Yum soup so it's hard to know what it's supposed to taste like. I think I got slightly close, though.

The nice thing about this soup is, and most articles about Tom Yum soup point this out, is that you can experiment with the flavors a lot to suit your tastes. If you like spicy, you can cut up the chilis and leave them in the soup; if not, you can leave them whole and remove them after they have imparted just a slight spiciness. If you like mild sour, you can just use the lime leaves and the lemongrass, but if you want it more sour you can add lime juice.

The not-so-nice thing about the soup is that unless your local grocery store carries Tom Yum sets, the ingredients can be difficult to locate. But I think that a good Asian market would have all the necessary items.

I wanted a light meal, so as a second course after the soup I made a bean sprout and Styrian beetle bean salad. Both items you can pick up here in Austria in the deli section. Here's my package of deluxe sprouts (3 different kinds!):
Beetle beans, or Kaeferbohnen in German, are grown in the southeast Austrian state of Styria, where the climate is perfect for their cultivation. They are rather big beans and sort of do look like beetles, even though that's kind of gross. Styria is also famous for its pumpkinseed oil, they call it the "black gold" of Styria, haha. In stores you can buy a bean salad made with both of these ingredients--the beans with a dressing of vinegar, diced onions, and pumpkinseed oil. On its own, the bean salad is delicious but a little rich, but spooned over bean sprouts, it is perfect. The juice from the bean salad provides a nice dressing for the sprouts.

Of course, this little bean salad is really only available here in Austria (I tried to find pumpkinseed oil in Bloomington once and it was available in only one store for something like $20, and I don't think you could find the beetle beans at all in the US). But I think this salad would be good with any vinegar-based bean salad.