Hmmmm, Lemon-Shrimp Soup!

January 18, 2007 6:39 AM

In paris at the weekend, I was in chinatown and I had a soup in an a small restaurant. The most noticable tastes were shrimp and lemon. I want to make that soup.

This restaurant could have been vietnamese, thai, or chinese. The soup was in a small bowl with a ceramic spoon, and was half clear, had some leaves in it, had tiny maize cobs in it, had shrimp and lime of course. The shrimp had the tails still on, but the body was peeled off, so you could hold the tail and simply bite off the flesh.

There were other things in the soup, but I forget. It is a native soup of an asian country. Anybody have an idea what this soup is, and how I can make it using ingredients commonly available in an average german city?

posted by markesh to food & drink (7 comments total)

It was probably Lemongrass soup.

It is delicious.
posted by JeremiahBritt at 6:50 AM on January 18, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Same soup, but the Thai name: Tom Yam Gung. The ingredients should be rather easy to get, the only challenge might be the Kaffir lime leaves.
posted by insouciant at 7:19 AM on January 18, 2007

Tom Yam?
posted by Pericles at 7:20 AM on January 18, 2007

You'll know if it was Tom Yam based on whether there was lemongrass in it or not -- were there straw-like inedible, yellowish stalks in the soup? There wouldn't be many, but at least a few.

If it was, you can use regular ginger instead of galangal. Lemongrass is integral, but you can probably get it. You can also make it with chicken, and if you add coconut milk you get my favourite Thai soup: Tom Kha (best with chicken).

OTOH, if you were in a Chinese restaurant, could it have been hot and sour soup?
posted by dreamsign at 7:44 AM on January 18, 2007

Sounds like some variation on "tom yum goong," particuarly if it was a bit spicy and salty. Recipes (including picture for reference) here and by googling "tom yum goong". Thai soups are quite tasty, I agree.

However, if you don't cook Thai food it might be difficult to track down ingredients like fish sauce, lemon grass shoots, kaffir lime leaves, and red curry paste (NOT interchangable with any variety of Indian curry paste!). There are "Westernized" versions of the soup recipe searchable on the web that don't have some or all of these unusual items, but I think you might find that it wouldn't taste the same.
posted by aught at 7:51 AM on January 18, 2007

If you can't find these ingredients near you, you can buy tom yum paste in a jar: available here, for instance (scroll down.) I haven't tried this product, so I can't vouch for it personally!
posted by escabeche at 8:14 AM on January 18, 2007

You can get excellent results with the stuff that comes in a jar. I use it all the time. No need to spend all afternoon assembling something from scratch, let someone else do it.
posted by Wolof at 5:40 PM on January 18, 2007