tom yam noodle soup
The weather’s been rainy with cool mornings and heavy downpours in the evenings which would’ve been perfect for checking out the warehouse sale my girl friend’s been dying to get to.
Except she’s down with the flu so there goes our brilliant plan to go shopping for wholesale handbags. So I stayed home and decided to cook tomyam rice noodle soup instead, which incidentally makes a warming meal for cool weather days.
I use tom yam flavored cubes for the soup base. I don’t stick to any particular brand of cubes, sometimes I use Maggi, sometimes Knorr, and you can pretty much use whatever brand you can find. There’s also the tomyam paste that comes in a jar but I didn’t quite like the taste of the ones I tried.
So I tend to stick with the flavored cubes which come in packs of 6. I typically use 3-4 cubes into a saucepan of boiling water to form the soup base depending on how strong a flavor I want.
To sweeten the soup, I add some chicken carcasses (to be removed later), sliced celery and carrots, fresh black mushrooms, fresh enoki mushrooms, fishballs and pork balls. Tomyam goes well with other ingredients like chicken or fish slices, squid or shrimp and whatever vegetables you fancy so go ahead and be creative.
Bring everything to a boil on medium to high heat. It’s important to taste the soup before serving. Depending on which brand and how many cubes I use, the soup may end up too sharp. If that’s the case, I just add a bit of sugar to take the edge off the tomyam. If you’re a chilli freak like me, you can also add fresh chopped chillies to really spice things up 
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In another saucepan, I boil up enough water to soak the rice noodles in. When the noodles are softened, drain and scoop into individual bowls. Ladle tomyam soup over the noodles and serve hot. Sometimes I make a big pot of tomyam soup, enough for lunch and dinner and we eat this for a whole day.
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