Lobster Coconut Noodle Soup
With Lobster season in full swing, here's a good way to use up your leftover lobsters (if there are any!). It's a nice, quick and healthy option for those who always feel a little guilty with the full cream in traditional lobster chowder. Give this recipe a try, it might just become your new go to for lobster the next day!
Cooking time - about 20 minutes if you lobsters are cooked and shelled in advance.
3 cups vegetable stock
lobster Shells
2 cloves garlic
400ml full fat coconut milk (1 can)
2 tablespoons Thai red curry paste
1+1/2 tablespoon fish sauce
1/2 lime
2 stalks lemon grass chopped (use the lower 1/3)
2 chopped carrots
5 quarterted mushrooms
1 small handful of rice noodles - I used thick ones, but vermicelli type noodles would probably work well too
cooked lobster meat - I used 4 tails and 8 claws, in bite sized pieces
cilantro
Bring the stock, garlic and shells to a boil. Reduce heat to min. Remove the shells and garlic
Add 1 can of coconut milk, fish sauce and thai red curry paste, whisk for 1 minute.
Add carrots and lemongrass.
While that is cooking, in a shallow pan, boil water for noodles. Once water is boiling, add noodles and let them boil only for a very short time (like less than a minute). Dump hot water and let noodles sit in cold water.
Add lime and mushrooms. Increase heat to medium (not quite boiling)
Add lobster and noodles.
Serve with cilantro garnish.
With no Thai restaurants in Sydney, I modified a Tom Kai Gai recipe just a little, the results were fantastic! You can opt for no noodles in this dish. When I make this the next time, I think I will add some celery and maybe some bamboo shoots.
There is quite a bit of salt in the stock, so you probably won't need to add any into the soup. We were serving this to our little office manager, so it was less spicy than we would normally serve. You can add a small dash of scriacha if you want to liven things up - but give this a go first, it is a very flavourful soup as is.
You can opt to go with "lite" coconut milk, but I find "lite" to be very watered down and less flavourful. Live a little, go with the full fat coconut milk....
It's kinda sad that we needed a nice hot soup on such a cold day in July. Oh summer, I feel like you are just playing games with us.... will you ever really show your face?
Love Soup? Check out this recipe for “Roasted Butternut Squash and Tomato Soup” recipe by clicking HERE.
JMM