Thai Me Up, Thai Me Down: Mussels Soup With Thai Basil (Hoi Malaeng Puu Bai Horapha)

It's been said that eating is one of the greatest pleasures our body could possibly experience.  If there is a cuisine that truly delivers on that aphorism, for me, it would be Thai cuisine.  I simply

love Thai cuisine.  I love the complexity of flavors that can be found in each dish.  I love the way it engages all my five senses; the way it burns my tongue with fiery chilis, causing beads of sweat to form on my temples, trickling down my ears and neck, leaving me soaking wet.  It's amazing the way Thai dishes can make me feel and look as if I've run three marathons in a single day even though I'm only exerting a minimal amount of  effort by bringing a fork loaded with morsels of food into my already burning mouth.

Yet, inspite of all the physical discomfort, I love the way a Thai dish compensates and soothes me with the lovely and subtle fragrance of kaffir lime leaves and lemongrass; and, how their scent lingers just for a few moments long after a morsel has made its way into the depths of the digestive system.

I am so enamored of the cuisine of Thailand that I've been considering going to neighboring Bangkok to take cooking lessons.  However, time and the circumstances I'm currently in won't permit me to indulge in such a luxury.  As an alternative, I've decided to buy David Thompson's cookbook, aptly titled Thai Food, to teach myself.  Although the book is comprehensive and wonderful in that it offers authentic Thai recipes; by the same token, from a Westerner's perspective, it is also the book's drawback.  Many of the recipes are impossible, if not difficult, to do for those living outside Southeast Asia, as most of the ingredients are unavailable or would be expensive if it were available.

Since I am currently living in the Philippines where most of these ingredients are readily available, it would be silly of me not to take advantage of such an opportunity by allowing the book to collect dust.  I certainly wouldn't be able to do many of these recipes if I were back home in Los Angeles.  So, from this day forward, my dear readers, all future Thai recipes in this blog will be based on Mr. David Thompson's comprehensive cookbook.

This is the second Thai dish I've ever prepared in my entire life.  The first Thai dish I've ever prepared was green chicken curry (out of a bottle).  Watch out for this recipe in my next entry.

This is the first recipe I've used from Mr. Thompson's book.  I love mussels, they're dirt cheap ( US $ 1.11/kg or $0.50/lb for live mussels) here in the Philippines; and this recipe is fairly easy to do for those of you who are living outside the Far East since the ingredients are most likely to be available.

The secret to this recipe's success is in the stock and fresh, live mussels.  Frozen mussels simply does not yield as much flavor.  Please do not use canned chicken stock.  Otherwise, do not bother making this dish at all.  Make your own Thai chicken stock.  It will make all the difference.  If you have no choice but use frozen mussels, a good stock can compensate for the lost flavor.

 

Recipe

(source: Thai Food by David Thompson)

6 oz (200 g) mussels

2 stalks lemongrass, bruised

1/2 cup  (125 ml) chicken stock

1 small bunch Thai basil, chopped

Directions:

Purge mussels by covering them in salted water for an hour.

Clean and debeard the mussels.

Add lemongrass to stock, bring to a boil and steam the mussels, covered, until they open. Discard unopened mussels

Sprinkle with basil and serve.

Note to fellow expats in the Philippines:  If you aren't comfortable going to the public markets just yet, the best place to buy live, fresh mussels would be at SM Hypermart Pasig, SM Supermarket Makati, SM MegaMall and SM Supermarket, Mall of Asia.