Name: Tom yum talay
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Thai
Ingredients: 1 large thumb-sized piece of fresh galangal, washed and thinly sliced; 1 tomato, core removed, cut into quarters; 2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce; 2 stems of lemon grass, outer sheath removed, cut into 1cm slices on the diagonal; 1½ tablespoons sunflower oil; 900 ml good chicken stock, tasty but not too strong or dark; 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice; 2 medium squid with tentacles, cleaned, body cut into ½cm rings or slices, tentacle clusters halved; 12 environmentally acceptable raw tiger or king prawns, peeled; 2 teaspoons soft light brown or palm sugar; 4 green or red (or a mix) of bird’s-eye chillies, roughly chopped; 4 closed-cap or chestnut mushrooms, cut into quarters; 6 kaffir lime leaves; 1 teaspoon shrimp paste; 2 medium banana (long) shallots, finely sliced; 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh coriander stalks, plus a handful of leaves; 2 cloves of garlic, very finely sliced; 300 g big mussels, debearded

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

What to Eat Next

By Valentine Warner

Published 2014

About

I don’t cook a lot of Thai food. I like eating it, certainly, but I feel I don’t have enough understanding of the basics, yet, to include much more of this cuisine in my book. (I need some lessons!) However, this is my favourite Thai soup, and I have had a few discussions with Thai restaurateurs about how this bowl of eye-wateringly hot, sharp, aromatic, fishy joy should be assembled. Were you to find me eating this alone, as I always seem to, the tears pouring from my eyes would suggest I