Raid the Freezer: Thai Style Curry Soup with Shrimp and Angel Hair Pasta

Adapted from Serious Eats "20-Minute Thai Red Curry Noodle Soup with Chicken" by J. Kenji Lopez

Coming home tired on a cold night, I realized that I had everything I needed to make a warm, fulfilling soup that didn't require a lot of brain power or prep. All of the main ingredients were in my freezer. I had fish sauce and an open curry paste in my refrigerator.

(I think the recipe would still be palatable without the fish sauce. Maybe some tamari or soy sauce added to the serving bowl would work?)

Ingredients
2 TBSP Thai red curry paste (for a medium heat)
1 tsp oil
5 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1" piece of whole fresh ginger, about 1/2 a tsp
1 TBSP chopped green onion (optional)
16 ounces of mild chicken or vegetable stock
3 TBSP Fish Sauce
2 TBSP cane sugar
Juice from 1 small lime (about 2 tsp); cut frozen limes work great for this
15 oz Coconut Milk
2 TBSP grated carrot
7 oz (about 1/2 a box) of Angel Hair or Thin Spaghetti
1 Quart water for boiling
12 oz salad shrimp
leftover, cooked butternut squash (if you have it), in 1" to 2" chunks
fresh cilantro for garnish if you have it

Directions
This works best with 2 pots so that you can eat in less than half an hour.

1. Fill one pot with the quart of water for boiling the pasta. Cover and set on low/medium heat to bring it to boiling while you start the soup. No need to add salt or oil.
2. In the soup pot, add curry paste, garlic, and oil (unless your paste has a lot of oil) and cook about 1 minute, pressing it against the bottom of the pan and stirring. You want the paste to cook but you don't want the garlic to burn.
3. Add your chicken or vegetable stock.
4. Add fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, green onions, and ginger. My limes were frozen wedges. I put them in as they were and fished them out once they had softened from the hot soup, squished the juice out, and discarded the peel. This is totally OK to do.
5. Add coconut milk.
6. Stir or wisk to blend the ingredients. 
7. Add the grated carrot.
8. Reduce the heat to low and allow to simmer covered.
9. By now, your pasta water will be boiling and ready for the pasta. Add your Angel Hair, stir it around in the water once the noodles are soft, and use the cooking time to warm your bowls, pour drinks, and set your table. You want your pasta slightly undercooked!
10. When the pasta is cooked al dente, turn off the heat. Do not drain it.
11. If the shrimp are frozen, add them to the pot of pasta and water. This will thaw them out and cool the water to stop the pasta from overcooking. Allow one or two minutes for the shrimp to warm up. If your shrimp aren't frozen, skip this step.
12. Using a spaghetti fork or other slotted instrument, spoon the pasta and shrimp directly into the simmering soup base. The extra water (about 16 oz) from the pasta adds to the soup volume. When most of the pasta/shrimp has been transferred, you can discard the remaining pasta water, which should be about 2 cups (16 oz). I don't recommend adding all the pasta water to the soup because it will make the final soup too thin.
13. Allow the soup to return to a simmer, then turn off the heat.
14. If you have leftover butternut squash, portion it out into your serving bowls.
15. Ladle the finished noodle soup into warm bowl over the squash, garnish with cilantro, and eat.

I like this curry paste, which is all-natural and has low sodium:

Thai and True red curry paste costs a bit more at my local natural grocery store, but it's a bigger jar and very, very good. Plus, it's been open in my refrigerator for about a year and it's still good!

The nation brand Thai Kitchen is easier to find, likely to be on sale or have a coupon, and has 38% of your daily sodium per serving. It works fine, but my experience is that it grows moldy after being open in the refrigerator about 3 months.

The fish sauce, oil, sugar, pasta, coconut milk, and the curry paste can all be in the pantry for when you need them.The perishable ingredients for this soup can be kept in the freezer, even the limes, garlic, ginger, green onions, butternut squash, and carrot. One bunch of green onions is always too much for me to use up while fresh. I have the same problem with fresh ginger, which I don't personally love, but recognize as the ingredient that makes or breaks a lot of soups and other recipes, and powdered ginger just doesn't give the same fullness.

Limes are expensive in the Pacific NW, so when I can't use up a whole one quickly, it's good to be able to cut it into slices or wedges and freeze them. They stay good for a month or so.

One of the best things about the original recipe is that it uses plain ol' pasta. I loved that! Who hasn't cooked too much spaghetti, at one time or another, and not know what to do with the extra? Leftover cooked noodles can also go into this soup.

If you prefer chicken to shrimp, here's the original recipe with chicken related instructions: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/10/20-minute-thai-red-curry-noodle-soup-with-chicken-recipe.html

Lemon & Lime Fish Chowder

Lemon & Lime Fish Chowder

1 small leek, thinly sliced
2 TBL unsalted butter (don't substitute or leave out)
3 sprigs marjoram
1 1/2 lbs white fish (cod and sole), fillets
1/2 a medium lemon
1/2 a medium lime
salt to taste (1 tsp)
splash (around 1/4 C) of mirin cooking sake (sherry or white wine)
fresh parsley, chopped (optional)

I used to think that every meal would be improved with garlic. The problem is how often anything I cook tastes the same as any other thing I cook: garlic, oregano, black pepper. Tonight I set out to cook something that would bring out the best in the fish. Due to too much fish for too small a cooking pot, this became a chowder instead of poached fish. Happy accident!

In a 3 quart (or there abouts) saucepan, melt the butter. Add the leeks and cover. Cook on medium heat until soft but not brown. (About 3 minutes.) Cut a couple thick slices of lemon.

Cut the fish into 1/2 pieces and place in the pot on top of the leeks. Add the marjoram and the lemon slices. Squeeze the juice out of the remaining lemon and the lime, over the fish. Cover and cook over low heat. (About 5 minutes.) Add the mirin. Let simmer uncovered for another minute. Don't overcook; you'll lose the "broth". When the fish flakes easily, remove the pot from heat and gently turn all the ingredients, removing the marjoram twigs, slices of lemon, and any pips or bones that got loose.

If you're serving this, you can garnish it with a pinch of chopped parsley and one of the lemon slices, which should still look pretty good, since this all cooks very fast. I would say that this serves 2 people generously. I ate the whole thing, I will admit, and it was too much. I ate the whole thing partially because it was soooo gooood and partially because I don't think this is something that will hold up to reheating. I was too hungry/impatient/lazy to make rice or angel hair pasta to go with the fish I wanted for dinner; again, I think that turned out for the best. While some crusty bread would compliment any fish chowder, I don't think this needs it.

It's all about the fish and the butter, but the delicately musty marjoram, the mildness of leek, and the zingy mix of citrus, further sweetened with the mirin, were the right supporting flavors. Sole by itself would have been mushy. The fillets are so thin, they are better for flash cooking. Mixed with the cod, which is a pretty robust fish, the sole broke up the dominant flavor and added texture interest.

No photo. I had nearly eaten it all before I thought, "I should post this."