Coconut Chicken & Lemongrass Soup

Ingredients

• 500 ml chicken stock
• 2 lemongrass stalks, bruised and halved
• 1 thumb-sized piece galangal or ginger, sliced
• 3 garlic cloves, sliced
• 2 red chillies, one sliced, one left whole
• 2 x 400ml tins coconut milk
• 3 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp palm sugar
• 4 kaffir lime leaves
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 600 g chicken breast, thinly sliced
• 200 g shiitake mushrooms, sliced
• 3 spring onions, sliced
• 15g fresh coriander
• Steamed jasmine rice, to serve
• Pickled cucumber, to serve
• Steamed jasmine rice, to serve
• Pickled cucumber, to serve

Method

1. Pour the coconut milk and chicken stock into a large heavy pot. Add the bruised lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal, sliced garlic and the whole chilli. Bring to the gentlest simmer over medium heat — you want a lazy shiver across the surface, not a rolling boil, or the coconut milk splits and goes grainy. Let it infuse for 15 minutes; by the end the kitchen should smell unmistakably of lemongrass and lime leaf.
2. Watch the garlic as it steeps — it should turn pale and soft, never brown. Burnt garlic in a clear coconut broth turns the whole pot bitter, so keep the heat low and the bubbles small.
3. Season the sliced chicken with a small pinch of salt before it goes in — coconut soaks up seasoning, and a naked piece of chicken in this broth tastes flat no matter how fragrant the liquid is.
4. Slide in the shiitake and mangetout. Simmer for 3 minutes — the mushrooms should darken and slump, the mangetout stay bright green with a snap.
5. Add the chicken slice by slice so the temperature doesn't crash and they don't clump into a single raft. Poach for 6–8 minutes at that same gentle simmer, stirring once or twice, until the chicken is opaque all the way through and tender — no firmer than that, or you've overshot.
6. Stir in the baby spinach and let it wilt down for 30 seconds — it only needs the residual heat.
7. Off the heat, season with the fish sauce, the lime juice and the palm sugar. Taste — most of the salt comes from the fish sauce, but you're chasing a balance of salty, sour and sweet, with the lime juice cutting cleanly through the coconut richness. Taste again and adjust: another splash of lime if it's flat, another teaspoon of fish sauce if it's thin, a final pinch of salt to tie it together.
8. Fish out the lemongrass, lime leaves, galangal and the whole chilli — they've done their job.
9. Ladle into bowls over a mound of steamed jasmine rice. Scatter with the spring onions, the sliced red chilli and a generous handful of fresh coriander, and set the pickled cucumber alongside for crunch.