I read in the
newspaper the other day, that a research team from the UK had proved
that an extract of galangal can both kill cancer cells and protect
healthy ones from the disease. As this is a common ingredient in Thai
stir-fries and soups I was intrigued to learn more. I went onto the
Internet and googled "galangal". I eventually found a recipe for Tom Kha
Gai (chicken coconut soup). As this is on my favourites list I decided
to have a go at cooking it.
My first stop
was my collection of cookery books. I soon discovered that although each
book had a recipe for Tom Kha Gai they were quite different from each
other. From my memory of eating this dish I decided to use the recipe
from "Thailand The Beautiful Cookbook". I made a list of the ingredients
before setting off to the supermarket. I needed: coconut milk,
galangal, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, lime juice, coriander leaves
and some chili. They wanted green but I wanted red. On the left is the galangal (kha). As you can see, it is similar in appearance to ginger. It is pinkish and has a peppery flavour. The label on the pack said it cost 45 baht per kilo. This pack cost 5.75 baht. More than enough. On the next shelf I noticed another pack with both lemon grass (right), galangal and kaffir lime leaves (below right). These are the ingredients for Lemon Grass Soup (more famously known as Tom Yum). As this was only 7 baht I decided to go for that. (1 US$ is presently 38 baht.) As far as I understand, although these two dishes have similar ingredients, Tom Yum focuses more on the lemon grass and Tom Kha Gai focuses more on the galangal. If you are wondering at this stage what "tom" means then I will tell you that it means "boiled".
Next I needed the coriander or "pak chee" in Thai. There were two varieties on the shelf. One was "pak chee tai" and the other "pak chee jeen". I guess the former was Thai and the latter Chinese. As "pak chee jeen" was translated into "coriander" on the label I knew which one to pick. This only cost 4 baht. Next on my list was the small green limes, coconunt milk, chilis and of course the chicken. Oh yes, did you know that the red chilis that are labelled in English as "red bird chili peppers" are called in Thai "mouse shit chilis"! I wonder why they didn't translate that properly in the supermarket?
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