Healing Thai Soup

So Julie's been dealing with a cold for the past week and I've had my tonsils kicking at me as well, so we decided that it was time for some healing and nourishing soup. So Julie stopped by Shuang Hur and picked up lemon grass, galangal and kafir lime leaf. I made some vegetable stock from the vegetable odds and ends that we keep in the freezer for just such occaisions. To make the soup from there: take about two quarts of vegetable stock and simmer it with six lime leaves, three lemon grass stalks (peeled and chopped into sections) and one three inch knob of galangal sliced into 1/8th inch coins for an hour. Add a couple of dried shitake to rehydrate in the stock for the last fifteen minutes.

After an hour remove the aromatics and discard (set the mushrooms aside until they're cool enough to handle, remove the stem, slice and return to the pot). Add vegetables of your choosing, spacing them out through the cooking process so that they finish at roughly the same time. We added first carrots and sweet potatoes, followed by onions, thai red chilis, garlic, sliced mushrooms and swiss chard, then chopped gluten and coconut milk to thicken and enrich the stock (we've made this before as a dinner party main dish, and added two full cans of coconut milk and a couple of tablespoons of red curry paste; this time we were feeling more basic, so only added about half a can of coconut milk). When the soup was in the bowls, we sprinkled on cilantro, sliced green onion and toasted cashews.

Ahhh, the healing powers of soup.