Khao soi

So our most recent vacation trip was to Singapore/Thailand in November.  So many new foods and tastes and smells!  One of the favorites is khao soi, a northern Thai curry chicken noodle dish, a Chiang Mai specialty.  Our friend who grew up in Thailand took us to his favorite place outside of old town, and our first time eating khao soi was DELICIOUS!

Khao soi is a spicy gingery curry chicken broth, with chicken drumsticks in it, and wide egg noodles.  It is topped with pickled mustard greens, sliced shallots, and fried egg noodles.  I think it's the fried egg noodles that makes it so awesome.

Luckily, I had signed us up for a cooking class the day after, and I was able to learn how to make it!  I learned how to make the khao soi curry paste (in a mortar pestle), and also cook it with the coconut cream to make the curry broth, but they did everything else for us.

So now I'm practicing the whole thing at home!  Out of all the curry pastes we learned in the class, I think khao soi is definitely the easiest (least number of different ingredients, and also most moist ingredients, easier to pound).

Try #1: way too spicy.... maybe my dried chilis are spicier than expected?  And burnt a couple of the fried noodles.  Also got lazy and just threw in pre-cooked chicken, so the broth lacked the meaty depth of flavor.

Try #2: not spicy enough (overcompensated too much in the other direction), but getting better at frying the noodles!  Still was lazy and threw in roasted chicken meat, so that was an interesting combination of flavors...

Try #3: ok spicy, but not too spicy, fried noodles were ok (and we remembered to salt them this time!), AND also poached the chicken in the coconut cream and curry broth.  SUPER tender chicken!  And got fancier this time because we had friends over, so I got pickled mustard greens too!

A work in progress :)