Cooking in hot weather

It's starting to cool off a little bit this week, but really it's been too hot to cook lately. Too hot really to even eat anything other than an occasional gin-soaked olive. But when it's steamy and hot and crappy like this I sometimes want a really spicy-sweet-sour soup. Not one of those fancy chilled soups, but a hot soup. With shrimps and scallops and lemon grass -- kind of like that stuff you get at Thai restaurants. I figure it's no accident that people in hot climates eat spicy food.

So I made some of this last night; it's not particularly authentic, and I don't make it the same way every time. The following instructions are just guidelines, not exactly a recipe, but I think you'll get the idea. It's kind of expensive to make unless the seafood happens to be really cheap. I like it hot enough to make my ears ring, but I've toned it down a bit here.

I wish I'd had a camera at home so I could show you how pretty it was, but you'll have to take my word for it: it's beautiful.

This makes about four smallish servings. I usually use 1 whole chicken breast, and a pound each of shrimp & scallops, and two or even three quarts of broth, but the quantities below fit comfortably into what I think is a 3-qt saucepan. I serve it over short-grained white rice (nishiki or sushi rice), but it's not necessary. You could also add some of those cellophane-type rice noodles (cook separately & store extra rice or noodles separately or you'll end up with a gummy mess).

Ingredients:

• onion (medium)
• olive oil (about 1 Tbsp)
• chicken breast (about 1/3 lb boneless, skinless)
• chicken broth (1 quart)
• garlic (1 clove)
• shiitake mushrooms* (4 largishstems removed), or some other kind, or no mushrooms at all -- about 1/2 cup sliced
• lemon grass (1 stalk)
• kaffir lime leaves (2 or 3)
• dried red chili peppers (1 or 2)
• fresh jalapeno pepper (optional - 1/2 to 1)
• fresh ginger (a few quarter-sized slices, peeled)
• juice of 1/2 lime (or more if you want)
• rice wine vinegar
• shoyu or tamari
• water (a cup or so)
• fresh basil *and/or cilantro (lots)
• cherry tomatoes (a few, say 4 or 5, cut in half)
• about 1/3 lb bay scallops
• fresh, whole jumbo shrimps (8)

Directions:

First you slice up the onion and saute it in the olive oil very slowly until it's very soft. Then you cut up the chicken breast and put it in and let it cook for a bit. Add the garlic and let it cook for just a minute. It doesn't really matter if you mince it up or if you run it through the garlic press. I can't find my garlic press, so I minced it. Then add the chicken broth (I used one 32-oz box of unsalted chicken broth, but I've also made it with homemade vegetable stock and mushroom broth which I bought by accident and it tasted just fine). Toss in the very thinly sliced mushrooms if you want them. Shiitakes especially seem kind of rubbery to me if you don't slice them really thin.

The next few things you won't actually eat, but they add a very nice flavor to the broth: just snip the lemon grass into 2-inch pieces - it's a bitch to chop, and you'll be picking them out later anyway; the kaffir lime leaves just toss in there whole, sort of like bay leaves. The dried peppers can be put in whole (though know your peppers -- if the broth is going to stand overnight, for example, you might want to break one or both of them and discard the seeds, unless you like really hot food). I usually also add a couple of thick slices of jalapeno pepper -- remove seeds (wear gloves!!) if you don't want it to get too hot. Peel the fresh ginger and slice into quarter-sized slices - add maybe $1 or $1.50 worth (4-6 chunks). Dried ginger doesn't work so well -- skip it if you don't have fresh ginger.

Let all of this simmer for a while, until the chicken is completely done. Add the lime juice and maybe a tablespoon or so each of rice wine vinegar and good soy sauce or tamari. The only rice wine vinegar I had was sushi vinegar, which is sweetened and salted. Worked fine - I just used a little less tamari so it wouldn't get too salty.

Taste it at this point. If you feel like it needs to be a little sweeter, add a few slices of carrot. The best time to do that whole broth part is the day before you want to make the soup, but if you didn't think of it yesterday, just let it stand for as long as you can (bring it to a simmer every now and then for a few minutes if it's going to be a while, just to discourage pathogen growth) or refrigerate it for a few hours. You don't want to just let it simmer endlessly, though, as I find this compromises the delicateness of the flavors.

When it's almost time to serve it, bring it to a gentle simmery boil and add the scallops, shrimps*, tomatoes, and the basil, stems and all (I'm talking about like maybe almost a whole one of those packages you get at the grocery store). Add more water if you need to, in order to keep everything submerged (a cup or so should do it). You can remove the peppers, lemon grass, etc. before you serve it, or just make people pick it out of their bowls themselves.

*Update: Yes, I just toss the shrimps in, shells and all. You can peel & clean them first if you want, but I think they look kind of cool whole. Plus they're kind of fun to peel at the table if you and your guests don't mind that sort of thing. Regarding the mushrooms, they are totally optional. I prefer shiitakes, but those little funny-looking ones like they have in the Thai or Vietnamese restaurants are good too, if you can find them. The button mushrooms or portobellos are not so good in this.

And also, I forgot to include cilantro when I wrote this down. Use a generous handful (not a whole great big bunch of it), rinsed and maybe torn up a bit, but don't bother chopping it. Oh, and I also forgot to say to simmer it gently for five or maybe ten minutes -- until the shrimps are bright pink and the scallops are cooked through. The basil and cilantro should still be bright green.