Thai Chicken Soup with Coconut Milk, 'Tom Kha Gai'

"This is a mild but spicy chicken soup (it can also be made with shrimp, pork, beef or mushrooms), flavored with the unique flavor of galangal ("kha" in Thai) which creates a heavenly taste when combined with hot chile peppers, coconut milk, lime leaves and lemongrass. The recipe below is a common, basic method using a prepackaged soup broth or bullion cube. To make things more tasty, try preparing your own broth from scratch. To make a simple broth for Tom Kha, put a carrot, half stalk celery, one medium chopped onion, perhaps a half cup of chopped daikon, and a few cloves of fresh garlic, into a pot of water. Simmer for an hour or so and you have a good broth, to be used in place of the 16 oz broth mentioned in recipe below. We also prefer increasing the amount of coconut milk to broth, to a 1:1 ratio. You might also be interested in our excellent quality ready-made Tom Kha Soup in Pouches. A nice variant to recipe below is our Tom Kha Salmon recipe made by the Prime Minister of Thailand...."