Mother’s Pride Soup

Number Two Son is very bad at Full Moon Parties. Last year his ‘drink was spiked’ and he fell asleep at midnight, waking when all the festivities were over. This year he made it to just after midnight, before some ruffian rugby-tackled him, he fell off a twenty foot platform and landed on a sharp light fitting.

‘I’ve just had twenty stitches in my leg. It just missed my femoral artery’ he said triumphantly down the phone to me, from a hospital in Koh Samui, where he had been speed-boated back along with a girl who had broken her arm. I was very grateful that he had not injured himself more seriously, but was cross with him for getting into a scrape.

When boys are eighteen – they think they are invincible and they are quite hard to discipline and manipulate into doing what a mother wants. I have  two large sons, two brothers and lots of male friends and think I am quite adept at ‘influencing’ men. I have found with younger ones, only two things work – two threats that will get them off their argumentative backsides and doing whatever it is that you want. These two things? Dancing and ‘talking street’.

I am very fond of Koh Samui, so I decided to take action. The only way to stop Number Two Son maiming himself again, would be to embarrass the life out of him. So I hopped on a plane and appeared at his guest house, where I found him, still covered in body paint and blood from the night before, seething and furious. ‘Why are you here’ he growled. ‘Why didn’t you just get me a plane ticket and bring me home. It’s so embarrassing having you here. I won’t be seen in public with you. You have just come here, but we aren’t together. I’m not going out in public with you’.

‘I was worried, darling’ I said. ‘You have hurt yourself and I wanted to see for myself what was going on’. His leg was completely hideous – a semicircle of stitches that looked like the doctor had been nipping at the morphine, and a large lip of flesh standing proud of the wound. Number Two Son graciously invited me to accompany him to the hospital to pay (so he could retrieve his passport), which we did, dodging the many cats that wove in between patients legs in the waiting room. We then went for dinner, where he ate like a wild man and expounded on how embarrassing it was having me there. ‘Look – people are staring’ he grumbled ‘They think you are my cougar’. ‘That’s the very reason I became a teenage mother’ I answered ‘So I could win glamorous granny competitions – you know that. It was never about children – I don’t really like children that much’.

The woman behind the reception desk gave me a wink as I checked in. She clearly thought I was doing awfully well with such a tall, handsome toyboy. I did nothing to disabuse her of the idea. She can’t have thought I was that lucky, as he had a face on him that was more ‘curdle milk’ than ‘adoring’ but then some people’s faces are like that all the time – think of Kanye West.

My finest hour came on the Saturday night, when after taking myself off to a beachside party, I bumped into my son and his friends in the Green Mango. His friends were delighted, as I plied them with drinks and gave them my views on Daft Punk. ‘You are not to dance’ said Number Two Son. ‘I will leave. You must go home and not dance’. His friends didn’t agree and within a small amount of time I was on a stage with nine teenage boys throwing my finest shapes. Number Two Son dragged me off the stage and my work was done.

In between embarrassing my child, I bought some very ‘Mutton’ clothes, spent time on the beautiful beach and stuffed myself with the most delicious Thai food. I honestly did not want to come home – I could live there forever. In honour of my beloved Koh Samui, here is a recipe for a delicious soup. It’s not the really famous one with shrimp –Tom Yum Goong – incidentally I think river shrimp are better than sea shrimp in that recipe, as their brains disperse so beautifully into the broth, leaving tiny creamy dots on the surface. This is a chicken soup. For veggies – use the firmest tofu you can find, cut into strips.

Tom Kaa Gai

Galangal and Kaffir lime leaves give this light, fresh soup a delicious fragrance. For a real flash-harry touch, add a couple of kaffir lime leaves just before you serve – so the scent as you put the soup in front of your guests is truly intense. It’s very easy too.

3 cups coconut milk

4 stalks lemongrass, bruised (as in wallop them with a rolling pin) and chopped

5-6 thin slices of galangal (it looks a bit like ginger. If you can’t find it – but here it comes in those ‘thai herb packs’ all the supermarkets carry, ginger will do at a pinch)

10 kaffir lime leaves torn in half

300g boneless chicken cut into strips OR firm tofu cut into strips

115g rice straw mushrooms (they are fleshy and a bit like little pudgy things. Any mushrooms will do if you can’t find these)

4 tablespoons lime juice

3 tablespoons (less if it’s not your thing so much) fish sauce

10 chopped hot chillies (again, if you are a baby about spice – don’t use as many – but this soup really is meant to be hot)

chopped spring onion and coriander leaves to garnish.

Heat the coconut milk in a saucepan until it comes to the boil. Add the lemongrass, galangal and half of the kaffir lime leaves. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for about ten minutes. Strain it and return the stock to the pan. Return to the heat, add the mushrooms and chicken or tofu. Cook for a further 5 -7 minutes until the chicken is nicely poached.

Stir in the lime juice, fish sauce and the rest of the kaffir lime leaves. season. Ganish with chillies, spring onions and coriander leaves.

Viking Noodles

Number Two Son is in Koh Samui at the moment, with a group of boys. I am trying not to think too hard about what he is getting up to. I made him watch an episode of ‘Banged Up Abroad’ and told him he was to stay away from drugs, mopeds, and ladyboys (the last, simply because ladyboys are hard as nails and would batter him in a fight). I thought that was quite restrained of me – especially because I spent a couple of weeks there on my own –and it was an utterly barking place.

During my stay in Koh Samui, I enjoyed a relaxing daily routine of scoffing fried eggs near the sea, then sitting on the beach for hours on end, chatting to a group of girls, who had befriended me,  pausing to eat a piece of pineapple on a stick or to pour a Singha beer down my neck. It was amazing. The only downside was, as a woman on my own, I attracted an unfortunate amount of attention from a bunch of nutters  wonderfully eclectic line of male, solo-travellers, who wouldn’t really take no for an answer. There was the man who took so much valium recreationally, that he would regularly fall asleep mid chat-up line, drool hanging from one corner of his mouth like a sad, sleepy Komodo dragon. There was the born again Christian, who had missed the memo on no sex before marriage, who was sharking his way up and down Chaweng beach, littering his religious chat with improper suggestions. But my favourite was the Danish Hell’s Angel – by far the most persistent of all. I met him while I was waiting for a friend to return from the full moon party, and an apparition in a canoe kept paddling backwards and forwards past ‘my’ spot on the beach, waving as he passed. He had a pretty tidy form, which was sadly marred by a lot of ink. I’m not fond of tattoos and I could see some serious writing going on around his midriff, along with those obligatory stripy tribal things men have on their upper arms. I took absolutely no notice of the waving, stuck my face  in my Jilly Cooper novel (which puts most British blokes off, as they think ‘horsey posh bird, with unrealistic demands in the bedroom’ ) and hoped he would get tired of canoeing and clear off.

No such luck – a well inked Muscle Mary landed next to me on the beach, whining about how he had just got out of prison, delivering some sob story about a terrible childhood, whilst absent mindedly stroking my foot- which I kept shifting out of the way. He asked me to admire his bodyart. I noticed the writing around his stomach was in gothic script and said something in foreign.  It began with a T, so when pressed, I told him that it reminded me of The Daily Telegraph, a quality newspaper in the UK. That wasn’t what he was looking for at all, but it wasn’t enough to put him off. His next gambit was to explain that this gothic tattoo showed his allegiance to the Hell’s Angels. I put on my bored face and told him that motorbikes were very dangerous and he shouldn’t ride them unless he enjoyed plastic surgery and didn’t rate the use of his limbs. Sadly that just egged him on, as he said to me ‘I like you – so I am going to tell you something I don’t tell many people. As part of my initiation into the Hell’s Angels, I had to kill a man’. By this stage, he had my ankle in a firm grip and I was wishing my novel were a hardback so I could whack him on the head, but instead I carried on chatting to him and  established that he hadn’t been imprisoned for the murder, rather for distributing drugs – he wasn’t a one-trick criminal, and hadn’t ever been fingered for the killing. I really, really wanted to leave, but was too scared to go back to my accommodation, as I was sure he would try and tag along, and actually, since he had hold of my ankle I wasn’t able to move. Mercifully two of his friends, who had been vigorously and enthusiastically copulating in the sea in front of us, returned to claim him, and I escaped.

Despite the sketchy admirers I attracted, I did have a very good time in Thailand and I hope my son is having fun too. One of the best things I did, after meeting a murderer, was a Thai cookery course –where we were taken to a market at the crack of dawn, shown vats of reeking fish sauce and introduced to a lot of ingredients I had never seen in real life. Banana blossom, leek leaves, pickled radishes – all beautifully fresh and exciting. We bought armfuls, retired to this amazing woman’s house, where she made us cook and eat for the next ten hours. It was wonderful, and I staggered out, so full and so excited to cook everything all over again, all traumatic thoughts of vicious Vikings left me.

Pad Thai Gung Sod

I haven’t ever found the same ingredients that we used in my class, so I adapted the recipe to use ones more mainstream and easy to source. The original recipe calls for Chinese Leek leaves – which we can get here in Hong Kong, but I would not hesitate to stick a small bunch of chopped chives, or a little shredded Holy Basil in instead.

My Pad Thai uses pork- but you could substitute chicken or prawns if you prefer. For a vegetarian version – use the same amount of cashew nuts

The best noodles to use are flat, tagliatelle shaped rice noodles. Fresh are best -but if you only have dried, then soak them before using

Pad Thai Gung Sod

300g noodles

3 eggs

1/2 cup ground roasted peanuts

1 tablespoon chopped shallot (the long banana ones are the best)

3 teaspoons fish sauce (can use more or less according to taste)

50g chinese leek leaves

400g bean sprouts

50g pork cut into small pieces

1 cake extra firm soyabean curd (approx 100g) This can be found in most oriental supermarkets and can be either a yellow or a brown colour – the brown one is flavoured with soy sauce and very delicious. Cut into small pieces the size of a postage stamp and about 2mm thick

1 tablespoon dried chilli

1 tablespoon chopped garlic

4 teaspoons sugar (again – add more or less to taste but this is a very sweet dish)

4 teaspoons tamarind juice or lime juice. My teacher suggested substituting vinegar, but I prefer lime for the freshness it gives

Heat a little oil in a large frying pan or wok, add the garlic and shallots and cook for a few moments. Add the noodles, with a little water to soften them. Keep turning them to avoid them sticking. Either remove from the pan, or shove them to one side (but that can be a bit of a mission -I’d just get them out)

Put 3 teaspoons oil into the pan – add the pork, bean curd and chillies and fry briefly. Return the noodles to the pan, add the sugar and fish sauce, mix and put onto a plate.

Put another 2 tsp oil in the pan, add the three beaten eggs and spread them in a thin layer, like a skinny omelet, over the base of the hot pan. When set, return the noodles and mix. Add half the beansprouts, the leek leaves and stir well.

Place on the serving dish and sprinkle with half the ground peanuts and the lime juice. Serve with the remaining beansprouts and  peanuts and a few chopped basil leaves on the side.