A lot of love and many, many test kitchen attempts went into the making of this recipe and I have a gazillion photos in my phone to prove it. I tried it every which way to find the ultimate recipe that you can make using regular supermarket ingredients without needing to go anywhere specialist nor forgoing flavour.

Traditionally this is more of a snack or starter but I love a big steaming bowl for dinner. You can either make 4 starter sized bowls or 2 dinner sized bowls with this recipe.

Best thing? It’s incredibly easy and only takes a little more than half an hour to whip up.

INGREDIENTS (Serves 2 or 4)

• 150g-200g cooked prawns (or raw if you’d rather)
• 500ml coconut milk
• 1 chicken stock cube
• 1.5 cups hot water
• 2 lemongrass sticks
• 1″ x 1″ piece of ginger
• 1 tsp chilli flakes
• 1 sliced red chilli with seeds
• 4 kaffir lime leaves
• 1 lime
• 1 tsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• Handful of coriander, to taste, roughly chopped
• 6-8 cherry tomatoes
• 100g button mushrooms
• 70g mange tout (optional)

METHOD

• Make up your stock mixing the cube and hot water together
• Finely slice the ginger and chilli (set a few of the chilli slices aside for serving)
• Remove outer casing of the lemongrass, I usually cut a cross in the end of the stalk to help release the flavour
• Cut the lime in half and juice one half (Set the other half aside for serving)
• In a large pot, which has a lid, heat the coconut cream and stock up to boiling point then add the ginger and lemongrass along with the chillis, chilli flakes, kaffir lime leaves, sugar and fish sauce
• Reduce to a simmer and cover for 20 minutes
• Add the mushrooms and continue to cook for a further 10 minutes
• At the last minute, add the tomatoes, prawns and if you’re having mange tout pop that in too along with your coriander (if you love coriander you can throw loads in, if you’re not a big fan about 5g will be right)
• Heat through for no more than 5 minutes (if you’re using raw prawns you will need to cook them for a bit longer and will need to adjust the above accordingly)
• Take off the heat and fish out the lime leaves and lemongrass, they’re not fun to eat whole!
• Serve up in bowls, dress with coriander, chilli slices and 1/4 lime per bowl

Y’all can thank me later once you’ve made it and taste how effing delicious it is!

Note: if you can get your hands on galangal use that instead of ginger but it’s a ‘mare to come by.