Tom Kha Kai is a Thai soup dish that’s cooked using various fragrant roots such as lemongrass, galangal, shallot, cooked in a coconut soup base. It can be cooked with a lot of spice (lots of chilli), but in my case I kept the spice level down because of the boy.
‘Nabe’ means a Japanese cooking pot, or a stew or soup cooked in such a pot. For this recipe, it means a soup or stew that is cooked in a large cooking pot (I used my favourite Dutch oven instead), with loads of Japanese-inspired ingredients including vegetables, mushrooms, tofu and gyoza. I love that it is a pot filled to the brim because it means that it can be a full meal in its own right, so there isn’t a need to cook any rice or noodles alongside this dish.
I just celebrated Children’s Day with the boy on Wednesday. It was a couple of days earlier than the actual day, but because he had to do home-based learning that day and I had to take leave for that, I told him that I would bring him out if he completed his assignments diligently. Well, to be honest, the part about going out was the main agenda for that day; completing the homework was just a ploy to get him out. And it worked. We went to Amazonia that afternoon. And to be honest, I had as great a time at the playground as he did. It was really fun because he was there – with his imagination about the monsters and the championships. I really have to take my hat off him for what goes on in his mind.
It was such a good break from work for me.
This is the first weekend when none of us at home is ill or down with flu or some kind of strange bacterial infection. The last two weeks were depressing because the first week was the boy’s turn and he had a very persistent fever that refused to come down and which broke only at day seven. And then it was our turn and because I had fever over two days I could neither focus on work nor on chores at home. I’m so glad things are back to normal this weekend.
This weekend is a bummer. The boy is having high fever again, for the second time this year. So I can’t really cook much if I have one less person at home to enjoy the food that I cook.
