Thai Hot and Sour Soup

Recipe ideas come from many places - cookbooks, magazines, restaurant meals, a vacation - you name it, it probably has inspired someone to create a recipe. This Thai Hot and Sour Soup was inspired by a cookbook I was flipping through on a recent trip - although the soup that inspired it was a bit  different - combining squash, coconut milk and thai spices  (which I did end up making and it was delicious!) but this Thai Hot and Sour Soup is  the version I kept coming back to as I doodled on the plane - a variation of Tom Yum soup.

As you probably know, I love soup almost as much as I love salads and appetizers - and soups are definitely my "fall back" plan when I can't decide what to make for dinner- my version of  "fast food" . Yes, I said fast food -   and soup is definitely fast food if you have the right ingredients on hand - and by ingredients I am talking about stock. Although I love making homemade stock, my demand for it definitely outstrips my supply (and my freezer space!)  - and so there are always jars of chicken, beef, vegetable and mushroom  bases in my refrigerator for making quick  pasta dishes, sauces, or for soups like this  Thai Hot and Sour soup. A combination of  chicken stock, lemongrass, ginger, garlic, shallots, fish sauce and rice wine vinegar made a fragrant and   flavorful soup and with the addition of  some cooked and shredded chicken, shitake mushrooms, pea pods, jalapeno and some slippery noodles it fit right into the category of not only fast food, but a one dish dinner. Since I'm trying to add more vegetables to our meals, I paired this Thai Hot and Sour Soup  with a simple salad of napa cabbage, cucumbers and carrots dressed with a little rice wine vinegar... easy, nutritious and delicious...truly fast food at it's best!!