Mixed Vegetable Soup – Gaeng Liang – แกงเลียงกุ้งสด

This is my favorite soup that I rarely get good one outside home that I considered good enough. This is an authentic procedure that I will sacrifice my time for it. This soup is what we made for a mother that had freshly given birth to a baby, because all the vitamins from the vegetables and wild ginger and black pepper will help her body to produce more milk for the baby.

I made this for a lunch party and it was so well appreciated that they ask to have it again for dinner.

This soup is a bit free style both with the meat and with the vegetables. For the paste, some people will use dried shrimp, but I use here boil shrimp instead – if you don’t eat seafood, you can use the boiled chicken meat as well. It is the black pepper, wild ginger, shallots and shrimp paste that cannot be missing.

How to make the paste:

1. Add 1 teaspoon of salt in 3 cup of water and bring to boil, add the half a cup of shrimp, when cook, take out and leave to cool.
   
2. Add the black pepper in the mortar and beat until it became fine powder.
   
3. Slowly add shallot and wild ginger and beat until it becomes a fine paste.
   
4. Add the shrimp and beat until become a paste.
   
5. Add the Shrimp paste and beat into paste.
   

How to make the soup:

1. Add 1 cup of the paste into the boiling pot.
   
2. Add the pumpkin and baby corn pieces. Season with 1 teaspoon of salt and close the lid for one minute.
   
3. Add the peel luffa and close the lid for 1 minute.
   
4. Add the cut pieces of mushroom and Shrimps and close the pot for a while.
   
5. See when the shrimp turn pink; add the gourd ivy and cylon spinach. In the end add Thai basil and turn off the gas.
   
6. Serve Hot with hot steamed rice.

Tip:

1. Mushroom: Originally we use straw mushroom, but I have Eryngi mushroom already in the fridge and they taste a bit sweeter, so they made the soup here really good. But you can use any mushroom you like/have. The oyster mushroom will not be bad too.
2. Normally people will use gourd ivy leaves. Since the pest have settled on gourd ivy in my garden, I took some Ceylon spinach to add the quantity I need. Surprisingly they compliment the soup very well.
3. One last thing that cannot be missing in the soup is the Thai basil. If you lack this one, the soup will be missing very important scent.