Tom Ka Gai Recipe

A high school friend from Facebook asked me to give her a recipe for a WONDERFUL Thai soup we love. It's a coconut milk based, spicy soup with lots of yummy stuff.
Read on and see if your taste buds start to water!
OK, so the cheating easy way to make it is to go to an Asian food market and buy a packet of Tom Ka (or Tom Kha) mix. It's a pouch-type thing with a kind of paste in a sealed pouch inside. Just ask the clerk, they will know. Also, buy a 2 cup can of coconut cream (not milk-- the richer the better).
When you get home, just follow the directions. What it will say is basically to boil some chicken in the coconut cream, then add the flavor packet and perhaps water or chicken stock. Mine also says to add lime juice and fish sauce "to taste," so you might want to grab some fish sauce while at the market (I know, sounds gross, but things like that are often the "secret" taste that is definitely missed when excluded).
We always add the "chunks" we like from how we see it served in restaurants. There are SO many variations, but what we like and usually see are onions, button mushrooms (sometimes shiitake too), cilantro and Thai chilies (or serrano).
If you REALLY want to go native, you gotta buy some more things while at the market: ginger, lemongrass, galanga root & Kaffir lime leaves (GOTTA have those). But this is really duplicating what the paste offers. The soup just looks better & more like they serve at Thai places.
I suppose if you had time to let all those things simmer together it would duplicate the paste, but I just add them cuz the paste's directions don't seem to make as much as we like-- so I can either add all that extra "native" stuff & some chicken broth to increase volume, or just do two packets of paste at once (+ the chicken, onions & shrooms).
Oh, and we like to put a scoop or 2 of rice in the bottom of our bowls before ladling the soup. It makes it more like a meal.
OK-- so I cook just "adding a little of this and that..." If you need amounts, write me back and I'll give you my "Troy-quivalents." :)
Enjoy!