Almost Vegetarian Laksa

If you've been following my Facebook page you'll know that over the past few days I've been trying to perfect a recipe for Laksa, one of my favourite soups. The idea first  popped into my head when a friend mentioned he was making it for dinner and like most cravings I've had in this pregnancy it refused to let go until I'd got it pretty much right. I started out with a recipe on the Thermomix Recipe Community which is a great resource once you own a Thermomix, but I think the end product is different enough that I'm happy calling it my own.

A couple of notes; I say "a small" type-of-vegetable because I used half of one so I can use the other half in something else later in the week. Don't knock yourself out trying to find miniscule produce.  Also I had a lot of the ingredients for this soup in my pantry already because I love Thai and Malaysian cooking- you can find pretty much everything at the IGA in Castlemaine or Castlemaine Fresh in Mostyn st. If you don't have any of the ingredients the first time you make this soup will be a bit expensive, but hopefully you'll like it enough to make it again and again and maybe try other dishes using similar things, so it'll be worth the initial outlay. Finally, the soup takes about 50 minutes from getting ingredients together to plating up, though there is a lot of "set and forget" time in there, so this is strictly a weekend dish at our house.

Paste Ingredients
20 g fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
1 large onion , quartered
3 cloves garlic 
1 tbs fresh coriander, leaves & stalks
12 cashew nuts
1 tsp tumeric
1 tsp shrimp paste 
50 g Thai red curry paste from Everyday Cookbook, or from a jar
50 g coconut cream 

5 g Rice Bran Oil (or other oil)

Sauce Ingredients
750 g coconut cream (i.e. rest of can you used for paste plus another can)
1 tsp Vegetable Stock Concentrate (from Everyday Cookbook or use a stock cube) plus 200 g water
1 "cube" palm sugar or 2 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp kaffir lime leaves from jar, or 8 fresh ones split
Splash of fish sauce
Juice of 1 lime
Pinch of salt
Small eggplant, halved vertically, horizontally then sliced into approx 1 cm thick strips
Small capsicum, prepared as eggplant
300 g firm tofu- cubed into bite-sized chunks
Handful snowpeas  

Fresh Noodles
440 g Hokkien 
440 g Udon

Garnish
Coriander leaves
Cherry tomatoes, halved
Lime wedges
Sliced red chilli

Place all paste ingredients into TM bowl and grind for 10 seconds on speed 7, scrape down bowl and repeat, scrape down again, including lid.

Add oil and cook for 8 minutes at 100°C on speed 1

Add all the sauce ingredients except the vegetables and tofu. Cook for 15 minutes at 100°C on speed 1

Add eggplant and capsicum and cook for 5 minutes at 100°C on Reverse on speed soft.

Place noodles in a separate bowl and cover with boiling water. 

Add tofu and snowpeas to TM bowl and cook for 4 minutes at 100°C on Reverse on speed soft

Drain noodles and divide into individual soup bowls. Ladle laksa over the top and garnish with coriander leaves, halved cherry tomatoes, lime wedges and slices of chilli.

Serves 4-6

Leftovers will keep for a day in the fridge.