Tom yum fish soup
a mashup of a Thai classic and a Singaporean hawker favourite
✨ Welcome to Singapore Noodles, a newsletter dedicated to celebrating Asian culinary traditions and food cultures. Every Monday, you’ll be receiving a tasty mix of food history, stories, and recipes straight in your inbox. Archived recipes and other content can be found on the index. This newsletter is 100% reader-funded; each paid subscription supports the writing and research that goes into the newsletter, pays guest-writers, and gives you access to all content and recipes. Thank you for being here and enjoy this week’s post. ✨
Long-time readers of this newsletter will know that a dish I love ordering at Singapore’s hawker centres is sliced fish noodle soup 鱼片米粉. A classically Teochew dish, it features firm slices of fish in broth — kept clear or spiked with a drizzle of evaporated milk for creaminess (more about the dish here). Occasionally, the bowl would come with a raft of egg floss (deep-fried strands of beaten egg) that not only add fragrance and richness to the dish, but sponge up the broth the way tofu puffs in a bowl of laksa do. I recently stumbled upon a hawker stall, Northern Thai Tomyam, that makes a tom yum version of fish noodle soup, complete with evaporated milk and egg floss. It is a brilliant idea that makes complete sense, and if you, like me, hoard prawn heads and shells in your freezer, this dish is within reach for a weeknight dinner.
I almost always purchase shell-on prawns — why buy them peeled when the heads and shells, when caramelised and simmered in water, can produce a flavourful stock in 30 minutes? Into the stockpot go ingredients that make up the tom yum flavour profile — lemongrass, lime leaves, coriander, and galangal — as well as fresh tomato wedges that lend the stock an attractive red tint when allowed to disintegrate. Add some store-bought tamarind concentrate and fish sauce and you have your tom yum soup base. From there, the dish comes together speedily. Cook the vegetables, fish slices, and glass noodles directly in the broth and add a glug of evaporated milk to finish.
Tom yum fish soup
Makes 2 large servings or 3 small servings
