Tom Yam Soup

NTUC sells "Tom Yam sets" consisting of the various things you will require to make a tom yam soup! I had never made a tom yam soup from scratch before, and I used very vague measurements for this, but it turned out brilliant. (with the total cost of ingredients being less than $6)

Along with 2 litres of water, I put in:

• Garlic, roughly cut up
  
• Lemongrass (the white bits were pounded into mash, the long hard green bits i left intact)
• Lime Leaves (torn up by hand)
• 1 lime (cut up and squeezed into the water)
  
• 3 small green chillies
  
• 2 dried red chillies
  
• about a dozen unshelled prawns
• a bag of fresh fishballs
• silken tofu
• tomatoes, sliced
• a sprinkling of coriander if you have some
  
• 1 chicken stock cube (if i could have used real chicken stock i would have!)

I put all the vegetables in along with the stock cube and allowed it to steep for as long as I could humanly bear, while I deshelled the prawns (i removed only the body shell but retained the head because the flavour is in the head!) and deveined them (all the gunk you find inside prawns!).

Finally after a long simmer, I brought it to a boil, and gently added in the tofu and fishballs followed by the prawns. You don't have to cook the prawns very long as they overcook easily, but cook them until they are pink all the way through. Simmer for a while more and serve.