Leela Punyaratabandhu

Soups galore: We've got one for every winter mood

By Leslie Brenner

You can say what you want about Gen Z, but here’s what I love: They know a good thing when they see it. And then they immortalize it with memes.

Take soup, for instance. My favorite four-letter meal has conquered the internet!

I couldn’t be happier about this development. In college, I majored in Soup. Soup is my middle name. Soup soup soup soup soup.

Here at Cooks Without Borders, we’ve got a soup for every winter mood. Gen Z, I’m talking to you.

Mood: Stop (all day) and smell the roses

Persian Chicken Soup with Chicken-and-Lamb Meatballs

When you’re in the mood for a major project — one that will fill your living space with the dreamiest fragrances you can imagine — this transporting soup adapted from Najmieh Batmanglij’s Food of Life delivers. Called abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi in Farsi, it’s garnished with grated garlic, fresh herbs and dried rose petals.

Mood: Get me back to a clearer space

Miso Soup

In a perfect world, you can have miso soup anytime you want it. But hey — you can even have it in a highly imperfect world! Take ten minutes to make a batch of dashi, keep miso and tofu in the fridge (both keep for a long time) and the foundational soup is yours practically on demand. Stir in miso, garnish and enjoy.

Mood: Navel-gazing

Maria Elena Machado's Sopa de Ombligo

Sometimes you just need to stare at your belly button. Or you could stare at the belly-button-like dumplings in a sumptuous pinto-bean soup — and then eat them.

Mood: Get me outta here!

Tom Kha Kai (Coconut-Galangal Chicken Soup)

If you’d rather be somewhere warm, sunny and far away — Bangkok, for instance — this irresistible Thai soup will take you there. Ours is adapted from Leela Punyaratabandhu’s seminal Simple Thai Food.

Mood: Virtuous vegan fridge-clearing brawl

Sunday Super Soup

This bad boy clears your crisper drawer, empties fridge shelves of veggie leftovers and helps you achieve zero waste — all while filling your kitchen with warm and spicy smells. Our master recipe is fully customizable according to what you’ve got. It’s also devastatingly delicious.

Mood: Snowed in, feeling nice and lazy

Classic Split Pea Soup

Make this once, and you could probably do it blindfolded next time. I keep split peas in the pantry and a ham hock in the freezer all winter just in case the mood strikes.

Mood: Fed up with fundamentalism

Ab Ghooshte Fasl (Iranian Bean and Vegetable Soup)

There are many ways we can support the brave women of Iran — starting by continuing to be engaged in the struggle for their freedom from tyranny. Make this soup in their honor.

Mood: I want to join Club Nixtamal

Heirloom Corn Pozole Rojo

If you’re nixtamal curious but don’t happen to own a molino to grind corn, I invite you to make heirloom corn pozole from scratch. If you’re serious about Mexican cooking, consider doing this once in your life — it’ll be the best pozole you’ve ever had. Recipe links to a shortcut version, too.

Mood: Wish spring would hurry up!

Ridiculously Easy Minted Pea Soup

This beautiful bowl is made from lettuce, butter, salt, pepper, mint and a bag of frozen peas. My take on a classic French soup called potage Saint-Germain, it’s simple enough for a weeknight yet elegant enough for a big-deal dinner. You’d swear those peas were fresh.

Mood: Spa retreat

Vegan Spring Beauty Soup

Here’s another one to help you channel spring. There’s already asparagus from California in the markets, and this is another that offers a frozen pea-cheat.

Mood: Pass the penicillin

Joan’s Chicken Soup

Of course winter is chicken soup season, and my mom made the best — of theJewish penicillin-variety, anyway. I’m so happy to share the recipe with you. Feel better.

Mood: Winter greens wonderland

Chloé’s Vegan Gumbo Z’herbes

Gumbo Z’herbes is a Louisiana tradition more associated with the season of Lent than the dead of winter, but our friend Chloé Landrieu-Murphy’s delicious version is packed with a ton of winter greens, so please be our guest!


Cookbooks We Love: Leela Punyaratabandhu's life-changing 'Simple Thai Food' is one of our favorite primers ever

Leela Punyaratabandhu’s ‘Simple Thai Food: Classic Recipes from the Thai Home Kitchen,” shown with lemongrass, shallots, Thai long chiles, makrut lime leaves and galangal

Simple Thai Food: Classic Recipes from the Thai Home Kitchen, by Leela Punyaratabandu; photographs by Erin Kunkel; 2014, Ten Speed Press, $24.99.

Backgrounder: Bangkok-born Leela Punyaratabandhu, who now divides her time between Bangkok and Chicago, has written for Serious Eats, Dill Magazine, Food52 and the Wall Street Journal, among others. She launched her Thai cooking blog, She Simmers, in 2008; four years later, it was honored as “Best Regional Cuisine” blog by Saveur. It has been inactive for a few years, though still very much worth reading — especially if you wind up buying Simple Thai Food, her 2014 cookbook, and loving it as much as we do. She has since written two other books, Bangkok and Flavors of the Southeast Asian Grill. We look forward to exploring those. But first things first: Simple Thai Food is life-changingly excellent.

Why we love it: Having spent much of my adult life in places with easy access to outstanding Thai restaurants, I’d never been moved to learn to cook Thai food. Then came the pandemic, and being shut in made me crave its bright, optimistic herbal tang, its lovely perfume of makrut lime leaves and lemongrass. Punyaratabandhu’s slim, 228-page volume makes Thai cooking approachable and accessible. Further, her recipes, though simple to execute (once you get your hands on the right ingredients), look and taste anything but simple; they’re extraordinarily sophisticated, downright impressive, with beautiful layered, balanced flavors.

Punyaratabandhu writes instructions that are not only clear and easy to follow, she also thoughtfully describes exactly the way a dish should look and taste as you cook, helping us appreciate the cuisine as it’s meant to be enjoyed.

Phat Phrik Khing — a dry curry, lightly sweet, of pork and long beans (or in this case, green beans). It is garnished with a chiffonnade of makrut lime leaves.

Phat Phrik Khing — a dry curry, lightly sweet, of pork and long beans (or in this case, green beans). It is garnished with a chiffonnade of makrut lime leaves.

That is particularly valuable when many of us may be using mediocre Thai restaurant renditions of dishes as yardsticks. “This dish is not supposed to be saucy,” she writes in the instructions for Phat Phrik Khing — a dry curry, lightly sweet, of pork and long beans. “When it looks like a dry curry that glistens with deep orange oil, you know it is done.” In those Americanized Thai places that offer “choice of protein” with this dish, that deep orange oil rarely shows up on the plate.

If you’re like me, you’ll be astounded at how simple it is (again, once you have the key ingredients) to make Tom Yam Kung (hot-and-sour prawn soup) or Tom Kha Kai — Coconut-Galangal Chicken Soup.

Tom Kha Kai — Coconut-Galangal Chicken Soup

Tom Kha Kai — Coconut-Galangal Chicken Soup

Som Tam — the green papaya salad that launched my pandemic Thai cravings — is easy to manage as well. Shredding the green papaya so that it does not bruise is best achieved using a mandoline (great excuse to buy one if you don’t already own one). The author also suggests a hand grater, calling out an inexpensive one called Kiwi Pro Slice.

Som Tam Malako — Green Papaya Salad

Som Tam Malako — Green Papaya Salad

Read this first: Buried at the end of the book is Punyaratabandhu’s extremely essential Ingredients Glossary. It’s where I would suggest you start if you want to dive into Thai cooking. In it, the author explains everything you need to know about palm sugar (it’s complicated; if you’re not already familiar with it you might want to stick with her suggested sub of brown sugar. We also used coconut sugar as a sub, with excellent results). She also explains that Thai eggplants may be eaten raw; the differences between Thai basil, holy basi and lemon basil; what to look for when you buy galangal (plus how to freeze it) and how to use makrut lime leaves and rind (and how to freeze them). While we are on the subject, Angkor Cambodian Food is a great source for many of these ingredients. If you think about gathering all your ingredients first, and prep and freeze those that can be frozen, you will be much better off when you finally dive in.

In the glossary, Punyaratabandhu insists on the use of some of these hard-to-source ingredients for particular dishes, and no doubt she’s right in doing so. Happily, she does condone shortcuts when the resulting flavor is acceptable, allowing that commercial Thai curry pastes are far better than homemade ones made with inappropriately subbed ingredients.

You’ve gotta try this: Among the many amazing Thai dishes I made from this book, the one my family was most bowled over by was a sort of dip called Lon Kung Mu Sap, which Punyaratabandhu translates as Shrimp-Coconut Relish with Vegetable Crudités. Basically, it’s chopped shrimp and pork simmered together in coconut milk, brightened with tamarind paste and seasoned with shallot and chiles and garnished with makrut lime leaves.

Leela Punyaratabandu’s Shrimp-Coconut Relish with Crudités (Lon Kung Mu Sap)

Leela Punyaratabandu’s Shrimp-Coconut Relish with Crudités (Lon Kung Mu Sap)

“Most people who did not grow up in a Thai household or live with Thai people are unfamiliar with the various coconut milk-based relishes called lon,” she explains in the headnote. She also explains that it is served not before dinner (as a westerner might guess), but along with the rest of the meal. Punyaratabandhu went to to share how she likes to eat it: “I take a piece of the vegetable crudités, put it on a bite’s worth of rice on my plate, top it with a dollop of the lon, transport the whole assembly on a spoon, and eat it in one big bite.”

Thank you for that delicious morsel, dear author.

Dear reader, if you’ve ever been tempted to try your hand at Thai cooking — or if you’ve done quite a bit of it and want a great reference with great recipes — you need this book.