Thai Carrot and Coconut "Soudles"
When soup and noodles go to Thailand and have a baby
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As I dished up the final iteration of this dish, my husband looked at it and asked:
So did you go with soup or noodles?
Neither, I told him. I went with Soudles.
Soudles is my name for this bastardization of a dish, where noodles and soup combine to be neither one nor the other.
It’s not noodle or regular soup because it’s too thick. It’s incredibly saucy so can’t be considered a stand-alone noodle dish.
So it’s Soudles. And it’s about to become my new favourite food category.
Because (whisper it), I don’t like most vegetable soups. I know, it’s heresy to say that, especially here in Portugal where vegetable soup rules. But I can’t help but feel most are really boring. Blended vegetables in a bit of stock. No texture. No interest.
But once you add noodles and make soudles, everything changes.
Texture! Flavour!
Because we’re in the middle of a cold snap in Porto — and I ate too few vegetables over Christmas — I wanted to make the first Soudle dish of the year spicy and filled with as many vegetables as I could pack in.
Which is why I went with Thai flavours.
Ginger. Garlic. Coriander. Chilli. Coconut. Rice noodles. This dish couldn’t be better for you if it tried.
Of course, because this is The Capsule Pantry, it makes heavy use of my personal Capsule Pantry ingredients and I’ve given you multiple adaptions in the variations section.
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Serves 4, generously
For the chilli paste