I haven’t blogged in a while… 8+ years to be more exact. I still update my Music Calendar on this site, but I do most of my music & food posting on Instagram @earfdae.

At any rate, I made something last summer for a potluck that I really liked, that I’ll make again, and that I’ve been thinking about it a lot since. It was something I came up with on my own, and while I used guidance, I winged it without a recipe. So, if I wanted to make it again, I figure I better write it down. So here goes…

🥥Tom Kha Gai Pasta Salad🍄‍🟫
serves 4-8
read instructions fully before starting

Ingredients:

• 16 oz bag of dry pasta – pasta salad is usually a curly type for sauce-clingability, pick your fave
• 8-16 oz mushrooms – use more if not adding chicken. I used a mix of enoki & baby bella, but pick your fave
• 1-2 Tbl neutral oil (avocado, grapeseed, vegetable, etc) or use coconut oil for more coconut flavor
• 4-6 Thai / bird chilies, divided evenly plus more if desired
• 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken (or 1.5 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken) – use breasts, thighs, or a mix of both. Optional.
• 2 cans full fat coconut milk (~13.5 oz. can) or 1 can milk (13.5 oz) and 1 can coconut cream (smaller 5.4 oz. can)
• 1 tsp kosher salt, plus more for pasta water and more for seasoning to taste
• 3 stalks lemongrass, smashed & cut into a few large chunks
• 1 Tbl minced/ground lemongrass – separate from the 3 stalks above, fresh using a mortar & pestle (or from the tube is fine if that’s what you’ve got)
• 5 makrut lime leaves (fresh or dry)
• 3-4″ piece of galangal, divided evenly, sliced into small coins or chunks
• 3 Tbl fish sauce, divided (and since 2 Tbl of this is applied after any cooking, use a better quality fish sauce if you have it available)
• 1/2 Tbl brown or palm sugar
• 2 1/2 Tbl fresh lime juice (from about 2-3 limes… you can round up)
• 1 bunch of cilantro (optional if you absolutely hate it, but it’s an important flavor)
• cilantro root (if you can find) or 2″ stem ends from 1 bunch of cilantro (above)

Sources / Helpers:

• Serious Eats / Daniel Gritzer’s Better Pasta Salad Tips (specifically the cooking the pasta +2 minutes past al dente).
• Pailin Chongchitnant / Hot Thai Kitchen’s Tom Ka Gai recipe. Also, if you don’t follow her, her YouTube is a wonderful source of ideas.
• David Thompson’s Thai Food cookbook. He’s a Michelin star chef with some restaurants in Thailand and Australia.

Head Notes:

• I made a LOT (3 pounds of dry pasta-worth), but I scaled this down to a normal 16oz bag of pasta. Feel free to tweak ratios, but maybe stay close to the ratios on coconut milk (2 cans), lime juice (2.5 Tbl) & fish sauce (3 Tbl).
• This is super-easy to make vegetarian… simply don’t add the chicken, and if you don’t eat fish sauce (which many vegetarians don’t), there are vegan fish sauce alternatives that are mushroom-based and/or fermented pineapple-based. A simulacrum to actual fish sauce, but that’s in the mouth of the beholder anyway.
• If you add fish sauce or lime juice to a heating phase, their flavors will be different and potentially deadened or not desirable. So, don’t.
• The Mushroom, Chicken & Pasta prep can happen in any order and essentially any style of cooking that works for you. I chose oven-roasted mushrooms and sous vide chicken (150°F for 2-3 hours). The end result is you want bite sized pieces of all of it in formats that lend themselves to being chilled and eaten cold/room temp.

Mushroom Prep

1. Place rack in middle position and Preheat oven to 400°F.
   
2. Clean mushrooms from any debris, if needed. Prep your mushrooms into bite sized pieces. Prep will vary based on mushroom style. Quarter button mushrooms, trim off “root” end of enoki, etc. Toss with 1-2 Tbl of oil and a dash or two of salt and 2-3 of the Thai chilies (stems removed & cut into small pieces / de-seeded if you desire). Place mushroom/chili mixture in roasting pan or rimmed baking sheet and roast until the mushrooms have expelled most of their water and have browned. Depending on your oven, it’s likely good to rotate the pan several times during cooking. I cooked mine for 40-50 minutes. This is not exact, as it will depend on your mushroom choice, but the end result you’ll want is browned but not burnt, fully cooked but not crispy. Once cooled, they’ll take on some coconut flavor and have a nice chewy texture in the pasta salad. (Note: if you don’t have a good roasting oven, getting to the final mushroom state can also be done in a fry pan on the stovetop with more attention given to it, though.)
   
3. While the mushrooms are roasting, prep two different coconut milk treatments. If using two cans of coconut milk, easy to split. If using 1 can of milk and one can of coconut cream, mix the two cans and divide evenly between two medium bowls. To be honest, the amount of liquid is a work-in-process and make vary based on your pasta shape. You can scale up more coconut if you want (another can of milk/cream, etc), as you can make these mixtures and then reserve some back when prepping the final pasta salad and tweak the amount of liquid versus solids that you like for the consistency that you want. I used 3 cans of milk & one can of cream for a triple batch 48 oz of pasta.
   • In coconut milk/cream mixture #1 (mushroom cooling mix): To the coconut milk mixture, add 1/2 Tbl minced/ground lemongrass and 1 Tbl fish sauce. Whisk thoroughly, cover and place in fridge.
   • In coconut milk/cream mixture #2 (final pasta mix): To the coconut milk mixture, add 2 stalks of smashed lemongrass, half of the sliced galangal, and 1/2 Tbl brown sugar to a small sauce pan and heat until simmering. Simmer for 3-5 minutes, remove from heat cover and set aside to let the flavors steep. (You will strain out the solids prior to mixture in the final assembly.)
     
4. Cool mushrooms in an air tight container in the fridge.

Chicken Prep

1. Cook the chicken in whatever manner you like (pan fry, poached, sous vide, grilled, etc). For chicken salad applications, I chose St. Kenji’s sous vide approach (2-4 hours at 150°F). I added 1 smashed lemongrass stalk, cilantro stems, and 1-2″ sliced galangal to the bag.
   
2. After cooking, cool off your chicken. For sous vide, I chilled in an ice bath (still in the bag).
   
3. Place in fridge until needed.

Pasta Prep

1. Cook the pasta in salted water based on the directions on the box for 2 minutes past the longest time on the box (a Serious Eats hack for pasta salad applications).
   
2. Drain, rinse in cold water, cover & put in the fridge.

Assembly

1. Strain the lemongrass & galangal solids from the cooled coconut milk mixture #2. Add remaining 2 Tbl fish sauce & 2 1/2 Tbl fresh lime juice to the strained mixture. Stir to combine.
   
2. Add coconut milk #2 to the mushroom/coconut milk #1 in a LARGE bowl.
   
3. Remove & discard aromatics used in cooking the chicken, if applicable. Cut up chicken into small chunks. Add chilled pasta and chicken chunks to the mushroom and coconut milk mixture. Mix all ingredients until well combined.
   
4. Cover and Chill for 6 hours up to a 48 hours (but it’s best in the window 24 hours from being made).
   
5. Bring out to room temperature at least 30 minutes before serving. This will help warm it up a little so you can re-integrate the pooled coconut milk at the bottom. Mix in fresh cilantro unless you hate it… but again, it’s an important flavor for Tom Kha.
   
6. Enjoy and share if you like it!

Final Comments

Since coconut provides the creaminess versus mayo, while you shouldn’t leave any food out too long for safety, I imagine this has a better “party shelf life” than any mayo-based pasta salads.

Try different flavor combos!! Yellow curry pasta salad, saag choley pasta salad, crying tiger beef pasta salad, larb with pork pasta salad, coconut shrimp pasta salad, et cetera…

Dan