Kaeng Lieng (Thai Vegetable Soup With Shrimp)

With orange carrots and kabocha squash, green zucchini and chayote, yellow baby corn, fat white shrimp and handfuls of spinach and lemon basil, this is an eye-catching, colorful, leafy soup. It’s so nourishing that it is sometimes recommended to nursing mothers in Thailand.

You can find flavor packets for the soup in Thai markets, such as Silom in Hollywood. But in this version of the soup, which has been adapted from several different online recipes, the curry paste is made from scratch with shrimp powder and shrimp paste, the latter an umami source so intense it strays into funk.

Fingerroot, also called grachai, is similar to but not the same as ginger. It is typically used in this soup but it is hard to find. The soup is still delicious and very nourishing without it.

From the story: The ‘soup for dinner’ diet: It’s easy, delicious. A never-boring way to slim down