Shut the Front Door! This Curried Pumpkin and Chicken Soup is So Good!

I had my first good experience with Thai food this past September. My sisters and I had our annual get-together in Washington, DC and Pittsburgh this year and we went out for Thai food for lunch one day. The only Thai food I'd had before that was yellow curry that my mom used to make us eat. Now, my mom is a great cook, I always ate well when I lived with my parents. But yellow curry is by far the nastiest thing I've ever eaten and I refuse to ever eat it again. So when my sisters suggested curry, I was not excited. (Neither of my sisters would consider eating yellow curry either, by the way.) They assured me if I stayed away from the yellow nasty stuff (which my husband actually likes, gag!), I would like it. And I did, in fact I fell in love with it and have been craving more ever since. So every time I get the chance to make something with Thai flavors, I jump at it.

I've been sick for the last week and so has half my family. I made chicken noodle soup last Saturday, from scratch, even though I didn't want to do anything more than crawl into bed and sleep for a week. But if I hadn't made it, we'd have ended up eating toast and mac & cheese for 3 days. Not appealing.  Every time I ate my soup, I was wishing that my kids would have been interested in this soup. Like most kids, mine are very hesitant to try new things, especially anything with complex flavors. My sister posted this recipe on our shared blog after she made it and raved about it. I was so jealous.

Well, today I finally gave in and made some. My fever broke yesterday, so I was feeling a bit better. But I was still feeling a little under the weather today. Then, instead of being about to go out to lunch with my wonderful husband for our weekly lunch date, my son Jacob got sick at school and I had to bring him home. I needed more chicken soup to deal with the sickness coming back, but my chicken noodle soup was gone. Today was the day to make some Thai chicken soup. And it was delicious. I'm hoping no one else will like it so I can have it all to myself.

I followed the recipe as closely as I could with what I had on hand. I didn't have the ingredients to make panang curry paste, so I used my red curry paste. I had chicken breasts in the fridge, so I used them instead of shrimp (although I love shrimp and think they would be wonderful in this recipe). I left out the lime leaves and the bird's eye chile too because I didn't have them. But everything else went into the pot and turned into quite a tasty creation. I ladled it into my bowl over some jasmine rice and savored every bite. I burned my tongue pretty badly because I wasn't willing to wait for it to cool down. So yummy. I would definitely recommend trying this recipe.

I think I'll add a bit of chile sauce to the leftovers for a little extra kick of heat. I like my asian food spicy and this wasn't spicy enough. All the other flavors were there, just not enough heat.