Canh hoa thien ly nau tom wins people over with a cool, sweet broth and flowers that still snap. The catch is that the flowers go limp and lose their green the moment they are overcooked.
The shrimp heads are pounded and strained for 500ml of liquid, which gives the broth deep sweetness without any bones. The shrimp meat is chopped, marinated in fish sauce for 10 minutes and then stir fried with the fried garlic.
This batch weighs about 2.7kg, at roughly 20 calories per 100g.
Method
Peel 300g fresh shrimp, pull off the heads, devein them, rinse and drain. Trim the whiskers from the heads, toss them with coarse salt and rinse again.
Pound the shrimp heads, add about 500ml water, stir and strain through a sieve, keeping the liquid and discarding the shells.
Chop the shrimp meat, season it with 1 teaspoon fish sauce, mix and leave for 10 minutes.
Pick the tough stems from 300g Tonkin jasmine flowers, soak them in lightly salted water for 3 to 5 minutes, rinse and drain. Chop 30g spring onion and mince 7 cloves of garlic.
Heat 1 tablespoon cooking oil in a pan and fry the garlic. Once it turns golden, add the shrimp meat and stir fry over medium heat until firm.
Pour in the strained shrimp head liquid, then top up with water to about 1.5 liters in total.
Once it boils, lower the heat, add the flowers and cook until it returns to a boil. Season with 1 teaspoon kOBE Monk Fruit Blend, 1/2 teaspoon MSG, 1 teaspoon seasoning powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1.5 tablespoons fish sauce.
Cook for about 2 more minutes, add the spring onion, stir once and turn off the heat. Ladle into bowls and scatter with ground pepper.
Tips
Pounding the prawn heads and straining the liquid gives a deeply sweet soup without simmering bones.
Choose Tonkin jasmine that is green with pale yellow petals, and snap a stem to check it breaks crisply.
Add the flowers last and cook for only 2 minutes to hold their color and crunch.
Strain the pounded prawn head liquid through a fine sieve, since any shell left behind is grit in the bowl.
Add the pepper as it is ladled into the bowls, where the aroma comes through more clearly than from the pot.
Need kOBE Monk Fruit Blend?
The recipe above is sweetened with kOBE Monk Fruit Blend, measured 1:1 like sugar. See the product page or send us a message.