Cook the Cover ~ Chicken Khao Soi

In this series, I will be cooking the delectable cover recipes of Bon Appetit magazine with the tantalizing prize of being featured on their blog and/or Facebook page. Wish me luck!

Since receiving my subscription, I've cooked quite a few of BA's cover recipes. Only one so far, December 2011's peppermint meringues, has been recognized in their FB album dedicated to such attempts. Needless to say, I was thrilled but I would love to be featured in the similar blog post on BonAppetit.com.

So going forward, you can expect a cook the cover post on the first of the month. Good. I'm glad we had this talk.

March's cover recipe, chicken khao soi, really jumped out at me with its bowls of creamy orange curry and festive adornments.  Please believe me when I tell you, you must make this recipe now. Tonight. Go to the supermarket immediately.

It's that good. Really.

Not only is it delicious but it's fairly quick to pull together on a week night. And I promise I will let you all know when recipes are NOT so good for weeknight cookery (like ajiaco criollo...but that experiment is for another blog post).

The cover story featured 5 different soups to cure the winter blues. Whether or not you are knee deep in snow or sitting by the pool in 70 degree weather, this recipe is a winner.  Just try not to think of how many calories come from 2 cans of full fat coconut milk, okay??

The only ingredient that was a bit tricky to find was the dried chile guajillo. Living in SoCal, thankfully, means that Mexican foods are easy to come by. I swore I had seen it at my local Ralph's but there were no dried chiles to be found in the Hispanic aisle. I had to call Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and yet another Ralph's before I tracked them down at the 2nd Ralph's. I now have enough dried chiles to make the recipe for the curry paste twice over. Other BA readers recommended making extra curry paste and freezing it for a rainy, hungry day. If I ever get better at meal planning, I will do the same and thank myself later.

Chicken Khao Soi
Adapted from Bon Appetit magazine, March 2013

I followed the recipe linked above pretty closely, but with the following modifications:

1.  I cut the boneless, skinless chicken thighs into 1-inch chunks and left them whole instead of shredding them.

2.  In a never ending effort to make things gluten-free and low-carb, I substituted rice noodles for the egg noodles.  I threw them in at the end, as rice noodles only take a few minutes to soften up. I was going to use kelp noodles, but I didn't want to trek to yet another grocery store...

3.  I also added a few handfuls of spinach after the noodles to add some more color :]

4.  Again, because sugar is the enemy, I omitted the tablespoon of palm sugar.

5.  I highly recommend giving each bowl a squirt (or four) of Sriracha or the Korean fermented pepper paste, gochujang.  Despite the four guajillo chiles in the paste, the soup does not come out that spicy.