Chicken Curry Noodle Soup

As regular readers know, I'm all for a shop-bought curry paste to speed up dinner time and inject a hit of flavour into a meal. This noodle soup is all sorts of comforting and the warmth from a good curry paste makes for delicious eating.

This recipe also uses a pack of stir fry veg to save you doing all the chopping but you can just sub in any veg you happen to have in. If you can't find baby corn, you can of course used tinned sweet corn instead and for a veggie (or even vegan) version swap the chicken for tofu and the stock for a vegetarian one.

Chicken Curry Noodle Soup

Serves 4

oil

2 x 150g chicken breasts

3 tbsp rendang or madras curry paste

10cm piece ginger

1 litre chicken stock

400g tin light coconut milk

200g soba noodles

160g baby corn

320g pack mixed stir fry veg

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

freshly ground black pepper

Put a large non-stick frying pan and a large, deep pan on medium heats. Slice each chicken breast into three long strips and massage with half the curry paste. Drizzle a little oil in the frying pan then add the chicken.

Chop the ginger into matchsticks and sprinkle half over the chicken. Cook for 5 minutes, turning regularly, until the chicken is almost blackened. Meanwhile, add the rest of the ginger and curry paste to the deep pan and pour in the stock. Bring to the boil then add the coconut milk and noodles.

Halve the corn length-ways and add to the stock pan then cover and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in the mixed veg with the soy sauce and cook for another minute until everything is piping hot. Season with black pepper then divide between bowls.

Add the vinegar to the chicken pan to deglaze it, moving the chicken around to pick up all the sticky bits off the base of the pan. Cut the chicken pieces in half and serve on top of the noodle soup.