Thai food is very exotic and has interesting contrasts in flavours. It draws on influences throughout South-East Asian food. This recipe is not authentic Thai, but a mixture of Thai seasoning and traditional English soup. This will make enough soup for eight portions.

Before you attempt this, you need to have a hand blender or a food processor and a very large pan.

Ingredients

• Two tuna steaks¹
• A bunch of celery²
• Two carrots
• Two leeks
• A white cabbage
• Two large peppers
• Three red onions
• A bunch of broccoli
• Fresh coriander
• Five large cloves of garlic
• 2.5cm cube of ginger
• Three green chillies
• Thai green paste
• Lemon grass (preferably in oil)
• 300ml coconut milk
• Thai fish sauce³
• Thai seven spice⁴
• Soy sauce
• Salt and pepper
• A lime
• A lemon

Method

1. The first step is to make the sauce for the vegetables to cook in. Into your blender, place four of the cloves of garlic, two of the chillies and the ginger. Add some oil (groundnut or sesame), liberal splash of fish sauce and one big teaspoon of lemon grass. Add plenty of fresh coriander and black pepper and the juice of your lime then blend until it is a nice consistent sauce.

2. Start to chop some of the vegetables. You need to chop all of the red onions, two sticks of celery, one of the leeks, one of the peppers, one of the carrots, a large handful of cabbage and half of your broccoli.

3. Throw all of these into your large pan and add a liberal splash of seven spice and a heaped teaspoon of green paste. Now pour the sauce you made in step one onto the veg and add about 500-600ml boiling water⁵. Put on a very low heat and leave to simmer for about an hour.

4. In the meantime cut up the other carrot, pepper, leek, chilli, as well as the remaining broccoli into small bits (about 1.5cm cubed).

5. At this stage you must prepare the tuna. Pour a little oil into a frying pan and add the juice of half the lemon. Crush the remaining garlic clove and add some salt and pepper and heat until it is reasonably hot. Add the two tuna steaks and cook for about 3-5 min on each side until nicely brown.

6. Once cooked, one of the steaks should be chopped up and put to one side with the chopped vegetables.

7. The other steak and the juice from the pan should be added to the simmering vegetables. Now using your hand blender⁶, blend the whole lot up into a creamy consistency mixture.⁷.

8. Add the tin of coconut milk, some soy sauce and taste. If necessary add additional seasoning, or some chilli sauce if it is not hot enough.

9. Add the chopped vegetables and tuna. Return it all to the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes.

Serve piping hot with a little fresh coriander on top.