Since we decided to have Ramen noodles tonight, I thought a nice Thai Peanut Sauce would be great:
Thai Peanut Sauce Soup
- 150 g crunchy peanut butter
- 180 mL coconut milk
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1 small onion
- 2 Tbsp fresh lime juice
- 1 Tbsp brown sugar
- 1 tsp curry powder
- 3 crushed dried thai peppers (or to taste)
- fresh coriander
- Chop & mix everything but the milk and peanut butter.
- Blend everything together 1 minute or until smooth.
Simple quick recipe, yes? Except we were out of coconut milk. Unfortunately, this isn’t South Caye, Belize with coconut trees, so we took a family walk to the local grocery and got some bagels and canned coconut milk. In the store I read the ingredient list and the amount — 13.5 fl. oz. | 60mL. So I picked up three cans figuring a touch shy won’t hurt, besides we never go completely by any recipe.
We got home and I chopped everything choppable and added everything to the food processor. In goes the peanut butter and all three cans of coconut milk.
Hmm… smells good, but that’s a bit thin. Oh well, tastes good, though not as sweet or as spicy as I like. Still this will work well.
As I’m sitting down reading the email from my independent studies professor, Tammy was working through how a sauce recipe could turn out so thin. She figured it out and said:
“Um, Eric, each can is 400 mL. The recipe only calls for 180 mL…you put in all three cans?”
I don’t know where I got that 60 mL from! And I never double checked afterwards! Doh! Fortunately, Johann noticed it tasted similar to Tom Kah Gai, so it became Thai Peanut Soup with a simple addition of warming for a couple minutes.
Tammy looked at the can again and figured out what must have happened. I read the front of the can and it said 13.5 fl. oz. I read the nutrition label for anything Tammy might be allergic to. At the top of the label it states that one serving is 57 mL. I somehow missed the next line that said there was 7 servings per can. And I know I totally missed the 400 mL next to the 13.5 fl. oz. on the front of the can.
Tammy said now I know how it feels to be given only partial information on important issues where huge misunderstandings could have been avoided, not to mention a lot of heartache, if I had just included that one piece of key information!
3 Comments
Hey! Now I’ve got recipes for both Thai Peanut Sauce AND Thai Peanut Soup!!!
Must have been like minds–we had stir-fry with papaya salad for lunch a couple of days ago … of course my Thai peppers were fresh …. However, now all those red little darlings are gone and it will be a while before I get fresh peppers again!! I’ve taken my seeds out of the fridge and will plant them soon to try to raise more pepper plants!
Way to go! Who knows what other wonders you can create by misreading the label. I love that Johann was the catalyst for the solution. Good job, Johann!
It’s great! If we feel like having soup one day, we have it. If we feel like having sauce, we just take a small amount, add more peanut butter and spices, pour it over noodles or rice, and voila! We could stretch this out for a whole month!
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