Thai-Style Coconut Sorrel Fish Soup

But back to the yellow wood sorrel. This is another one of those plants that can be found growing in abundance as a garden weed or in waste areas, so it is easy enough to find in quantity, even thought the leaves are small and cook down a lot. My first attempt at actually making something with yellow wood sorrel was in Vermont last year. We had run out of limes and I needed something lemon-limey for a batch of stuffed clams I was making, so Gregg and I collected sorrel leaves and flowers, chopped them up, and added them to the stuffing--a pleasant addition to the dish.

Recently, on a visit to my friend Jennifer's house, we allowed her daughter to taste some of the yellow wood sorrel growing in her grandmother's garden. She absolutely loved it and couldn't stop talking about it. Not only that but she proved to be very good at identifying the yellow wood sorrel by its heart-shaped leaves, although I couldn't get her to remember the plant's name despite my prompt:  "I'm sorry I can't remember that this plant's name is sorrel."  

But I continue to digress. Now for the good part--the Thai-style coconut sorrel fish soup--which is, if I do say so myself, the most delicious meal I have made with wild edible plants to date.

The idea for sorrel soup came to me in a roundabout way from my grandmother. Grandma's mother and father, who we called Babcia and Gagi, were first generation Polish immigrants to the U.S. They brought with them a recipe for sorrel soup that is made with a soup base of spare ribs. Grandma imagines that her parents used wild sorrel in that soup, upon first arrival in the U.S., until they discovered how to cultivate their homeland variety here. As it turns out, Gagi was no stranger to wild edible plants. Grandma tells me that although he used to buy imported mushrooms for another Polish dish they liked to make, he started gathering them in the wild after the price of imported mushrooms went up, and Babcia would dry them out to use throughout the year. (Incidentally this experience is probably why grandma is even more receptive to eating wild edible plants than my dad. It required no effort at all to get grandma to taste both purslane and sea beans, both of which she suggested I try using in a salad.)

My dad, like my grandma, grew up on Babcia's sorrel soup, and I have to admit that part of my reason for wanting to make the recipe was an attempt to garner dad's support for wild edible plants. In the end I failed, however, in acquiring the recipe in time to make the dish. 

Instead I improvised. After a little research on how to make tom ka gai, a delicious Thai coconut chicken soup that my parents and I love, I came up with yet another bastardized recipe. Lacking chicken, I used freshly caught striped bass and made it into a fish soup. Lacking lemongrass, I attempted to use sorrel for the lemony flavor, but finding that not to be enough, I ended up squeezing a lime into it as well.

Without further ado, then, here is how to make my Thai-style coconut sorrel fish soup. First, fry up some finely chopped garlic and pickled ginger in a little peanut oil. Add two cans of coconut milk, two cans of water, four tbsp of fish sauce, one thinly sliced onion, one thinly sliced red bell pepper, one thinly sliced spicy green pepper of some sort, a bunch of yellow wood sorrel leaves and flowers (I think we ended up with about two cups after cleaning it), chunks of white fish (I used striped bass), some reconstituted dried shitake mushrooms plus the water in which they were reconstituted, the juice of a lime, and cook together on low heat for like 30 minutes.

If success can be measured by my dad not only finishing his bowl but also by taking a second huge serving, then success was most certainly attained! My mom and I also liked the soup very much. Yay to wood sorrel.

Note: In A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants, Lee Allen Peterson warns that "Excessive consumption over an extended period of time may inhibit the absorption of calcium by the body." So just don't eat too much wood sorrel all the time, I guess, and you should be okay.

Article revised by etmarciniec 5.26.10.