Thai Chicken Soup

• 2 kilogram free range or organic chicken
• 200g tamarind, broken up
• 1 piece ginger, sliced
• 2 red chillies, seeds removed, 1 chopped and 1 finely sliced
• 1 red onion, skin on, sliced
• 2 sticks lemon grass, bashed, bruised and roughly chopped
• 1 bulb garlic, cut in half
• 1 large bunch fresh coriander
• 400 ml can coconut milk
• 225g rice noodles
• Thai Fish Sauce
• Soy sauce
• Drizzle of olive oil.

Place the chicken in a large heavy-based saucepan, and add the tamarind, ginger, chopped chilli, onion, lemon grass and garlic.

Finely slice the coriander stalks and add to the pan, keeping the leaves till later.

Cover with water to the top and weight the chicken down with a heavy lid or a smaller pan that fits inside the cooking pan. Bring to the boil and slowly simmer for 1 hour to 1 hour and 30 minutes. Once cooked, remove the chicken and pull off the meat using a fork.

Mash up the sauce and add the coconut milk and a lug of fish sauce.

Put the rice noodles in a bowl, pour boiling water over and leave to stand for 3 minutes.

Mix the coriander leaves with the finely sliced chilli.

Drain the noodles, place some in the bottom of each serving bowl, and dress with soy sauce to season. Pile the chicken on top, then pour the strained sauce over. Pile the chilli and coriander mix on top and drizzle with olive oil.