Never wear anything but black when eating khao soi. Ever. I caught myself in time, and layered on a black hoodie before digging in to khao soi. Unforunately for my t-shirt, I should have done this while cooking as well. I follow the Pok Pok recipe for khao soi, and there is a full tablespoon of turmeric. Splatters are inevitable, but the worst is the nearly invisible, fine turmeric dust that lingers in threads like a dormant volcano until the cloth touches liquid.
The Pok Pok recipe calls for a whopping 6 cups of coconut milk, and I sub about half with chicken stock. The other mod I usually make is cutting back on the shrimp paste and omitting the fried noodles.
To be honest, I used to dread when people ordered this and wanted to share this. This isn’t a sharing dish, and yet we would still bring individuals bowls, chopsticks, and soup spoons for every person at the table. With bone-in chicken and the fried noodle nest and the 1.5 cups of broth, sharing was patently absurd and messy.
