Thai Coconut Chicken Soup

Back when we lived in Boise, one of my favorite restaurants was this Thai place called (appropriately) "Thai Cuisine" lol. They have this coconut soup that I absolutely love, but I have never even considered trying it because it has ingredients like lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, and galangal. Not only would I not know where to find these ingredients here, I never would even try because I'd only use them for this one soup. So I've just been going without. Until last night. I saw someone using regular similarly-flavored ingredients in another Asian soup and I was like, "Hey, I could do that!" So I came up with the following, which was surprisingly CLOSE. It wasn't exactly the same, but the whole family loved it nonetheless and I will just keep working on the flavor balance to make it perfect.

Coconut Chicken Soup:

2 chicken breasts, cooked and cut-up into 1-inch pieces
2 cups chicken stock (I used homemade)
2 cups coconut milk
1 onion, cut in half and sliced into strips
3 cups button mushrooms, quartered
8 slices fresh ginger, peeled
1 tablespoon chili paste
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
juice of 1 lemon
olive oil

1) Drizzle a little olive oil in the bottom of a soup pot, heat over medium heat. Add the onions and cook about 2-3 minutes.
2) Add the stock, coconut milk, mushrooms, ginger, chili paste, basil and pepper and simmer for 10 minutes.
3) Add the chicken and simmer another 5 minutes.
4) Add the lemon juice and serve hot.

Enjoy!