The combination of a strong and lasting craving for sour stuff in the past few days, and a jar of tamarind juice in the fridge, inspired me to look up tamarind soups and adapt a couple of Indian recipes I found on the Web.

I put in a pint-pot about 200ml of tamarind juice (see yesterday's entry) and made up to half a litre with water. Added a crushed clove of garlic, a chopped (and deseeded) fresh red chilli, some spinach stalks (because I had them lying around from last night's dinner) and a pinch of salt. Covered and boiled for about 5 minutes.

At this point I took out the spinach stalks and added a 1/2-inch cube of creamed coconut, about the same amount of palm sugar (brown sugar would work just as well), and a small handful of sweet potato noodles (any kind of noodles would do). Simmered for another 5 minutes, and ate.

Quite sour, but pleasant -- the coconut and sugar provided sweetness to round the sharpness of the tamarind.