Food and Life in Myanmar
With thanks to my friend Daw Phyu, who always passes the most delicious food to me across the fence between our homes. Thank you for cooking with me and helping me to learn this recipe. I will always love your food.
A note about ingredients for making this curry:
Lots of Myanmar curries have a seafood component. This dish, as taught to me by my friend Daw Phyu, often includes a handful of fresh shrimp and a teaspoon of fish paste.…
Well, here we are, three years after I started this blog, and I am finally getting around to posting the recipe for which it is named. Better late than never, right? Pickled tea leaves are a favorite of mine, and I think there is nothing like them in the world. I am a bit at a loss to describe them adequately. They have the flavor of green tea, with the flavor of fermentation; they are slightly bitter, slightly salty, and they leave a bit of a tangy aftertaste on the tongue for a few moments.…
Myanmar is not short on flavorful vegetarian dishes—this stew is another example of that! I love this dish because it can easily be made in bulk and lasts a few meals and it is really inexpensive. Also, if I have any leftover meat curry from a previous meal, I can easily add it in to give the whole meal extra protein and flavor (and use up leftovers in the process–always a win).
I struggled to name this recipe; in Burmese, part of its name contains a pejorative term for an ethnic group in Myanmar.…
Traditional Burmese sour soup: it is served in most restaurants, alongside platefuls of rice and little dishes with different curries. You can pour spoonfuls of it onto your rice and mix it with a curry, or you can just drink it right out of the bowl. Usually the restaurant staff will keep refilling your bowl of sour soup unless you ask them to stop; I rarely ask them to stop—such is my love for sour soup. (Ironically, you don’t receive bottomless water when you eat out in this part of the world, you have to order a bottle of it.…
Coconut Milk Noodles
(Ohng No Khao Swe)
“Coconut milk noodles” – that is the direct translation from the Myanmar name for this dish. A lot of dishes here have simple and sometimes vague names—“Chinese Muslim fried rice”, “wide fried noodles”, “soaked, long and fried”—names which do not always explain the flavor, contents, or texture of the dish. I struggled to give this recipe a proper title in English, afraid that a direct translation of the name would leads you to believe that the noodles themselves are made from coconut milk (which does sound pretty great, actually).…
Sour Soup (Chin Hin)
When we moved here last January, one of the first dishes I fell for was sour soup. It is served alongside curry dishes at many small curry and rice shops, and you usually are served a bottomless bowl of the stuff. There are a ton of variations on it, and I hope to share more of them with you in the months to come. This soup is called sour soup, but I don’t even know if the English word “sour” would be an apt description for it.
