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.…
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.…
Dulce de leche translates from Spanish to mean, literally, “sweet of milk.” It is creamy, thick, and is, in essence, caramel. Dulce de leche is made with sugar and milk, but can easily be made by heating sweetened condensed milk for a number of hours.
A couple summers ago, when I first made dulce de leche, I submerged a can of sweetened condensed milk in a pan of water, brought it to a simmer, and then continued cooking the can on low (while maintaining the water level) for another 3 hours.…
