Myanmar Pumpkin Curry

Myanmar Pumpkin Curry

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

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.…

Beansprouts and Tofu, lightly fried

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I am typically not a huge fan of either bean sprouts or tofu. However, this particular arrangement of the two has become a new favorite in our house. Some days, I don’t get to the market early enough to get the best meat, and some days, I just don’t feel like cooking meat; these sorts of days often come on the heels of meat purchases that proved to be tough and unpalatable. (My last attempt at beef curry involved what must have been a very old water buffalo.…

Roasted Butternut Squash with Carmelized Onions

This post hopefully ends the longest period of silence on the blog for the foreseeable future. Shortly after launching this blog in April, I got a case of heat exhaustion in the 100+ degree weather, and from then on I spent about 12 hours a day in bed for the remainder of my pregnancy. After giving birth and a few weeks of some postpartum health drama, we’re slowly easing into a new normal as a family of three. Here’s hoping that involves more regularity in sharing our overseas food life with you!

Byau Pu Tho (Corn Salad)

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This salad was my first invention upon settling into our new home in Yangon. It also symbolizes my initiation into shopping Myanmar style (that is to say, open air market). Before going out to shop, I sat down with my vegetable picture chart and my fluent husband and made a list of the things I’d need, sounding out the name of each ingredient, writing it down, and practicing it a few times.

Emboldened by my new arsenal of vocabulary, we strode out to the market, basket in hand.…