Myanmar Salads

Salads in Myanmar aren't quite like salads I've ever eaten anywhere else.  For a start, the main ingredient of perhaps their most famous salad dish is pickled tea-leaves!  I had heard about this dish, known as laphet, and was determined to search it out.  However, it was nowhere to be found in Yangon - or perhaps it was on the menu but it was written in Burmese script?!


Anyway, the first we saw of it was when we reached Bagan, and stopped to grab a drink at a roadside stall.  Hanging from the side of the stall were these little sachets...  yes, labelled only in Burmese, but I felt sure that this was it.  We bought a packet and decided to sample it with our pre-dinner lager that night.

As you can see, it looked slightly sinister...  The tea-leaf paste was mixed with crispy fried peanuts, sesame seeds and broad beans.

But if there was ever a case of something tasting a LOT better than it looks, this was it!

In fact, we went straight out to supper at a vegetarian restaurant we had found in Old Bagan (The Moon) and I ordered a large plate of the same salad (Rob had pumpkin curry).

This salad was even better than the stuff in the packet.  It had lots of extra ingredients - I had a chat with the restaurant owner and took notes while he told me what was in it:  pickled tea-leaves (of course), peanuts, sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds (both toasted), fresh chillies, crispy fried garlic, raw garlic, fresh tomato and fresh lime juice.  It was the garlic that really elevated it to new heights I think - fried garlic has such a distinctive taste, and paired with the raw garlic (in vampire-scaring amounts) gave the salad a real lift.

I've been trying to research more detailed recipes for this salad, but they seem fairly few and far between.  However, I have noticed that in many restaurants the salad is served in its constituent parts and either assembled by the diner, or tossed together at the table (see video below).

I see from the video that dried shrimp can also be added, but I think I'd prefer it without; those shrimp can be very pungent.  We bought several more small sachets of the salad, but also a larger bag of the pickled tea, along with a bag of the crispy nuts and seeds, so we'll definitely be having a go at it now we're back at home.  Of course sourcing the pickled tea-leaves might be somewhat of an issue in the future, but I'm sure there are ways and means... and perhaps I might even try making some myself?

However, in the absence of a ready supply, the Myanmar salad can be created without the addition of tea.  We also ate it in several other versions, notably made with lemon.

This was a base of shredded white cabbage, mixed with ground peanuts, peanut oil, toasted peanuts, fried and raw garlic, and large chunks of fresh lemon.  Wow, this was zingy - a perfect refreshing lunch on a hot day.  Another variation was made with a local leaf called Pennywort.  We saw this in a supermarket and didn't recognise it as anything we'd seen either in the UK or Brunei, but the salad was made with similar ingredients and had a delicious savoury flavour.

I've always been someone who would rarely think of having a salad as a main meal, but these salads in Myanmar went a long way towards changing my mind!

Myanmar Curries

Considering that tourism isn't a big thing in Myanmar (yet) I was surprised to see lots of restaurants, particularly around Inle Lake, advertising pasta and pizza, clearly in an attempt to appeal to visiting Westerners.  Now I didn't go to Myanmar to eat Italian food, but after nearly 2 weeks there I was almost beginning to see the appeal...  as most Myanmar food seems to consist either of curry or salad.

Salad?  Don't pre-judge, these salads were some of the most amazing foods I've ever eaten...  but that's for my next blog-post!

When you hear the word 'curry' you probably immediately think of spices, and heat...  but the curries in Myanmar don't really fit this description.  They're more tomatoey (tomatoes are grown a lot in Myanmar, notably in the floating gardens on Inle Lake) and, whilst I think they are subtly seasoned with spices, they lack any chili heat.

Harvesting tomatoes by canoe on Inle Lake (shot taken about a second too late, but never mind!)

We ordered curries several time and in various restaurants.  They always had the same sauce, and we always had to ask for extra chili!

I'm aware that this is a bit of a luke-warm write-up, but don't get me wrong, I liked them.  They were tasty and often made with interesting alternatives to meat, but they were just all a bit same-y.

Here's my tofu curry.  Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd say!  I didn't intentionally go vegetarian on this holiday, I just ended up eating lots of vegetarian food - partly because we found 2 excellent veggie restaurants whilst in Bagan, but partly because there was a lot of nice vegetarian food available.  The tofu here was local to Inle Lake and was made with yellow split peas, giving it an unusual texture more akin to polenta.  You can see the little dish of dried chili in the background.

Here's Rob the following day, eating the same dish while I sampled Egg Curry (same sauce, different protein!).  He's not looking that impressed is he, but to be fair he was on the road to recovery after a nasty bout of D&V (hence me eating alone the previous day) and was still a bit nervous about eating anything at all.

I can't find any kind of 'Burmese Curry' recipe that looks anything like the curries we ate, but I suspect it's something that could be relatively easily recreated at home.  I think I'd make a paste of garlic, ginger and turmeric, and fry it with some diced onion before adding diced tomatoes and dried chillies.  A lovely addition to many of these curries was chopped spring onion, added just before serving.  Much as I enjoyed the tofu curry, and the hard-boiled-egg option, my favourite variation on the theme was pumpkin - cubes of pumpkin or squash simmered in the sauce until meltingly tender.

I think I'll give it a try.

Myanmar Breakfasts

I always find 'Western' breakfasts in Asian hotels a bit depressing.  Actually no, the 'Western' breakfasts in Asian hotels make me want to throw myself off a tall building, or perhaps under the nearest passing bus, they really are that bad. I think it's worst in Muslim countries, where pork is clearly not going to be on the menu - imagine processed chicken sausages and beef bacon (apologies for any dry-heaving that may result from imagining that) and you'll get the idea.

I'm securely planted in the 'when in Rome...' camp, so when we go abroad we make a point of opting for the local option; and in Myanmar there were plenty of exciting local options to be had!

Exhibit 1 - and possibly the most exciting of all: sticky rice with coconut cream and assorted condiments.

There was both black and white sticky rice, identical taste, but the black one looks somewhat more interesting on the plate.  The rice is rather bland, but a vehicle for the tastes that you add to it.  The coconut cream loosens it up, and on top of that I sprinkled a sesame seed mix that was somehow both sweet and salty.  The other additions were all sweet, the one on the rear of the plate being a kind of almondy egg-custard (divine), and the one at the front being caramelised coconut.  Perhaps the most exciting was the orangey coloured one which was toasted coconut with finely sliced kaffir lime leaves, which was delicious (providing you ignored the lurid colour!).

Our first hotel was excellent as the breakfast was extensive - and was a buffet!  It meant that we never needed to have lunch - breakfast saw us through until pre-dinner beer and nibbles at 6pm!

Exhibit 2 - Rice Porridge.  An Asian favourite, about which I've blogged before. 

I liked the oily peanuts that came as a condiment here, although was less impressed by the sweet pickled vegetables that I also mistakenly threw onto it...  Oh well, you can't win them all!

Exhibit 3 - Fried Rice with extras. 

Fried Rice (or Nasi Goreng here in Brunei) is always a winner for breakfast, especially if it's topped with a freshly fried egg.  The best hotels have an egg-chef manning a small burner at all times so you can have a fresh omelette or fried egg at a minute's notice.  The accompaniments to this fried rice were pandan-wrapped chicken (the leafy thing at the front of the photo!), brasied kailan (a local leafy vegetable) and a vaguely Chinese-y pork dish where the pork was melt-in-the-mouth tender.

Wow, I've just realised that all 3 of those dishes were from the first breakfast that we ate in Yangon (in the Kandawgyi Palace Hotel).  The first breakfast that I ate in Yangon to be embarrassingly specific...  Can you see why it filled me up for the whole day?!

Exhibit 4 - Mohinga, or Burmese Noodle Soup.

This was served in all 3 of the hotels in which we stayed, but I think the best we had was in the Bagan Thande.  The rest of the breakfast wasn't that great, I have to admit, but this was lovely - a mildly spicy chicken soup (sometimes with a hint of coconut), served over noodles, and made exciting by the array of toppings.  I added fresh coriander, dried chilli flakes and a generous squirt of fresh lime juice.

Here's Rob with his Mohinga at the Hotel Amazing in Nyaung Shwe (Inle Lake).  This came with deep-fried gourd and sticky rice with chickpeas, as well as condiments of coriander, sliced raw shallots, dried chilli flakes and fresh lime.

Exhibit 5 -The 'Roadhouse'. 

In our third and final hotel, there was no breakfast buffet (boo!) but there was an exciting menu of 5 breakfasts for which you could place your order the previous night.  If you forgot to place your order you'd end up with the 'American Breakfast'...  which seemed like a good incentive to get your act together and decide on an alternative option.  On the first day I ordered the above - representative of the selection of foods you might get at a roadside stall in Myanmar.  It was all nice, but it was all also deep-fried, which lay rather heavily in my stomach for several hours.  Luckily there was also watermelon juice and a plate of fresh fruit, but even that barely lightened the overall effect.  Nice, but too much.

Exhibit 6 - 'Simply Shan'.

The Shan are one of the largest tribes who live in Myanmar, and this was a typically Shan selection of dishes which I ordered another morning.  This proved - again - slightly stodgy and carb-heavy, but I can't say I didn't enjoy it!  The splodge in the centre of the plate was a mix of potato and rice...  the crisp things were like poppadums, and the purple and white things on the right of the picture were crispy rice-cakes.  All could be dipped into ketchup (perhaps not that authentically Shan?!) or chili sauce.

For the other 2 breakfasts there (we stayed 4 nights) I chose the Mohinga option, which I came to realise was by far the nicest.

What a great way to start the day!

Mingalabar Myanmar!

We're back, and have just been catching our breath after an amazing trip.  I'll try to organise my thoughts more on the matter over the coming days (I'm definitely planning a blog post about the food for example) but I'll start with my overwhelming impression of the place - that of smiling faces.

At first I was a bit nervous - everyone in Yangon seemed to be staring at us.  However, I soon realised that if I simply smiled everyone would break into beaming grins!  The staring was simply curiosity; Myanmar gets so few tourists that they were just fascinated to see us.

Our one word of Burmese - "Mingalabar" (hello) - served us well as we could greet people and prepare for the inevitable follow-up question "Where you from?"  Most Burmese speak a smattering of English as it is taught in schools, but the words that followed our answer ("England") were inevitably "Football!", "Premier League!" or "Rooney!"  Sigh...   They did love to chat though.  And smile!

The 'face-paint' is a kind of sunblock/cosmetic made from tree bark.  Most people wear it, sometimes painted on in patterns.

For a country with not much to smile about - grinding poverty, a dictatorial military government, many people struggling to earn $1 a day - it was beautiful to see such an attitude of positivity and happiness.  I have never felt so welcomed in any other country.

Off on Holiday again...

We're off to Myanmar (Burma) tomorrow.  Exciting.

Photo courtesy of my friend Jo...  hope she didn't mind me borrowing it...

Back in a couple of weeks with news, views and food to report!