Burmese Stir-Fried Rice Noodles with Minced Meat

Burmese Stir-Fried Rice Noodles
 with Minced Meat

A Burmese video posted on Facebook provided the inspiration for this recipe. It was super simple to follow and needed just a few often-used ingredients that I regularly stock in my pantry. 

To make things easy on myself, I purchase substantial quantities of ground chicken, brown the lot in some oil, crumble and freeze it for future use. It's quick and easy to assemble the ingredients, when needed, if the minced meat is already cooked.

Ideal for lunch or if unexpected guests drop by, this is one dish that I'll be making often.

Stir-Fried Glass Noodles
 with Minced Meat

Chingri Maacher Malai Curry - Shrimp in Coconut Sauce

 Chingri Maacher Malai Curry

The perfect festive dish to take along to a potluck, this shrimp curry is a Bengali favourite at any gathering. Malai means cream, but instead of using whipping cream, cream from a can of coconut milk is used. Suppress the natural inclination to shake the can before opening, and remove the cream that collects on the inside of the can top and keep scooping out the coconut cream from the can until the thin coconut milk becomes visible.

Purchase the largest raw shrimp that is available. I was lucky enough to find peeled & deveined shrimp that tasted divine. My indication of success is when children like what I cook and had fun watching the littlest kids clamoring for 'fish!' last night at a Diwali potluck.

First Cooking of Shrimp

To keep the shrimp soft and succulent, I introduced them to the sauce at the start, removed them and reintroduced them at the end of the cooking process.

Knowing there were going to be children at this get-together, I kept away from the stronger spices and kept the sauce simple.

Burmese Htamin Let Thoke - Hand-Tossed Noodle & Rice Salad

Burmese Htamin Let Thoke

Also known as Let Thoke Sone or A-Thoke, this carb-rich salad is a popular street food in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). Htamin (rice) Let (hand) Thoke (tossed/mixed), like many other Burmese hand-tossed salads, is made from 12 or more ingredients, most of which are readily available in your local supermarkets. Specialty items like deep-fried onions and garlic can be made from scratch, but is a laborious process. Asian markets stock those along with spicy shrimp floss for which I like to use Balachaung as a substitute. Tamarind paste also is available in Asian and Indian markets.

Thai Tom Yum Goong - Hot & Sour Shrimp Soup

Thai Hot & Sour Soup

Bowl of Tom Yum

The inspiration for this soup came from a friend on Facebook asking for a Hot & Sour Soup recipe which led me to Closet Cooking. We had it for lunch for lunch today which along with an egg roll each, made for a filling and satisying meal. Because some of the ingredients were missing from my pantry, I had to make some modifications so I've described, below, what I did to reproduce the recipe.

The hot part of this soup came from a combination of minced green chilies and gochujang, a Korean chili paste that I love! The sour aspect came simply from the juice of one lime. I dropped the squeezed out rinds of lime into the soup and fished them out before serving. This made up for the absence of lemon grass. 

Eggplant & Pork in Oyster Sauce

Eggplant & Pork in Oyster Sauce

For a quick and easy main dish with an Asian flair, few dishes can beat this eggplant and pork stir-fry. A combination of oyster sauce, chili-garlic sauce, balsamic vinegar and fish sauce form the base for ground pork that is browned along with diced onions and garlic. Bite-sized pieces of Japanese eggplant are added at the tail end so that they retain their texture and don't disintegrate.

Chinese and Thai restaurants have a form of this recipe on their menus. My problem is that they always seem to over-salt the dish, so I prefer to replicate it at home so I can control the amount of salt that is added. In fact, no salt was added in this recipe because the different sauces are salty to begin with. Adjust the salt at the end of the cooking cycle to suit your taste.

A trick to break down the ground pork with little effort is to hand-mix it with 1/2 tsp. salt and 2 Tbsp. oil and set aside for 15 minutes. The oil acts to separate the nodules of ground meat which makes it easier to brown.

Burmese Stir-Fried Cabbage with Scrambled Eggs

Cabbage with Scrambled Eggs

Weekends were very special when we were growing up, made even more festive by Mum's cooking. She was a consummate cook of Indian, Burmese and Asian cuisines and passed on her love for cooking to all eight of us. We were curious and eager to try all kinds of food, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. 

Being a single mother of eight and a professor in a women's college meant that she was not able to spend as much time in the kitchen as she would have liked. Evenings and weekends were festive affairs because visitors dropped by unannounced, tea and snacks were constantly being served and meals were prepared by Mum with a lot of help from all of us and the hired help. There were occasions when her Thai students who lived at the hostel would arrive with all the necessary ingredients to prepare a feast for all of us. They were so happy to have a kitchen that was open to them so they could enjoy their cuisine, which they missed terribly.

This stir-fried cabbage dish is one that I associate with Mum's loving and nurturing nature. Cabbage is totally tasteless on its own, but is transformed when stir-fried until crisp, flavoured with the zing of black pepper powder and the umami of fish sauce. Add eggs into the mix and it assumes an unforgettable contrast in texture from the crispness of the cabbage to the creaminess of the scrambled eggs.

This is served as a side dish to accompany any Asian meal and is best suited to be had with hot, steamed long-grain rice.

Burmese Stir-Fried Bitter Melon and Eggplant

Burmese Stir-Fried Bitter Melon

Simple stir-fry with bitter melon which came pre-sliced, Japanese eggplant and multi-colored peppers, and seasoned with tomatoes, shrimp paste and fish sauce. The last two ingredients are what makes this a Burmese dish.

The pre-sliced bitter melon is available in Asian markets, so all I had to do was prep the other vegetables, dump it all in a skillet over medium heat and simmer it until the bitter melon was cooked.

Burmese Stir-Fried Garlicky Shrimp

Pazun Hsipyan

These shrimp (pazun) are stir-fried until the "oil resurfaces" (hsipyan). Most of the effort in preparing this dish is spent in shelling and deveining the shrimp, which take no time at all to cook. Keep this recipe in your repertoire of dishes that can be prepared in a hurry. The shrimp can be cleaned and marinated in advance and then cooked just before serving.

Ingredients:

1 lb. shrimp, shelled & deveined
6 Tbsp. vegetable oil
8-10 cloves garlic, peeled & diced
1 large onion, peeled, halved & sliced in thin crescents
1 large tomato, diced
1 serrano pepper, diced
1 bunch cilantro stems, diced
1/2 tsp. Kashmiri mirch or paprika
1 Tbsp. fish sauce
1/4 tsp. turmeric powder
salt to taste

Directions:

1. Marinate shrimp with turmeric & fish sauce for 15 minutes or longer.
2. Heat oil in a skillet/wok over medium-high heat and add paprika.
3. Stir-fry onions, peppers & garlic until onions are translucent.
4. Lower heat to medium, add tomatoes & simmer until oil resurfaces.
5. Add shrimp & cilantro stems and stir-fry until shrimp are no longer pink.
6. Adjust salt to taste & serve immediately over steamed long-grain rice.

Note: No water is used in cooking this dish. The gravy/sauce is the light olive oil (white & odorless) that I used which turned red from Kashmiri mirch and tomatoes.