Toh Zya - Burmese Vegetable Dip

Toh Zya

A Burmese meal is generally started with an appetizer of fresh vegetables and a dip that oozes umami in every bite. 

Serve with Fresh Vegetables

or

Serve with Dumplings

My brother makes the best Toh Zya, but this version comes in a close second. Besides raw vegetables, this dip goes great with dumplings or gyoza.

Crab Paste

It's quite quick to assemble if pureed tomatoes (e.g. Hunt's tomato sauce) are available. Shrimp paste imparts the umami flavour we all crave, but Hubby is allergic to shrimp so I used crab paste that comes pre-cooked in a glass jar. The hardest part was to blanch a couple of onions and a whole pod of garlic which are added to the rest of the ingredients and blended to a paste before being simmered on the stove until oil resurfaces. There is sufficient oil in the crab paste so no oil needs to be added.

Burmese Stir-Fried Spinach & Eggplants

Burmese Spinach & Eggplants

Supermarkets now stock bags and tubs of triple washed spinach which cuts down on prep time. Baby spinach leaves are small enough to leave whole and that cuts down on prep time because they don't need to be chopped.

I fry the eggplant first then add the spinach, cooking it just until wilted.The leaves have to be moved from the bottom of the pan to the top several times because the pan is usually too small to accommodate the entire contents of the bag or tub.

Sorrel

Sorrel is an herb, delicious and tart, that look very much like spinach. If sown in the ground, this vigourous plant will take over just like mint. I've bought it at the farmer's market as seedlings and potted them successfully. They die back in the winter and return in the spring. The tender & tangy greens are edible when they first sprout but become more and more bitter as they mature. 

To emulate the tangy flavour of sorrel and roselle leaves (chin baung ywet in Burmese), I add the juice of a lime just before removing this dish from the stove. 

Burmese Stewed Eggplant - Khayan Thee Hin

A form of sipyan, this eggplant dish is so much easier to prepare because everything is combined in a skillet and left to cook on its own.  Out of sheer habit, I scraped the bottom of the pan to make sure it wasn't sticking, but that was not necessary at all. Once the tomatoes cooked down, the cooking liquids covered the eggplant pieces which then stewed in the resulting juices. The bulk of the flavour and umami was imparted by a combination of peanuts, shrimp paste and dried shrimp powder.

Here are several options for vegans. To achieve umami flavour without using fish-/seafood-based sauces, would be to use mushroom sauce and dried shiitake mushrooms. Mushroom sauce is used by vegans to replace oyster sauce and the soaking liquid from dried shiitake mushrooms both impart strong umami flavour. More difficult to come by is dried konbu or kelp (seaweed) which is used to make konbu dashi. A third option would be to use Ajinomoto or MSG.

Serve this as a side over a mound of steamed rice, preferably coconut rice or Ohn Htamin.

Burmese Toh Zya - Vegetables & Dip

Toh Zya

When we were growing up in Burma, I and my siblings spent a lot of time at our neighbor's house. They were a childless couple and, from what I can remember, enjoyed our company. We were always welcome to join them for a meal and one staple at their table was always some form of tangy dip with fresh, steamed or parboiled vegetables. 

Toh Zya in Burmese refers to anything that can be dipped into a sauce. The dip varies, but this particular one is a favorite of mine because of the incredible umami imparted by the shrimp paste and fish sauce. This dip is made from a puree of tomatoes, blanched onions, lots of garlic, chili paste, paprika, fish sauce, shrimp paste and a generous amount of oil. It cooks on the stovetop for close to an hour because all the water from the puree has to cook off, leaving a thick, almost syrupy sauce in which the oil floats back to the surface.

Any crunchy vegetable is ideal for dipping in this sauce. I especially like cucumbers and the bottom part or ribs of romaine lettuce. Sweet little rainbow peppers also taste great for dipping.

Ingredients:

2 beefsteak tomatoes, diced

1 large onion, blanched and drained

1 pod of garlic, segmented & peeled

1 tsp. Kashmiri mirch or paprika

2 tsp. roasted chili paste

1 tsp. shrimp paste/ngapi
1 tsp. fish sauce

salt to taste

4 Tbsp. vegetable oil

Directions:

1. Puree all the ingredients, except oil, in a blender.
2. Heat oil over medium-high heat and pour pureed ingredients into oil.
3. Bring to a boil, lower heat to medium and simmer for close to an hour, stirring occasionally.
4. When all the liquid is absorbed and the sauce thickens and reduces by half, adjust salt to taste, stir well and continue to simmer until the oil resurfaces and floats to the surface.
5. Bring to room temperature and serve as a dip with vegetables.

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 Spinach with Shrimp

Hin Nu Ywet 

This is another Burmese dish that reminds me of my mother and our childhood. Mum would garnish it with roasted sesame seeds which I didn't have, so I used sesame oil. The shrimp can be omitted altogether because the shrimp paste gives this dish a lot of flavour. Any kind of greens can be used, of which water spinach is my favourite.