meemalee

Fritter Seller in Mandalay 36 years ago today, my mother, father, and two brothers disembarked from a plane at Heathrow Airport. I was a stowaway, born four months later. As well as the anniversary of my family's arrival in the UK, today is also  Independence Day in Burma (aka Myanmar), marking 67 years since Burma left the British Empire*. To celebrate both these occasions, I'm delighted that the Huffington Post has given me the opportunity to talk to you about Burmese food, and share my tips for eating and drinking in Burma. Here's my Insider Food Guide to Myanmar - see also below for photos of all the various dishes which I describe in detail: Typical Burmese spread Mohinga , our national dish Mandalay Noodle Salad ( Mandalay Mohntee / Mont-Di ) Lahpet Thohk - Pickled Tea Leaves Salad Ngapi Yay-Jo with blanched vegetables - Similar to Bagna Cauda, Ngapi is ...

Burmese Meatball Curry A-thar-lohn-hin aka meatball curry is eaten throughout Burma, but especially in Upper Burma. It is usually made with goat ( seit-thar ), but beef ( a-mair-thar ) is also popular. Lamb makes an excellent substitute, although is uncommonly used in Burma, partly because the Burmese word for "lamb" is thoh which also sounds like our word for "rotten". It's also good using 50:50 pork and beef mince, and the higher up you travel in Burma, the more likely pork will feature in the mix. Traditionally served with steamed rice, you could also eat it with naan bread, or even serve on noodles for a Burmese take on spaghetti and meatballs. Burmese Meatball Curry (A-thar-lohn hin) Serves 4-6 For the sauce 4 medium onions, diced  2 cloves garlic, chopped 1 tsp turmeric 4 tbsp groundnut or other neutral oil 400g can chopped tomatoes  3 red finger chillies  1 tbsp sweet paprika  2 tbsp fish sauce - good quality - I like Three ...

Mogok Pork Curry (photo by Luiz Hara ) My mother is from Mogok, a chilly gem-mining town in the hilly north of Burma, where everyone adores pork ( I mentioned before that they refer to wages as "pork funds").  This classic Mogok curry is more or less used to wean Burmese children - my nephews and nieces can eat bowls and bowls of the stuff, as it's sweet and mild, yet addictive.  Before my youngest nephew could talk properly, whenever he visited his grandparents, he'd ask for " pork and yice " (pork and rice), and I'm pleased to say that my one year old daughter is now an equally big fan. BURMESE PORK CURRY, MOGOK-STYLE ( Wet-thar Hnut ) Serves 4 to 6, freezes well 1 kg pork leg or shoulder, with some fat, diced into 2.5cm cubes 100ml malt vinegar 4 medium white onions, peeled 4 cloves of garlic, peeled 2cm piece of fresh root ginger, peeled 4 tbsp groundnut oil 1 tbsp caster sugar 1 tbsp light soy sauce 1 tbsp dark so...

Coconut Prawn Curry I stockpile cans like there's no tomorrow . Chopped and plum tomatoes, baked beans, chickpeas, kidney beans, cannellini beans, sweetcorn, pilchards, sardines, corned beef, condensed milk, random meat products which I bought partly because of their amusing names, and even a forlorn tin of Libby's pumpkin, waiting, always waiting, to be turned into pumpkin pie some (Thanksgiving) day. The other tin which stares at me reproachfully is one of coconut milk. "You only ever use me to make ohn-no khao swè ", it says to me. "I am so versatile and exciting. DO SOMETHING WITH ME. LET ME LIVE". So I made up this dish. Coconut Prawn Curry Recipe Serves 4 500g large raw prawns 3 tbsp oil 1 large onion, chopped 4 cloves garlic, chopped 1 lemongrass stalk, trimmed of woody bits and finely chopped OR 1 tsp lemongrass paste 1 tbsp Marigold bouillon 1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes 1 x 400g tin coconut milk 1 tbsp fish sauce Sm...

It's the MiMi Cookery Show! Ha, not really. So you know Vouchercodes - those guys that email you handy discount codes for shops like Clark's and Dorothy Perkins? Turns out that they also have an online magazine called Most Wanted  which is oddly hidden away in the top right of their website. Most Wanted is full of rather good articles and handy money-saving tips - eg how to stream music for free  or how to achieve Jennifer Lawrence's smokey eye makeup . "Now add the chicken to the stockpot"   It also has a Food and Drink section, which is currently running a series called "Afford Autumn Food".  It even has its own hashtag on Twitter - #AffordAutumnFood . Vouchercodes asked me to take part in the series, so I went along to the beautiful cookery school  Food at 52 to spend a couple of hours filming this How-To video. "It should be starting to smell fragrant" Anyway, here is the result - watch the video below to...

I have small hands and all Growing up in Britain as a Burmese child was weird in a lot of ways. One of these was that my diet was entirely Burmese at home. I didn't really cook or shop for food for myself till I was at college, so I genuinely never realised for example that asparagus made your wee smell (in fact, I used to think that there was something up with my future in-laws' plumbing, since their house was the only place I ate the stuff). A plate of  fried crickets in Burma And I didn't know that avocados could be savoury as I'd only had them in milkshakes and ice cream, and I only got to eat fish and chips from a bag when there was a power cut. I had my first McDonalds when I was 12 - and yet I had my first cricket when I was 8. Crickets - those chirpy little beggars with too many legs and antennae. Known as payit in Burma, and sold on the streets of Mandalay and Yangon in huge bamboo trays, they were meaty and crunchy and incredibly delicious, ...

Spicy Shan Cauliflower and Carrot Pickle Pickling is in my blood. As you know, I'm Burmese, but Burma aka Myanmar is made up of over 100 ethnic groups. A large part of me is Shan , one of the more prominent of these ethnic groups, who primarily live in a rural, hilly region in Burma known as the Shan State . Traditionally tall and fair, and cousins to the Dai people in Thailand, the Shan are rather fond of pickles (and noodles, and pork - often the three in combination). All manner of Shan pickles for sale in Mandalay The classic Shan pickle is mohnyin-tjin , but as wonderful as this is, it takes a little effort and patience to make (by patience, I mean at least a week, kimchi -style).  This recipe is for one of my favourite overnight pickles, using cauliflower and carrot, both of which are hard to come by in lower Burma, but plentiful in the Shan State. Though of course carrots and cauliflowers aren't rare in the UK, you may not find the pickli...

A friend of mine was mocking the recent craze for food mash-ups - cronuts , doissants, townies, what have you. She suggested the world should come up with a dish combining noodles and rice called "nice", so I mentioned to her that us Burmese already have a dish comprising rice, noodles AND potatoes (the Atkin's diet was never going to work in Burma). This triple-carb beauty is called let thohk sohn (or let thoke sone ) which literally means "hand-tossed everything", but I've seen it called "rainbow salad" which, to be fair, makes for pleasanter nomenclature. Let thohk sohn is perfect picnic fare, as well as a pretty awesome desk lunch. Triple carb joy, plus some carrots and white cabbage Eaten cold or at room temperature, it's technically a salad (the Burmese for salad is " a-thohk " ie "tossed"), but its flavours and textures make it as far from a droopy bunch of green leaves as you can possibly imagine. I...