meemalee

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...

Some people don't like century eggs. Those people are wrong . Whenever I visit Burma, I try to consume five times my bodyweight in food - that’s just the way I roll (sometimes literally, on the way back from Heathrow). Give me a break, I only make it out there every couple of years, so I need to make it last. This means I eat out (and in) about 12 times a day and succeed in putting on at least two dress sizes. I’m completely spoilt for choice when it comes to eating out - there are 135 ethnic groups in Burma each with varying cuisines. I’m a mixed bag myself - I worked out the other day that I’m 38% Shan, 32% Bamar, 13% Intha and 17% Chinese. I used a spreadsheet and everything. I guess it’s the Chinese in me that drives me to visit Shway Bè in Mandalay (that and the magnificent mascot - see above), for Shway Bè is ostensibly a Chinese restaurant, though most of the food has a Burmese twist. And when we’re there, we always order the roast duck (Shway Bè means ...

"Marian" is the name of my favourite Indiana Jones character ( you already know of my Indy love ). It's also the name of one of my favourite fruits - the marian or marian plum, botanical name Bouea Burmanica , known as ma-yong or maa-prong in Thailand. Marians aren't lovely, luscious orbs of juicy sweetness however. Even when ripe, they're mouth-puckeringly sour and they're a vital component of one of the best Burmese salads ever . Unfortunately, as far as I know you can't get marian fruit in this country. Even in Burma, marians or mayun-thee is only available seasonally, and I always seem to manage to miss them whenever I get over there. However, there's always a substitute for an impossible ingredient and my mother discovered long ago that gooseberries make a respectable replacement. Since then, every June, I've bought up the very first "goosegogs" available ( thanks Tasty Tottenham ) to make this salad. Marian salad is eaten as a s...