Tasting regional cuisine is one of joys of travelling

Ma Thanegi

FOOD, food, lovely food, what would travel be without food? Five inches less from your waist, that’s what. But every traveller has at one time or the other said, I’ll diet when I get home. With this promise in mind, its good to let your waistband expand as you see the sights and taste the food.

Too exotic food of Myanmar may not be to your taste, such as deep fried crickets stuffed with ginger, but there are a variety of less aggressive fare. The Bama Butterfish curry, lentil soup and pennywort salad by now have become requisite dishes on the Yangon local menu prepared for foreigners. Another favourite is the Ohn No Khaut Swe, a special treat of noodles in coconut flavoured chicken soup.

As this is a city of many races, some of the ethnic foods such as the Shan noodles or the Myeik "Cut with Scissors" are available in a few places, if not as good as what you would get in their original regions. Indian or Chinese food, whether in the upscale restaurants or street stall fare, are best in Yangon. The simplest Chinese noodle dish is Hsi Chet Khaut Swe – thin, flat, almost translucent flour noodles mixed with garlic oil, chopped boiled duck meat, and chopped spring onions. Or the more hearty Kyay Oh, vermicelli or rice noodles in thick soup with bits of as many parts of a pig you can think of.

These shops need to be warned to avoid msg, as they like to use lashings of it. Indian cuisine for the locals is the Biriani rice, cooked together with marinated chicken and spices. Cheap, delicious one-dish meal. Or by the roadside you might want to try doshay, a sort of rice-flour Indian taco filled with cabbage, tomato and peas. These, together with the numerous salads, are found often enough on the beaten track. What of other regions, other nationalities? What do they have to offer?

In Bagan, look for tender pork stew with bean paste. This sauce is made from red beans and has a dark brown colour. But the nutty, savory taste is sensational. Mix this with your rice, so that it is no longer that boring white colour, and tuck in. This sauce is made only in Bagan, and as with their lacquer ware, it’s excellent. The recipe for this supposedly goes back as far as they’ve been making lacquer which would be about a thousand years. In Mandalay, go find yourself a bowl of Mon-di noodles. They are thick rice noodles mixed with chicken curry, a bit of onion oil, some small fish balls and powder made from a certain bean that Mandalayites do not want to give to Yangon people. It’s their secret and let no outsider come near their bean patch. The dish is somewhat like spaghetti, or a distant cousin, anyway. Tell them to go easy on the oil; Mandalay cooks think that using too little oil is insulting to their guests and their idea of little is really not very little. Another dish that can compete with Mon-di is Mee Shay, rice noodles served with pork cooked very tender, crushed garlic, vinegar and pickled soy beans.

The night market of Mandalay has several stalls selling grills of chicken wings, fish and prawns, or whole chunks of roast pork, dark red and juicy, gleaming with oil. Out in the Shan States or Kachin States, the noodle dishes are the most delicious. Flat rice noodles or thin sticky ones are seeped in a clear broth, topped with crushed peanuts, chicken curry and blanched tendrils of the pea vine. You may also have the noodles dry, with soup on the side. To go with it there are pickled mustard greens or julienne sour bamboo shoots, but you may want to pass on these side dishes if you’re not sure about your tummy.

Shan curries are also great; they are cooked with herbs that we don’t often use in the plains. The taste is vastly different from Bama cuisine.  On Inle Lake, try their stuffed lake fish. This dish is called Nga Doke-kha, the Sufferin’ Fish and for a good reason: the fish is skinned (already dead, of course) the flesh deboned and pounded with garlic and onions, stuffed back into the skin, the whole thing tied around with bamboo strips and deep fried. Now that sounds torturous but the taste is divine. The vegetables on Inle are probably the best in the country: such sweet tomatoes, fresh crunchy beans. They hotel restaurant will gladly make salads or stirfrys from them. I know a tourist who took back some Inle tomatoes in her carry-on back to Europe for her family to taste.

The Shan rice salad is a must; they mix rice with boiled, boned fish flakes, and serve with fried chilies. The locals eat it with deep fried strips of dried leather, which puff up in the hot oil like long strips of rice cake. The Shan and Kachin make good tofu: from rice or chickpeas, or even peanuts. This last is a delicate pink, soft, with a slight nutty taste. There is even a noodle dish called "Warm Tofu", where creamy tofu paste before its set, is poured over rice noodles and chicken. The Kachin Hin Baung is a bundle of leaves wrapped around some vegetables, steamed and then eaten with rice and pickled soybean cakes. Not really to Western taste, but you may want to try the healthy veggies. Pickled soybeans cakes are definitely an acquired taste.  In the Rakhine State of the Western coast the amount of chili they put in their curries is enough to have non-residents fanning their tongues if not actually soaking them in the river. Their version of the ubiquitous monhinga is made with thin rice noodles in a clear fish sauce laced with galangal. I swear it is really and truly named "Hot Throat Hot Tongue." Don’t say they didn’t warn you. But if this dish is served dry with soup on the side, it’s less lethal because the searing heat is in the innocent-looking clear soup on which they even sprinkle pepper. You can take baby sips of the soup or when no one’s watching dilute it with hot water. Seriously, it’s really not that hot, but its better to warn the chef that you really cannot walk to a river to soak your tongue.

The Southern State of Mon as well as the beaches, of course, has great seafood. In Ngapali Beach of the West coast, try to get grilled Barracuda. Probably it’s available at other beaches too, but I’m not sure. It looks very much like another bony version so one must be careful to get the real one and of course to steer clear of its teeth. It’s the best fish I have ever eaten: no bones, thick, sweet, chunky white flesh. And it’s a long fish, big enough for two greedy people or three normal ones. There are a few differences in how it’s called in Bama, so I wouldn’t try to give you a name. If you find one alive and it begins chomping on your foot, it must be the real thing. The Myanmar usually eat seafood cooked, but in Mawlamyaing they make a salad of raw, peeled prawns marinated in limejuice. This effectively ‘cooks’ the prawns. In Myeik, they have a fried noodle dish called Kut Kyee Kite – "Cut with Scissors" – that makes you drool to smell it five yards away. It is a dish of flat rice noodles fried with anything goes. First you go to the market, get a selection of things you want in your dish such as seafood, pork, chicken, vegetables, boiled beans, bean sprouts, and hand it to the cook. He supplies the noodles and will cook them with your own selection.

Apparently the market stalls are quite used to selling an assortment like that. Last count, we have about twenty noodle dishes in the country, and that’s a lot when you consider that it’s eaten as a snack and not as a meal. Snacks are sold and eaten all day, even at midnight and beyond, so you might want to try the rice cakes. The rice pancakes called Bein-mont, savory or sweet, are a filling snack. The best are the Husband and Wife cakes, two halves making a whole, with a tiny quail’s egg cooked in each half. A delicious way to get all smoochy and romantic.