I arrive in Burma with my culinary expectations practically zero if not negative given everything I have read about the cuisine being bland and uninteresting, especially compared to its neighbours. Thierry, who visited Burma over 15 years ago also does not have particularly exciting memories of the food scene, but we are in for a great surprise: So many new, tasty vegetables! Such creative salads! Such great use of every part of the plant, the fruit, the stem, the leaf…. I’m in heaven. Tea leaf salad (!!!), Tamarind leaf salad (!!!), hibiscus leaves, kaffir leaves with chutneys…. the list is seemingly endless. Needless to say that after my first peak at a menu brimming with such exotic items, I try to book us a cooking class. Luckily we manage to get the very last spot at the highly rated Pennywort cooking class in Bagan with May at her lovely home. May is not a professional cook but she is clearly very talented and passionate and had the idea to propose cooking classes to fund her project of offering libraries in Bagan. This is how 3 excited kids and myself end up at her long rattan table in her courtyard with 5 traditional brick/clay/coal stoves and a small vegetable patch. She presents us with a large basket of colourful vegetables, asking us to choose 2 each for a recipe. Some of the veggies we know (cauliflower, aubergine, long beans, bean sprouts…) but there are quite a few that we don’t know. I’m already loving it. Nilay chooses the Ridged Gourd and Pak Choy, Anjali the Winged Bean and Aubergine, Vyas Tamarind leaves and his beloved yellow lentil “tofu” and myself pennywort and morning glory. But May sees that I am pining to have to choose amongst all the goodies so she promises to let me try acacia leaves, hibiscus leaves and a local honey-savoury pumpkin dish as well. I’m definitely loving it. Off we go with lots of peeling and chopping, followed by quite some smashing (ginger and garlic in our case), burning fingers on stove coals while fanning them (ouch!) and then the magic of assembly begins. There is liberal use of turmeric, which, combined with the ginger-garlic smash reminds me a lot of Indian cooking. But here there is no cumin, no coriander powder and so the flavours are somewhat crisper and allow the veggies themselves to pronounce their character more.
Here come the vegetables, leaves and dishes:
Tamarind Leaf
The Journiacs all already love the tamarind fruit, sweet and sour and much appreciated during our North Peru exploratory. Here we discover that you can also eat the leaves, which are bright green, small and soft. Tamarind leaves have all kinds of amazing health benefits, from their high Vit C levels, to controlling blood sugar, to their anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, anti-oxidant rich properties. And the list goes on. Can’t believe I’ve never heard of this before! The popular Burmese way of preparing tamarind leaves is in a crisp salad – just mix a big bunch of tamarind leaves with finely sliced shallots, crispy fried garlic and sesame, a dash of salt, some chickpea flour, lime juice and fresh tomato, topped with some crunchy peanuts et voilà! You have yourself a delicious, fresh salad. This is clean eating at its best. And it’s beautiful.
Acacia leaf
Let’s continue with the “list of leaves you can eat that I didn’t know of”. Acacia leaves. Acacia are part of the pea family which is why they grow the long pods like peas and other legumes. The leaf is small, oval shaped and grows like a double-sided comb or feather. It has urticaria on its backside which is why you need to at minimum blanch them before using. These leaves are thus not used in raw salads, but rather in curries, stir fries or sour soups. As with pretty much all leafy greens, acacia leaves are also high in vitamin C and other antioxidants, and allegedly have cancer fighting and analgesic properties. May makes us prepare it in a kind of curry with chickpeas. It is a little bit sweet and Anjali and I like it a lot.
Pennywort
Pennywort is a creeping plant that spreads out horizontally forming dense mats along ponds and wetlands, an Asian version of watercress. The leaf is rounded fan-shaped. At the risk of sounding repetitive, pennywort also has anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant properties and is also, like most leafy greens, high in calcium. But it is also high in Vit B1,B2,B3 and B6, magnesium and zinc and as such bestows many health benefits. It is most commonly known here as a youth elixir (great to sharpen the mind and nervous system, apparently. Definitely checking that one out in more detail) as well as to fight arthritis. You can make it into a tea, blend it in a smoothie, or, as we do today, crunch it into a delicious salad. Here we used much the same ingredients as for the tamarind salad, minus the tomato but with added fermented bean paste and a dash of the ubiquitous fish sauce. Sooooooo good.
Wing(ed) Bean (or star bean)
The Wing Bean is so pretty! It looks a bit like a skinny, green version of the carambole/star fruit. It is a bit soft, fresh in flavour thanks to high water content and can be found on any serious Burmese crudité platter. They dip it into all kinds of yummy sauces, most of them, frankly, way too spicy for me, let alone the kids, but May made us a delicious tomato chutney so we can all happily tuck in. Besides that, we also turn these little veggies into yet another salad, cutting them up with scissors and mixing them up with the same ingredients as the other two salads. This is the perfect demonstration of how the same sauces can “spice up” different vegetables in their own unique ways. Anjali is 100% into the task, mixing it up with both hands and sneaking in a little handful here and there (picture proof – she is caught in flagantri). Surprisingly, at least to me, the wing bean is allegedly as rich a source of protein as a soy bean. It is also very high in Vit A and a rich source of folate. So there you go: pretty AND smart.
Ridged Gourd
As soon as Nilay set his eyes on the pretty giant, club like ridged gourd, he was sold. So no surprise that he picked that besides his all time favorite pak choy for his vegetable of choice for today’s cook-a-thon. Apparently the unripe fruit is used as a vegetable, but the mature fruit is used as a sponge – in fact, the ridged gourd is part of the luffa family, so just like the luffa sponge. We peel and slice it, and now it reminds me of a peeled zucchini crossed with cucumber both in appearance as well as taste, but with a distinctly more bitter finish. It is high in fibre and known to boost liver detox. May prepares it in a fresh tasty curry with chickpeas. The kids don’t love it, but I do. Of course.
Water Spinach or Water Morning Glory
Popular across SEA, this leafy vegetable is used in stir-fries or spicy-sour salads like the Thai mango or papaya salad. It is incredibly rich in magnesium and calcium in particular, as well as iron and Vit A. Here May uses it in a lovely stirfry with cauliflower and bean sprouts and some shredded carrots. With veggies this tasty, you only need a dash of salt and pepper.
Hibiscus Leaf/Noni leaf/Papaya leaf
Hibiscus is such a pretty and popular flower for cooking across the world (we enjoyed delicious hibiscus lemonade in Guatemala and we can’t wait to recreate “Viva Peru”‘s beetroot/hibiscus tarte when we’re back) but here we are introduced the use of the leaf. Much like Noni or Papaya leaves, this leaf is mainly used to flavour curries. It has a very fresh, lemony taste, very distinct from the kaffir lime leaf. The boys and I love it. Besides imparting its flavour, it is appreciated for its anti-oxidant and anti-microbial benefits.
Tea Leaf Salad
For the quintessential Myanmar dish, try Tea Leaf Salad – Laphet Thoke. Indeed, in Myanmar, they don’t just drink their tea (and lots of it – I love, love it! Green tea, on tap (or rather, in thermos) wherever we go!), they eat it, too ― but first, they ferment it. This fermented tea is called “laphet”. As the Burma Superstar cookbook describes it: “Tea shops around Yangon and Myanmar pour gallons of green tea and black tea every day. Yet half of the tea consumed in Myanmar is eaten, not drunk. Made by fermenting just-picked Assam leaves, laphet — or what the Burmese call ‘pickled tea’— is slightly bitter, deeply savory, and strangely addictive.”
The fermentation process is a long one and begins as soon as the leaves are picked, before they have a chance to oxidize. As the book explains, the tea is “steamed, pressed to release excess water, and then rolled. The next day, it’s sorted by hand, with the smaller, higher-quality leaves separated from the larger leaves that stay in the local market. Then the tea is packed tightly in plastic-lined burlap sacks, packed down into the bags, and placed in cement containers in the ground. Weights — mostly heavy rocks — are put on top to help compress the leaves. The bags stay there to ferment for at least four months or up to two years.”
In Myanmar, Laphet is eaten in salads, as a snack or even as an after-dinner treat. Snack packs are sold there like chips in the West, and they make a popular cheap meal for students who sprinkle it over rice. (added bonus: this snack is naturally caffeinated.)
I find it quite addictive. It has a singular combination of textures and savory, salty, mildly sour flavors.
Salak – the delicious “snake fruit”
This new discovery for us is a fruit with reddish-brown scaly skin, almost spiky. The inside is sweet and sour at the same time, a bit like a pineapple and incredibly juicy. The skin peels off easily, the fruit inside consists of 3 lobes, each with a large, inedible seed. It is apparently packed with beta-carotene, a powerful antioxidant, with levels 5 times superior to those found in watermelon or mangos! An absolute hit with the family, especially Thierry and myself.
Between Mandalay and especially in Bagan, we are truly spoiled for delicious choices. The salads, the lentil soups, the curries, the fruit smoothies…. this country has been a culinary surprise hit for us!
