So I've been thinking a lot about starting a blog to document my adventures in food. My mind is always wandering to what I'll eat (and cook) next. I really like trying to cook new and different things. Sometimes I take pictures but usually we're too hungry and just start eating right away :) From now on, I will try to be better!
Tonight's dinner is Burmese themed, because we went to a new Burmese restaurant on Friday night and it was really really good (and seemed very homey and simple that I somehow think I might be able to recreate it). We had a vegetable curry stew with tomato, okra, opo, eggplant, and potato. It wasn't hot spicy, which I very much appreciated after the fried samosas that were on the edge of my very low spice tolerance. The sweet chili sauce that seemed to come with anything fried (they also gave us a free order of "fried tofu" that is actually made out of chickpea flour instead of soybeans) was super addictive. We also got some garlic noodles with chicken and green onions on top, which was decent but not particularly memorable.
Ok, so back to the really good vegetable curry stew thingy. There were these very distinctive tasting leaves in the veggie stew, so I asked what they were. The owners were nice enough to tell me that they are curry leaves, and one can easily obtain them at any Indian or Asian grocery store. I looked on my phone and there was an Indian market less than a block away... so guess where we went after dinner!
I go to the public library every couple of months or so... to switch one large stack of cookbooks for a new stack of cookbooks. Inspired by my desire to recreate the veggie curry dish, I went to the library yesterday to pick up Burma Rivers of Flavor.
The book gives a very nice overview of the different history, regions,
people, and cuisines of Burma. Clearly I didn't pay enough
attention during social studies or history class in school, or maybe just never realized that Burma
(Myanmar) is right inbetween China/Thailand/India, so that's why their
food is so familiar yet so different from anything I've eaten before.
Unfortunately, I didn't find a recipe I thought was an exact match of
the veggie curry, so I figure I'll sort of vaguely follow the 'simmered cabbage, shan style' recipe and put all my ingredients in and see what comes out.
1/4 cup oil
1 1/2 tsp chili powder (I just put a dash in)
1 tsp tumeric
1 cup thinly sliced shallots
2 tsp powdered toasted soybean disk (I didn't have any, so none went in)
1 tbs salt
1 head cabbage (I put in a bunch of cubed okra, eggplant, opo, and potatoes instead)
1 cup sliced tomatoes
Put everything but the veggies into a pot and stir fry for a couple of minutes, until the shallots get sort of soft. Then put in all the vegetables and stir. [the following part starts deviating from the recipe] I added water to barely cover everything, and put in a whole bag of curry leaves. Cover and let simmer until the veggies are tender (20-30 mins). I think because I put a whole bunch of curry leaves in, it started tasting pretty close to the veggie curry on Friday. Hooray! This came out! The stew turned out a little thinner and less salty than the restaurant one, but it was still good!
I also made the 'kachin chicken curry', which also turned out delicious! It was more flavorful (salty, gingery, garlicky) than the stew. We had both dishes with rice!
For dessert, I made the 'deep forest monklets' sticky rice cake'. It has sticky rice, raw peanuts, palm sugar, sesame seeds, salt, and water in it. I'm not sure if they meant white sesame seeds, or black, but in any case I ran out of white ones so I used the black ones. It looks like I used some kind of exotic purple or black rice! I made it in my rice cooker in the afternoon before we went rock climbing, so it had time to cool down and set in the baking dish. However, I couldn't resist the tempting smells of sesame and peanuts so I snuck a piece before we left! I've never had Palm sugar before, but I now think it tastes like wintermelon candy.
Happy Sunday!
