The Burma Challenge

~post by Julie W. (with Grace, Steven, & Robyn)

Last week, a group of us gathered in my small, hot kitchen with eight bags of groceries, one bottle of gin and a galley copy of Burma: Rivers of Flavor, the upcoming cookbook by Naomi Duguid (on shelves this October). We had more shallots on our hands than I’d ever seen in one place. We had tilapia. We had shrimp. We had the makings for something called Magic Rice Balls. We had tomatoes and mushrooms and maple syrup and garlic and peanut oil – boy, did we have peanut oil. We had the determination to light all four burners, seed every pepper, peel every clove, and cook ourselves a feast.

And so we did.

The menu:

poached fish salad with shallots and herbs

intensely green spinach and tomato salad with peanuts

mushroom and tomato simmer

shrimp curry

coconut rice

magic rice balls

The execution:

Remember the Dream Team from the ’92 Olympics? That’s what we were like in the kitchen. Each of us  gravitated towards a recipe and ran up and down the (admittedly cramped) court chopping, stirring, and making magic happen. First, however, there was the communal slicing and frying of The Biggest Pile of Shallots Ever Assembled.

Shallot oil was one of the base ingredients in virtually all of the recipes on our list. Grace and Robyn stuck matches in their mouths (keeps your eyes from watering, try it) and went about peeling and chopping Shallot Mountain. Then we watched those sliced babies sizzle in a few cups of peanut oil. The result was a fragrant oil and some bonus fried shallots we let dry on a paper towel (the air was too humid for them to turn truly crispy, which Duguid had warned us might be the case; this is Texas in August, it’s not as if our hopes were high).

During this time Stephen also prepared red chile oil. Later on, we realized we’d meant to make red chile powder. Oh well! The more chili concoctions, the merrier! The red chile oil was simple, as was the shallot oil. The chiles were boiled whole, then pureed and cooked in peanut oil. Done and done.

Meanwhile, I started working on the coconut rice. This was also simple. And also involved shallots. After rinsing the rice, I sauteed shallots in peanut oil, then added the rice, clove, cinnamon and a few other spices. After stirring the fragrant mix, I added coconut milk and water. Duguid advised measuring the depth of the liquid with an index finger to determine whether or not there was enough for the pot being used. The liquid hit my first joint. We were good to go!

Grace and Robyn worked on the tomato and mushroom simmer. With two out of four members of our Dream Team adhering to a loose vegetarian lifestyle, we steered towards a veggie-heavy menu, so this dish fit in perfectly. It was also quick (do you see a theme developing here?) and simple. Portabello mushrooms, garlic, fish sauce and of course those ubiquitous shallots. Like many of the recipes we cooked, the tomato and mushroom simmer allowed the particular flavor of each ingredient to rise up and mingle with, but not get lost in, the other flavors. The mushrooms cooked down quite a bit, as mushrooms will do, so we wound up cooking up a second batch to be sure we had enough to feed our (by now) rather hungry selves.

By this point we were listening to Lou Reed’s Transformer and breaking up to cover our own sections of the court. Here’s a play-by-play from our cooks.

S T E V E N

“A sweltering kitchen of friendship hoisted the banner of decadence to celebrate Burmese culture and cuisine last week. The dish that most of my sweat fell into was the poached fish salad with shallots and herbs. Like everything else on the menu, shallots figured prominently in the ingredients roster, and I was called upon to poach my first ever fish. As it turns out, “poaching” is remarkably similar to “boiling and largely ignoring”. Ducking and dodging like a valet on 6th Street, I weaved around my similarly frenetic coworkers and their affiliates in an attempt to keep out of everyone’s way while simultaneously completing a successful dish. Against all odds, several handfuls of lemongrass fish, green peppers, coriander (apparently the same thing as cilantro), and the ubiquitous shallot were stacked atop one another and then shaken vigorously (a process known as “mixing”), transforming the formerly layered salad into a “tossed” delight. Much of this process remains a mysterious blur of frenzied activity to my muddled memory, but something must have tracked because the salad-y output to my ingredient-y input tasted incredible. With a complex flavor and satisfying texture, the procedure was deceptively easy. I’m going to make this delicious tilapia salad a “Burma-nent” fixture at all of my future dinner engagements.”

G R A C E

“Magic rice balls, sweet magic rice balls. What is there to say about such a treat? These sticky, sweet, soft little creations are dangerously easy to make and terribly difficult to stop eating. We were all happy to find a desert that wasn’t fried, we expressed our joy in consuming twice as many of these babies. I say this with no regret, they are honestly amazing.

The recipe called for two types of rice flour, regular and sticky. After some googling we learned sticky and sweet rice flour are the same thing. Add some water to the mixture and start forming balls. Boil the balls for 4 minutes, they’ll float. Then coat in maple syrup and roll in coconut. That’s it. I told you, far too easy. I’m trying to resist making these for breakfast on the daily but they will definitely be making an appearance on my future dinner party menus. I can’t wait to impress friends with my exotic dessert skillz. (Yes, with a z).”

R O B Y N

Robyn is our crazy-busy, crazy awesome Assistant Buyer. She single-handedly took care of the second round of mushroom and tomato simmer and also made the intensely green spinach and tomato salad with peanuts. Robyn is a newbie to the wide and wonderful world of vegetables. It was her first time boiling spinach. And she did a damn fine job. This recipe called not only for shallot oil but also for some of the fried shallots we’d made earlier. It was a nice complement to the poached fish salad.

M E

I took care of the shrimp curry. Now I know what you’re thinking when you read “curry”. Think something else. This recipe did not call for coconut milk and similar Indian-style curry staples. What it did call for was a TON of garlic, which made me happy, plenty of tomatoes, chilis, a bit of fish sauce and, of course, shallots. It cooked up pretty quick and is hands down the most uncomplicated curry I have ever put together. An easy weeknight dinner.

We set up a table outside and ate by candlelight, heaping our plates with dishes whose flavors came alive in the dark. Perhaps it was the shared shallot oil, the shallots themselves strung through virtually every dish, but these dishes seemed destined to convene for the same meal.

I look forward to digging into more recipes in Burma, and to recommending it when it’s on our shelves. Everything we made out of this cookbook was accessible, quick and came together with ingredients we found at our local Central Market. With recipes like tamarind-pumpkin curry, herbed catfish laap, not to mention all of the chutneys, relishes and sauces, there are certainly plenty of Burmese adventures in our future. This is the perfect cookbook for an experienced chef looking for fresh flavors to liven up her repertoire, and for a novice who wants to impress her dinner guests.

Duguid provides plenty of background on the culture, too, with personal stories of her experiences in Burma interspersed with the recipes to make this a well-rounded cookbook that taught us a few things about Burmese culture along with the cooking.