Cooking classes

KK has finished his cooking classes for non-Myanmar food. This was usually my domain but lately he has a new-found confidence in his own ability. 

At school several teachers expressed an interest in learning how to cook Myanmar food, especially our two house guests who both felt that the biggest downside in leaving our hospitality apart from the company (especially the kids) was missing out on the wonderful food.

Over the years I have met quite a few tourists and often they don’t like the Myanmar food. They claim it is oily and not very tasty. More often than not, they don’t eat at really Myanmar places since those restaurants are often more difficult to find.  Many restaurants here are more Chinese oriented.

They have a point though, Myanmar food can be oily. Many people here believe that it is good to use q fair amount of oil in cooking. It shows of your wealth. In villages without electricity, oil is used to cover the curry to prevent it from going bad. 

At our house we cook (or I should say KK cooks) with little oil and the result s of his efforts are very tasty, hence the request for the help in learning how to cook Myanmar food. So Sunday two weeks ago four of my fellow teachers came over to our place to learn about some traditional dishes. 

They started with la-phe or pickled tea in an original lacquerware dish, very typical Myanmar. Pickled tea tastes a lot better than it sounds.  It makes for great salads as well. 

La-phe

I left the kitchen shortly after they started. Our kitchen is not roomy enough to accommodate so many people. I just waited for the end results. And they were worth getting out of the way for.  Green tomato salad, pumpkin curry, pickled mango salad, chicken or pork curry (being a vegetarian myself I have no idea what it was and never asked), and the day’s favourite: bean curry.

Some ingredients

Fresh herbs

Everything is ready1

The mixing

cook in the kitchen

chop chop

The result.. yum!

The idea is to continue the lessons coming Sunday. They haven’t started yet on the Mohinga and other noodles (my personal favourite there is noodles Shan – village style), soups, and desserts.  Some of this will be done coming lesson. Good for my tastebuds!