Cookbook: Bryan Koh’s 600-page epic on Myanmar’s cuisine

The title of this book may be puzzling to those who aren’t familiar with Burmese food, but Singaporean writer and cake shop owner Bryan Koh (whose book on Filipino cuisine, Milk Pigs and Violet Gold , I reviewed in May) explains in the introduction.

“To say that mont hin gar, literally trans­lated as ‘peppery soup snack’, is Burma’s most well-known dish is something of an understatement,” Koh writes. “For many an outsider it is the only dish for which the country seems to be known. The Burmese endearingly refer to it as their unofficial national dish.

“At its essence, mont hin gar is a fish noodle soup, which is about as en­light­ening as calling minestrone a vege­table soup [...] The soup, with the visual appeal of a mud-brown soupe de poisson, does little to titillate. But what it lacks in appearance it readily recompenses with flavour [...]

“Mornings are for mont hin gar. This is not a Burmese proverb, though it should be, one oddly absent from Hla Pe’s book on the subject, the missing 451st entry that would have bridged the sections on prudence and excess quite perfectly.

“Few can think of a better way to break into their day than with a hot bowl of the stuff, bright­ened with boiled duck egg and bulked up with crisp, succulent slices of blanched bana­na stem and snipped up buthee kyaw , crunchy fritters of cala­bash. Road­side vendors start their preparations as early as four o’clock in the morning so they are able to entertain the early birds by five-thirty.”