Myanmar Food

Shan Soaked Noodles

Myanmar offers a variety of noodle dishes: friend noodles, noodles in broth, noodles in starch soup, coconut milk noodles Chinese Muslim style and noodle salad. But an indigenous dish of noodles is ganing in popularity. It is Shan "soaked noodles" which come either in the wet type or dried.

The Shan noodle base is the common wetland rice or the more glutinous Shan variety. The rice is steamed and kneaded when cooked. T he dough is then passed through rollers. The flattened dough then goes through a cutting machine to create noodle strands. The strands are gathered in skeins. The skeins are sold in the wet stage or are air-dried. The dried version is convenient for the home.

A skein of Shan noodles serves four persons. If the noodles are made of hard rice they should be soaked in water for about four hours. They should then be dipped in hot water and retrieved with a sieve before serving.

The soaked noodles may be eaten with meatless Shan style garnish, Myanmar style curry or Chinese style steamed duck.

Ingredients

The following is a recipe for the Shan style garnish.

• tomatoes 1 kg
• ground dried shrimp 4 teaspoon
• vegetable oil 2 teaspoon
• Shrimp paste 1 teaspoon
• ginger root 1 .5 cm
• garlic 2 cloves
• shauk-kaw Shan spice 1/2 teaspoon
• pauk-kaw( -do-) 1/2 teaspoon
• water 6 cups

How to cook

Heat the water to boil. Put ill tomatoes and continue boling for 5 minutes and let cool. Remove skin and seeds and mash the tomatoes. Set aside the liquid.

Heat oil and fry pounded ginger root and garlic. Add shrimp paste and the spices on the fire. Add the tomatoes and the set aside liquid. Bring to boil. Serve the Shan soaked noodles in the soup.

How to serve

Fried bean curd, pickled pork, "nampong" (fried calfhide) and Shan pickles may be served as side dishes.