Chom Mai Restaurant/บ้านชมใม้

Khao soi, egg noodles in a curry-like broth, is generally considered a northern Thai dish. But in recent years, I'd begun to think of it as more of a Chiang Mai dish. Although the stuff is available just about everywhere in northern Thailand, there are only a handful of restaurants outside of the city that, at least in my opinion, live up to what khao soi is supposed to be (if you're curious, they are Khao Soi Lam Duan Fah Ham, Khao Soi Prince and Khao Soi Islam), and most bowls I encounter are generally pretty bland and boring.

Despite this, when up north, I'll still try just about any khao soi that crosses my path. And in Mae Hong Son, where I thought I'd already been to every vendor, this willingness led me to the bowls served at Chom Mai.

The restaurant's beef khao soi (pictured above) boasts a strong and distinct spice profile, one that seemed to emphasise warm and slightly 'sweet' spices such as cinnamon, clove and perhaps even anise. The broth was also rich and meaty, something that's often lacking in many bowls of khao soi. The chicken version -- the better khao soi vendors make two separate broths -- was entirely different, and was mild and slightly sweet, with very little dried spice flavour. In fact, I'd venture to say that the chicken version was almost tomato soup-like, which frankly, may not be too far off the mark, as Thai Yai/Shan cooks in Mae Hong Son tend to put tomato (or sometimes even ketchup) in just about everything. Both bowls came served with the spicy, almost kimchi-like Shan style pickled greens and smooth noodles, and were some of the some of the most interesting and distinctive versions of the dish that I've encountered in a long time.

Chom Mai also do an excellent and slightly unusual khao mok kai (called 'khaw mok kai' on the menu), chicken biryani:

Also seemingly emulating local tastes, the dish as served here was exceedingly turmericy; the rice was bright yellow from the root, and both the rice and chicken were garnished with a splash of an oily, turmeric-heavy broth. This was countered by a refreshing ajaat (a sweet/sour cucumber relish) and a spicy/tart dipping sauce, and the dish was served with a tasty (and graciously turmeric-free) broth.

And to top it off, Chom Mai also serves what are easily the best coffee drinks in Mae Hong Son, although some of their nomenclature is slightly off: what they call a cappuccino is probably closer to what Australians would call a flat white.

So perhaps I was wrong, and khao soi is, after all, a northern dish. Or maybe it's the case that Chiang Mai now has a serious khao soi rival?

Chom Mai is located about 4km outside of Mae Hong Son, just after turn off to Tha Pong Daeng -- look for Doi Chaang coffee sign.

Chom Mai Restaurant Ban Mai Ngae, Mae Hong Son 053 684 033 8.30am-3.30pm

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Inside Pa Ni's kitchen

A while back, I blogged about the sweets available from Pa Ni, a vendor here in Mae Hong Son city. Suay thamin, alawaa, alwaa jung and peng mong are Thai Yai/Shan standards, available across the province, but the versions sold by Pa Ni are exceptional; I eat the stuff on a daily basis when I'm here, and everybody who's ever joined me in Mae Hong Son -- foodie types and otherwise -- have all been blown away by them.

Yet despite having known Pa Ni for several years now, it wasn't until this trip that I learned that she isn't in fact the one who makes the sweets. Instead, her husband, Phaithoon, is the man in the kitchen. But Pa Ni appears to run the show, and upon request, granted me and Oregon- and New York City-based restaurateur Andy Ricker permission to spend a morning in her kitchen and watch how the dishes are made.

Arriving on a chilly Mae Hong Son morning, we met a friendly and welcoming Phaithoon, who told us that he's the third generation of his family to make Thai Yai sweets. When I asked if there would be a fourth generation, he explained that his daughter, who currently works at a bank in Chiang Mai, plans to take over the business when he's no longer able. "She's been making the sweets since she was young, and is very talented," he adds.

Until then, Phaithoon will continue to wake up at 4am every morning -- except Buddhist holidays --  to make sweets.

Starting work at 4am seems a bit extreme until you consider that Phaithoon does virtually every step of the process himself. Despite the apparent differences between each of the four sweets sold at Pa Ni, they're all essentially made from the same thing: some sort of carb (rice, rice flour or wheat flour), which is supplemented with salt, sugar (cane and palm) and coconut milk. The latter is probably the most time-consuming ingredient, particularly since Phaithoon makes it himself, starting with raw coconuts:

which he husks and grates:

before mixing the grated flesh with warm water:

and squeezing it in a manually-powered press to extract the coconut cream (the first pressing) and the coconut milk (the second):

"I used to have to do this by hand," explains Phaithoon, while making the motion of wringing a bag with his hands followed by an exasperated laugh.

With the essential ingredients ready, Phaithoon can start making sweets. One of the more intriguing (and delicious) dishes he does is something called alawaa jung (อาละหว่า-จุ่ง). Unlike the others, wheat flour is the base for this one, which beforehand, Mr Phaithoon dry-roasts in a wok over coals

After it's been lightly toasted, the flour is then sifted:

and combined with the other staple ingredients: coconut milk and cream, salt, golden cane sugar and palm sugar. This mixture is then continuously stirred over a low heat for about 40 minutes:

Towards the end of this process, Phaithoon throws in a pretty awe-inspiring amount of butter. He explained that, when it's available in Mae Hong Son (generally only during April), he'll also add fresh durian.

After the mixture had reduced and was sufficiently smooth, he scooped a bit out, drizzled it with fresh coconut cream, and gave it to us to taste:

Eaten at this stage, the dish was warm, soft, rich and just slightly sweet. It reminded me a lot of Indian-style carrot halwa -- a dish with which I suspect alawaa shares both a culinary and etymological link.

But Phaithoon wasn't done yet; all of his sweets are finished via a unique flourish.

After spreading the still-warm alawaa into a shallow pan, Mr Phaithoon covers the entire surface of the sweet with a thin layer of rather watery coconut cream. The pan is then covered with a sheet of metal, which is stacked with a pile of coconut husks. These are ignited:

and allowed to reduce to coals, causing the top layer of the sweet to firm up, the liquid in the coconut cream to evaporate, and ultimately, a topping that's deliciously rich and thick, and intermittently and seductively charred:

It's a clever, resourceful and delicious technique:

and one that will hopefully continue for several more generations.

Pa Ni 9 Thanon Singhanat Bamrung, Mae Hong Son 9:30am-3pm

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Khao Sen Nam Yuak Paa Khon/ข้าวเส้นน้ำหยวกป้าคน

A while back, I blogged about the various places in Mae Hong Son city to get the local dishes of khao sen, thin rice noodles served with a pork and tomato broth, and khang phong, crispy deep-fried fritters. I thought I'd covered everywhere in town until this most recent visit, when I was pointed the direction of Paa Khon.

Every morning, in what is little more than a dark shack under a large tree:

Paa Khon serves the noodle dish known elsewhere in Thailand as khanom jeen nam ngiaw. Like other local versions in Mae Hong Son, the broth is largely meat-free, has a tart flavour due to the addition of tomatoes, and is garnished with cilantro and deep-fried crispy garlic. Unlike elsewhere, Paa Khon supplements her broth with chopped bits of yuak kluay, the pithy stalk of the banana tree, resulting in a soup that's thicker and heartier than most, with a bit of crunch.

Another highlight is her delicious khang pong. She does the green papaya version:

a staple here in Mae Hong Son, but seemingly continuing on the banana theme, she also does an unusual version using hua plee, banana blossom:

She explained that she uses the firmer blossoms of wild bananas, which are sliced thinly and deep-fried raw. Both versions come out of the wok golden, crispy and lightly seasoned -- salty, spicy and herbal -- and are served with a sour/sweet, cucumber-studded dipping sauce.

Come lunch, Paa Khon also does a short menu of northeastern Thai dishes including grilled chicken and papaya salad.

Khao Sen Nam Yuak Paa Khon Th Makha Santi, Mae Hong Son 7am-3pm

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Back in the MHS

It's January, which means once again, I'm back in Thailand's most northwestern province, Mae Hong Son. I've been visiting the area since 1998, and for the last five years or so, have made a point of trying to spend at least a couple weeks here every winter. During this season, in some parts of the province, temperatures edge close to freezing, and the cold weather is undoubtedly one thing that draws me here year after year.

I'm also drawn to the scenery. The shot below:

was taken in Ban Huay Pha, a village about 16km from Mae Hong Son city. It's just one of several beautiful vistas one encounters on this short drive, which toward the tail end of the cold season is painted in shades of red, purple, pink and orange by the changing leaves of the teak trees.

And I'd be lying if I said that I didn't come for the food. The majority of people in Mae Hong Son are Thai Yai, the Tai ethnic group also known as Shan, and have a distinct cuisine. Conservative tastes, a palpable Burmese influence, a reliance on emblematically local ingredients -- sesame, tomatoes, soybeans, turmeric, garlic and shallots come to mind -- and relative isolation have left their dishes staunchly local and virtually unavailable outside of the province.

I was reminded of the particular uniqueness of this food while in Ban Huay Pha -- a short walk from where the photo above was taken -- where I encountered a small group of people making khao puk ngaa (ข้าวปุกงา), a Thai Yai sweet made by pounding freshly-steamed sticky rice with sesame.

As pictured at the top of this post, this was done in a heavy wooden mortar, and with long bamboo poles functioning as pestles. While the men pounded, the woman would toss in spoonfuls of black sesame seeds. After several minutes of this, the rice emerged as a warm, soft, rather dark blob. A chunk was pulled off and offered to me; I was told to dip it in melted sugarcane. Eating the sweet, I was struck by the fact that this experience, from the setting -- a tidy Thai Yai village perched at the edge of a mountain valley -- to the unique flavours -- those of sticky rice and sugarcane from the valleys, and sesame seeds from the hills -- could really only be had in Mae Hong Son.

I've lined up a few more posts on the food of Mae Hong Son and look forward to sharing more about this area's unique countryside, people and flavours.

Khanom jeen/ขนมจีน

On the suface, khanom jeen, thin, round, freshly-made rice noodles, look simple. But the process of making them can take as many as five days, and involves an astonishing amount of labour. That's why I was surprised when David Thompson, Head Chef at Bangkok's nahm, told me that for the last several months his kitchen has been making the noodles in-house. Perhaps sensing that I was incredulous, he invited me to stop by the restaurant's kitchen and document the process.

The first step in making khanom jeen involves soaking uncooked rice in water. I was told that 'old' rice (rice harvested in previous seasons or years) is required for this, as it has a low water content and doesn't tend to get 'sticky' during the subsequent stages. After three days of soaking, during which the water is changed each day, the soggy mixture is ground to a coarse paste. At nahm, they use an old-school hand-powered granite mill to do this. The resulting dough is bundled and pressed overnight, extracting much of its water.

The next day, the crumbly dough is divided up and shaped into small logs:

which are then boiled for 15 minutes:

leaving the exterior soft and translucent and the interior largely uncooked:

The still-hot dough is then transferred to a huge wooden mortar -- actually a hollowed-out tree stump -- where it is vigorously pounded with heavy wooden mallets:

This process takes two people and as many as 30 to 45 minutes, and I was told that the goal is to pound until the dough has stopped sticking to the wood.

At the end of this process, the dough has the appearance and texture of shortening or marshmallow creme:

A lid is thrown on it, and the mixture is kept at room temperature overnight. I was told that this stage can vary in duration, depending on how sour the noodles are ultimately meant to be.

The next morning, the dough is stirred thoroughly to provide it with an even consistency and to eliminate air bubbles. In batches, it's inserted into a small sieve with a plunger device, and extracted into simmering water:

Upon contacting the hot water, the dough solidifies, and voilà: you have khanom jeen.

The threads are fished out and rinsed in a couple baths of cool water before being allowed to drain:

After all this time and effort, it's hard to believe that khanom jeen generally must be consumed within the same day, otherwise the noodles tend to go off or become too dry.

There are several different ways to eat khanom jeen in Thailand, but most commonly they're topped with one of several types curry-like dishes and eaten with sides usually including herbs and vegetables, and sometimes including meat, egg and fish:

Nahm do some really excellent curries, including the mild 'coconut and turmeric curry of minced prawns with banana blossoms and asian pennywort' (pictured at the top of this post), and what is possibly my all-time favourite nahm dish, the almost comically piquant 'spicy smoked fish curry with prawns, chicken livers, cockles, chillies and black pepper'.

Khanom jeen is available at nahm for lunch, Monday through Friday.

nahm Metropolitan Hotel, 27 Th Sathon Tai 02 625 3388 Noon-2pm Mon-Fri & 7-10pm daily

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Watermelons

In flipping through my images from Myanmar, it quickly became clear that I had more than a few pics of... watermelons. Perhaps I was drawn to the bright colours, or perhaps it's something about the geometry of the the way the fruit is sliced (and indeed, sold) in Myanmar, but it appears that I found something visually interesting in this subject. So, as my last post in this mini-series on food in Myanmar, here's a random grab-bag of Burmese watermelon images.

Burmese sweets

I don't have much of a sweet tooth. I probably eat ice cream about twice a year, and I'll almost always order another savoury course over a dessert. As such, I found much to like about Burmese food. The Burmese employ a myriad of ingredients -- bean flour, fish sauce, fried shallots, oil -- to accentuate savoury flavours, and sugar rarely features in savoury dishes. Even the traditional Burmese post-meal dessert isn't really sweet at all, but rather consists of sour/salty pickled tea leaves and nuts, sometimes supplemented with a knob of palm sugar.

Sweets, at least as we perceive them in the west, are called moun (sometimes written mont), but in Myanmar are largely regarded as snacks, typically taken with tea in the morning or afternoon.

These dishes aren't overwhelmingly sweet, instead relying on the naturally sweet flavours inherent in their main ingredients, not heaps of supplemented sugar.

These ingredients include grated coconut, coconut milk, rice flour (from white rice or sticky rice), cooked sticky rice:

tapioca and various fruits. Quite a few Burmese sweets have been influenced by Indian cooking and include somewhat exotic ingredients such as semolina and poppy seeds:

My favourite Burmese sweet is hsa nwin ma kin, which translates as 'turmeric unavoidable' -- an odd name, as it does not, in fact, contain any turmeric. Instead, the dish is made with semolina flour, which is supplemented with coconut milk, ghee and raisins (a recipe for the dish can be found here). It can be identified by its topping of coarse semolina flour (shown below at 5 o'clock), and like many moun, resembles a tiny cake and is served as an attractive diamond-shaped slice:

Another favourite is bein moun and moun pyit thalet, Burmese-style pancakes, served sweet or savoury, that have a damp, holey consistency not unlike a good crumpet or a Portuguese tigelada.

In Yangon, a huge variety of moun can be purchased from the vendors who set up every day in front of the FMI Centre.

Burmese sweets vendors In front of FMI Centre, Bogyoke Aung San Rd, Yangon Daytime

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Deep-fried in Myanmar

As mentioned previously, the Burmese love their oil. Your average Burmese-style curry is served with at least two fingers of the stuff; mohinga, the national noodle dish, often comes topped with greasy akyaw, deep-fried savoury bits; and many of the country's snacks -- particularly those sold in teashops -- are deep-fried. The paradox is that Burmese vendors aren't particularly skilled at deep-frying, and many of these dishes tend to be soggy and oily. But one deep-fried staple that the Burmese tend to get right is buthi kyaw, battered and deep-fried chunks of gourd.

I first encountered the dish in a small town outside Mawlamyine, in Mon State, where at the edge of a lake overlooking a dam, several stalls served this dish alone. It seemed an obscure tourist draw, but served freshly fried, the fritters were delicious: hot and crispy, concealing a soft, slightly watery interior of tender gourd. They were served with a sour/sweet dip that appeared to be made from tamarind pulp and a bit of syrup, but that could be savouried up to taste with bean powder:

Deep-fried gourd is also available in Yangon. My favourite vendor sets up shop every evening on the corner of Thein Byu and Anawratha Roads. It's little more than a small wok and a few tiny chairs, but served with a similar tamarind-derived dipping sauce (and a communal chequered cloth for hand wiping), the deep-fried gourd here is one of the best snacks in town.

Buthi kyaw (deep-fried gourd) vendor Cnr Thein Byu & Anawratha Rds, Yangon 4-9pm

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A recipe for buthi kyaw can be found here, at the Burmese cookery website, hsa*ba.

Burmese teashops

Myanmar's teashops are not just places to have tiny cups of sweet, milky tea or coffee, or bottomless pots of weak Chinese tea. They’re also places to catch up with a friend. They're where you go for a smoke. They’re almost certainly a better place for breakfast than your hotel or guesthouse. And they’re where gossip is passed around, deals made and, if you believe the rumours, government spies are rampant.

Their defining element -- tea -- takes a slightly different form than most of us may be used to, and may not be to everybody's liking. Teashops are where the Burmese appear to consume the bulk of their sucrose, and your average tiny mug has nearly as much sugar and sweetened condensed milk as it does black tea. The generic word Burmese for tea is lephet ye, 'tea water', but if you follow this by saying cho bawq, you'll get something that's still sweet, but that at least won't rot your teeth. The saving grace is the ubiquitous pot of weak green tea that serves as a chaser.

Burmese teashops are also great places to eat, and the dishes served often reflect the ethnicity of the shop's proprietor. Indian/Muslim-owned teashops tend to specialise in deep-fried snacks such as samosas or poori (deep-fried bread served with a potato curry), as well as oil-free breads such as dosai (southern Indian-style crepes) or nanbya (nan bread), the latter often served with a somewhat sweet pigeon pea-based dip. This type of teashop also tends to serve an appealing variety of South Asian-inspired sweets. Chinese-style teashops often feature lots of baked sweets as well as meaty steamed buns and yam cha-like nibbles.

Teashops -- in particular, those run by ethnic Burmese -- are some of the best places to dig into the world of Burmese noodle dishes. Mohinga is usually available as a matter of course, but other more obscure noodle dishes offered at teashops include oh no hkauk hswe (a wheat noodle dish with a coconut milk broth), myi shay (a Shan-influenced noodle soup with pickled tofu and pork) and nangyi thoke (a salad of wide rice noodles). Burmese-style teashops that serve these dishes are also likely to serve rice dishes such as fried rice or htamin thoke (rice salad), both great for breakfast.

Myanmar's teashops are also noteworthy for their uniquely Burmese quirks. These include the obligatorily tiny plastic chairs and tables; for a typical foreigner, a drink at a Burmese teashop can feel like a visit to Lilliput. There's the carefully folded synthetic cloth for communal hand-wiping. There are, of course, the 'tea boys', prepubescent teashop staff who race around delivering orders and responding to the squeaky kissing sound that the Burmese use to draw attention. And there are the plastic sleeves of cigarettes that decorate every table; often at a Burmese teashop, in lieu of small change, you'll be given a couple Londons or 555s.

In Yangon, Lucky Seven is probably my all-around favourite teashop: it's tidy, has a pleasant atmosphere and the quality of food is high. A similar teashop in the Burmese model is Shwe We Htun; the Burmese-style one-plate dishes here are great. The archetype of the Chinese-style teashop is the tidy Shwe Khuang Laung, and Yatha Teashop is your typical Muslim-run teashop. See map below for locations.

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Lethoke

Lethoke refers to a type of Burmese salad -- thoke -- whose essential element is that it's mixed by hand -- let. Despite being an old term, vendors and cooks at the street stalls and restaurants of Myanmar continue to use their hands -- not a spoon -- to make this type of dish.

I first became aware of this style of cooking when, on my first trip to Myanmar, I stopped at a streetside stall in central Yangon to eat a salad. I was a little shocked when the vendor began mixing the salad by hand -- gripping, squeezing and pinching the ingredients with her bare fingers -- but the real surprise came when, as I began eating it, she proceeded to slowly and deliberately lick her fingers clean while watching me eat...

Despite this introduction, I wasn't dissuaded, and since then have eaten many, many types of lethoke (nowadays, many vendors wear disposable plastic gloves). Perhaps the most famous version of the dish, and among my favourites, is lephet thoke, a salad of pickled tea leaves, fried nuts, and thin slices of cabbage, garlic, tomato and fresh chili:

But in Myanmar one can make a lethoke out of just about anything, including rice, noodles or even sliced samosas:

the latter served on the streets of Yangon with a thin lentil dressing.

The most common type of lethoke revolves around vegetables or fruit, which can range from meaty tomatoes to the tart flesh of shauk thi, a large citrus fruit that I've only ever encountered in Myanmar. One of the more unusual and delicious versions of the dish I've tasted was a lethoke made from a bitter, indigenous vegetable known as kyaung sha thi, which translates as 'cat tongue' (in northern Thailand, it's known as lin fah -- ลิ้นฟ้า -- 'sky tongue', and in science as Oroxylum indicum). Mi-Mi Htun, proprietor of the family-run Moon-Light Rest House, in Thazi, Shan State, was kind enough to show me how she makes this dish (shown at the top of this post). Not many of you will be able to recreate it at home, but I think it's worth sharing as an illustration of a typical Burmese-style lethoke, in particular one that emphasises the overwhelmingly savoury ingredients and flavours -- fried shallots, toasted chickpea flour, dried shrimp, turmeric oil -- that Burmese people love.

'Cat Tongue' Salad (Kyaung Sha Thi Thoke)

‘Cat tongue’, a bitter vegetable Salt Shallots, sliced thinly Garlic, sliced thinly Oil for frying Roasted peanuts, ground Dried shrimp, ground to a near powder Lime, to taste Roasted chickpea flour (also known as gram flour or besan) Oil steeped with turmeric, to taste Salt

Slice the 'cat tongue' thinly, mix with salt and set aside.

Slice shallots and garlic thinly and fry in oil until brown and crispy. Allow to drain on paper towels.

Squeeze and rinse the cat tongue two or three times until the bitter juices are mostly extracted and the cat tongue is soft.

Using your hand, combine cat tongue with peanuts and shrimp. Squeeze, but don't mush or use too much force. Season to taste with lime, bean powder, oil and more salt, if necessary.

Burmese curry restaurants

Relatively little is known about Burmese food outside of the country. And even those who visit Myanmar tend to come away from the country with a generally negative impression of its eats, as summarised in this excerpt from the most recent version of Lonely Planet's Myanmar (Burma) guidebook:

Burmese food has a reputation for being oily. We won’t deny this, but in its defence will posit that much of this is the fault of the curries.

The centrepiece of any Burmese meal, hin, Burmese-style curries, are generally cooked until the oil separates from all other ingredients and rises to the top. The Burmese term for this cooking method is s’i pyan, ‘oil returns’, and the process ensures that the rather harsh curry paste ingredients -- typically turmeric, tomatoes, ginger, garlic, onions, and shrimp paste -- have properly amalgamated and have become milder. Some restaurants also add extra oil to maintain the correct top layer, as the fat also preserves the underlying food from contamination by insects and airborne bacteria while the curries sit in open, unheated pots for hours at a time.

The good news is that all this oil isn’t necessarily meant to be eaten and it’s usually easy enough to work around it. Those who got burned by the spiciness of Thai food will be pleased to learn that Burmese curries are the mildest in Asia in terms of chilli power -- in fact most cooks don't use chillies at all in their recipes. It’s also worth mentioning that the most common curry proteins you’ll encounter are fish, chicken, prawns or mutton. Relatively little beef or pork is eaten by people in Myanmar -- beef because it's considered offensive to most Hindus and Burmese Buddhists, and pork because the nat (spirits) disapprove.

Most importantly, it’s crucial to keep in mind that a curry only constitutes a single element of a Burmese meal. The requisite side dishes, which include various soups, salads, dips and fresh herbs, often have little or no oil.

So yes, when eating in Myanmar, you're going to encounter a bit of oil. But the sheer diversity of dishes that make up a traditional Burmese meal acts as something of a counterpoint to this. Upon arriving at any Myanma saa thauk sain ('Burmese Eat Drink Shop' -- a Burmese curry restaurant), after you’ve chosen a curry, fried dish or salad, a succession of side dishes will follow. These include soup -- either an Indian-influenced peh-hin-ye (lentil soup, or dhal) or a tart leaf-based hin-jo (sour soup) -- as well as a tray of fresh and par-boiled vegetables and herbs, to be eaten with various dips ranging from ngapi ye, a watery, fishy dip, or balachaung, a dry, pungent combination of chillies, garlic and dried shrimp fried in oil. By the time it all arrives, you'll be faced with a huge -- practically overwhelming -- spread of dishes that runs the gamut of ingredients, textures and flavours.

I can't imagine a better introduction to this type of eating than Aung Thuka:

Located near the Shwedagon Pagoda, Aung Thukha is a Yangon restaurant legend that excels at herbal, relatively light Burmese dishes. This emphasis on herbs is evident in the house soup (pictured above at 8 o'clock), which is clear and delicate, and is flavoured with little more than slightly pungent local leaves. The fried dishes and curries have the requisite oil, but are also relatively light and fragrant; I particularly love their rich, tomatoey fish cake curry (pictured at 12 o'clock, above). Aung Thukha also do some very good salads -- all made to order -- including a tart and refreshing tomato salad (pictured at 3 o'clock). And after you've finished the savouries, you'll receive the traditional Burmese dessert of a lacquer tray of pickled tea leaves, ginger and nuts, and crunchy chunks of palm sugar.

Aung Thukha Dhamma Zedi Rd, Yangon Lunch & dinner

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An analogue to this is central Yangon's Shwe Mei Tha Su, the Muslim version of the Burmese curry restaurant:

Instead of the clear, herb-based side soup, here you'll get a bowl of slightly watery lentils studded with root vegetables. There was a salty/spicy balachaung and a side of crispy papadums. They do a great shauq-thi dhouq, a salad made from an indigenous, lemon-like fruit (pictured at 10 o'clock). And a Muslim-style curry shop is one of relatively few places in Myanmar where you'll find beef (in the centre of the pic above), and the beef curry here is fragrant and sweet -- practically bordering on candied -- a stark contrast with predominately salty/savoury 'Buddhist' Burmese dishes.

Shwe Mei Tha Su 173 29th St, Yangon Lunch & dinner

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Upcountry, Burmese-style curry restaurants that exemplified this type of dining include San Ma Tau, another old-school, hall-like restaurant in Hpa-an, Kayin State. This place had the biggest range of balachaung I encountered just about anywhere in Myanmar (pictured at the top of this post), and lots of interesting fresh herbs and vegetables to accompany them. They also served a great number of really delicious veggie-based sides, from a dish of slow-cooked, nearly melted eggplant to a small side of flash-fried okra.

San Ma Tau Myanmar Restaurant 1/290 Bokyoke St (Hwy 85), Hpa-an Lunch & dinner

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There's not a lot of good food in Nyaungshwe, the jumping-off point for Inle Lake, which makes Lin Htett all the more interesting:

This is another place that takes its vegetables seriously -- many of them grown on Inle Lake's famous floating gardens. They do some excellent salads here, including a refreshingly herbal pennywort salad and a tart tomato salad (pictured at 2 o'clock). And not surprisingly, freshwater fish features on the menu, and they do a great, rich Burmese-style fish curry.

Lin Htett Myanmar Traditional Food Yone Gyi Rd, Nyaungshwe Lunch & dinner

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Mohinga

Starting in late 2010, I spent nearly three months in Myanmar updating Lonely Planet's Myanmar (Burma) guidebook. At the time, the country was still pretty much as as isolated and paranoid as it had been since the early 1960s. I needed consecutive visas to enter the country, but because I feared that the Burmese authorities might suspect I was a Bangkok-based news journalist, I had to request a second US passport and apply for my Myanmar visas at its embassies in Hong Kong and the US. When the book was eventually printed, the other authors and I decided to use pseudonyms for fear that we might be identified and blacklisted (during certain periods the Lonely Planet guide has allegedly been banned in Myanmar). Over the course of my three trips to the country, I took lots of photos of the food I ate, but didn't consider blogging about them, for fear that this would risk outing me as one of the book's authors and possibly jeopardising my chances of visiting the country again and ultimately, contributing to the guidebook in the future.

Fast-forward a mere few years and the Myanmar of today is a vastly different place. Journalists -- and indeed, US presidents -- visit the country, political prisoners have been released, and the press is now allegedly free. Photos of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi -- who, incidentally, I interviewed for the guidebook -- are now sold on the street, and scoring a hotel room in Yangon these days requires either a lot of luck or an equal amount of US dollars. With this in mind, and given that Myanmar has been getting so much media attention recently, I thought it was finally a safe time to dig through my images and notes and vicariously revisit some of the eateries and food I encountered on those trips.

When talking about food in Myanmar, the logical starting point is mohinga -- often referred to as the country's unofficial national dish. Mohinga takes the form of a thick broth that combines herbs, freshwater fish, whole shallots and crunchy shards of banana stalk, served over thin, round rice noodles similar to the Thai khanom jeen. It tends to dominate the breakfast scene, but is also available at night, often sold from mobile baskets or carts.

It's savoury and hearty, and is one of those simple but satisfying Southeast Asian noodle dishes that functions equally well as a meal or a snack.

The dish is available just about everywhere in Yangon, but my favourite version is probably the bowl served at Myaung Mya Daw Cho, a open-air restaurant located under a towering tamarind tree in a quiet neighbourhood. There's relatively little that makes one bowl of mohinga different from another, but the version here stands out with its assertive turmericy-herbness and generous amount of flaked freshwater fish. If you like, you can supplement your bowl with a boiled egg or akyaw, deep-fried battered vegetables or lentil cakes. And as is the case elsewhere, the dish can be seasoned with a squeeze of lime or a pinch of dried chili. The only downside with Myaung Mya Daw Cho is that it's a morning place in the Burmese sense of the word, which means if you arrive later than 8:30am, it'll almost certainly be sold out.

Myaung Mya Daw Cho 158 51st St, Yangon 4.30-9am

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Klom Klom/กลมกลม

On the surface, Klom Klom looks like your typical trendy restaurant run by a rich Bangkok kid: a cutesy dining room serving confounding Japanese-Thai fusion creations or Thai dishes augmented with bacon, the kind of place that puts atmosphere above flavour. But looks can be deceiving, and after several visits, I can confirm that Klom Klom serves some homey, delicious, real Thai food.

The  namesake dish here (Klom Klom means 'Round Round') is roti, a type of fried bread with origins in South Asia. Unlike the thin, oily disks you'll see sold on the street, the roti here -- made to order in house -- are thick, flaky, crispy and surprisingly non-oily. They're practically pastry-like, and are easily some of the better roti I've encountered in Bangkok, but they're really only a vehicle for Klom Klom's exceptional curry. Described on the Thai-language menu as kaeng khiaw waan, green curry, the dish seems to have much more in common with kurumaa, the local equivalent of the South Asian korma. Unlike your typical Thai-style green curry, there's no vegetables in this one, the emphasis instead being on meat -- beef or chicken -- and much of the dish's character comes from the generous use of dried spices, not fresh herbs. In talking to the owner I learned that there's a good reason for this: the recipe comes from his grandmother, who was born in Pakistan. The dish was a hit among friends and family in her adopted hometown of Kanchanaburi, and the owner described how he still follows her recipe, employing the same time-consuming process and expensive dried spices. The result is a curry that's somewhere between Thailand and Pakistan: spicy and fragrant, yet meaty and rich.

Klom Klom also do a slowly-expanding menu of basic Thai dishes, such as rice noodles with pork, as well as interesting drinks such as naam dok anchan (also pictured above), a drink made from an indigenous flower.

Klom Klom Th Convent, Bangkok 10am-7pm Mon-Sat

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E. Pochana/อี่ โภชนา

There are lots of places in Bangkok serving seafood, but many of them are directed at foreign tourists, and as such tend to serve overpriced, bland food. E. Pochana, a longstanding seafood restaurant in central Bangkok, is both fairly-priced and serves delicious, full-flavoured dishes. But it's an old-school restaurant in the Chinese/Thai school, which means there are a few caveats.

I should make it clear that E. Pochana isn't overtly unattractive or uncomfortable, but other than a lone Chinese calendar stuck on one wall, there's been absolutely no effort made towards interior design. The tables and chairs are almost certainly original and bear the battle scars of decades of use. The lighting is both fluorescent and abundant. The owner is perched, rather intimidatingly, behind a throne-like desk piled with office supplies and documents. E. Pochana's posted closing time is 10pm, but you're going to receive some unpleasant stares from the staff (not to mention a significantly reduced menu) if you're eating there any later than 8.30pm. In a way, these quirks do provide E. Pochana with a sort of atmosphere, but not necessarily one that all diners are on board with.

But if you can manage to get past these, you're in for some excellent food -- probably the best of its kind that I've encountered in Bangkok.

As this is basically Chinese food (or, at least, Chinese food as perceived through a Thai lens), the flavours here are predominately rich and salty, rather than tart or spicy. One of the best examples of this is E. Pochana's pu phat phong karii, crab fried with curry powder and egg. The crabs are huge and fat, and I suspect they use duck egg yolks (not to mention a lot of oil) in this dish, as I can't recall having encountered a richer, more satisfying version. Other recommendable dishes include just about anything grilled -- in particular the fish and prawns -- the pork satay; kung op wun sen, shrimp cooked in a lidded pot with glass noodles; and the flash-fried vegetable dishes. The only dish I wasn't crazy about on my most recent visit was the fish head hotpot; the dish lacked the tartness usually associated with a broth that's been seasoned with salted plum.

E. Pochana Soi Chula 15, Bangkok 02 215 4220 10am-10pm

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Khanom tup tap/ขนมตุ๊บตั๊บ

I've blogged about this sweet -- a type of Chinese/Thai peanut brittle -- a couple times previously. But it is such a tasty and unusual dish, not to mention one that's made via such a fascinating process, that I wanted to share it again.

You can find khanom tup tap -- the name is an onomatopoeia and refers to the sound that results during a particular stage of the cooking process -- during Bangkok's annual vegetarian festival, in September/October. For 10 days, a handful of vendors make the dish in the narrow alleyway in Bangkok's Talat Noi neighbourhood.

The first step in making khanom tup tap is to assemble a simple syrup:

To do this, white cane sugar and water are combined in a hot wok over coals.

When the syrup has reached the right consistency, whole roasted peanuts are added. The mixture is quickly removed from the coals, spread on a tray and allowed to cool:

Now comes the fun part; using mallets, two men whack the mixture (the origin of the eponymous tup tap), pounding it until flat before folding the mixture onto itself and continuing with another round of thwacking:

This is repeated about six times and combines the peanuts and syrup in a way that results in thin, almost pastry-like stratifications.

Still warm, the peanut mixture is pulled and stretched out into a long, relatively thin wrapper, which is filled with ground peanuts and rolled. The resulting tube is then cut into short sections:

The final product is sweet, crispy and rich, and has more than a little bit in common with the American candy bar Butterfinger:

In the land of grilled chicken

In addition to the previously-mentioned book shoot, I'd also been commissioned to do some photos of kai yaang, Thai-style grilled chicken, for a US food mag. So rather than return directly to Bangkok from Chiang Mai, I took the long route and stopped by two of Thailand's most famous destinations for the dish: Khao Suan Kwang and Wichianburi, both in Thailand's northeast.

Khao Suan Kwang is a tiny town in Khon Kaen, located about 40km outside of the provincial capital. The streets (well, street) of the town are literally lined with vendors selling grilled chicken -- I was told that there were as many as 130, and this could very well be true. The chickens -- a specific breed that's small with relatively little meat but fatty, flavourful skin -- are splayed in a specific way on long bamboo frames -- feet and head and all (shown at the top of this post) -- and are slowly grilled on a thick metal grill over an enamel basin of coals.

At the busier restaurants, the chickens are grilled in stages over coals of varying heat, and I was told that grilling a chicken can take as long as 4o minutes. Another unique local aspect is that upon serving, Khao Suan Kwang-style grilled chicken is dusted with white pepper; one of the more famous restaurants uses coarsely ground peppercorns. I tried the wares of two vendors here (as the chickens are only sold whole here, this means I ate nearly two entire chickens), and the flavours ranged from meaty and almost baconlike to slightly herbal.

Probably equally as famous is the grilled chicken from Wichianburi, a rural district in Phetchabun.

This style of grilled chicken is sold from the roadside all over Thailand and can be identified by its specific cooking method, which sees the chicken splayed on a small, triangle-shaped bamboo frame that elevates the chicken at an angle over slightly flaming coals. If you eat the dish in Wichianburi, a specific breed of chicken is used. The local marinade -- and indeed the dipping sauce --  is generally slightly sweet, and the unique cooking method also produced a smokier chicken, something I really enjoyed.

I'd post stronger images, but I'm not sure which ones the magazine will choose; I'll be sure to let you know when it comes out in print.

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Paa Waang/ป้าหว่าง

I took the long way back from Chiang Mai, making a lengthy diversion into northeastern Thailand (more on that to follow). Along the way, I passed through Utaradit, one of northern Thailand's smaller and more obscure provinces. I'd been told that the local dish there is something called mee phan (หม่ีพัน), 'wrapped noodles', and proceeded to investigate. Pulling into Lap Lae, a sleepy town about 15km outside of the provincial capital, I asked where one could find mee phan and was told to talk to Paa Waang.

Paa Waang, pictured above, claims to have invented the dish more than 20 years ago. It starts with sen mee, thin rice noodles that have been seasoned with fish sauce, dried chili and lime, and supplemented with pork rinds and a few slices of par-boiled long bean:

The mixture is then rolled up in a rather stiff sheet of rice paper:

"Wait a while and it gets soft," Paa Waang explained. She added that the seasoned noodle dish existed previously, but it was her idea to wrap it in rice paper, making the dish easy to take to the field or to work.

Eating them in car a couple hours later, I wondered if Paa Wang knew that she'd also created pretty much the perfect road trip food.

Paa Waang Th Rat Uthit, Lap Lae, Utaradit 10am-5.30pm

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How to photograph a cookbook

If you've ever been curious about what's involved in shooting the images for a cookbook, here are some inside tips gathered from my recent experience -- after all, I'm pretty sure this is how everybody else does it:

1. Find a friend who runs a successful restaurant and who also believes that you have the skills to photograph his cookbook.

2. Set up an impromptu open-air studio an antique house in a beautiful corner of rural northern Thailand (pictured above).

3. Attempt to shoot all the photos exclusively in natural light.

4. Realise, only after several days of wasting everybody's time, that during the height of Thailand's rainy season, natural light is a fleeting, inconsistent concept.

5. Hire a photographer's assistant who has a proper studio lighting rig.

6. Learn the basics of studio photography in a matter of days.

7. Wonder at the marvel that is artificial, consistent, controllable light.

8. Quickly begin to feel more like a director than a photographer.

9. Wish for the opportunity to re-direct all of the previously-shot dishes.

10. Wonder, What just happened?

Khanom Jeen San Paa Khoy/ขนมจีนสันป่าข่อย

Khanom jeen, thin round rice noodles, are among Thailand's most regional dishes. You could easily pinpoint where you are in Thailand simply by looking at the khanom jeen on offer. In the south, this would most likely be a spicy, coconut-milk curry served with a huge platter of fresh herbs and some semi-pickled fruit or vegetables; in Bangkok, khanom jeen are sold with a variety of mild, herbal, typically fish-based curries and sides of shredded herbs and vegetables; and in northeastern Thailand, the noodles are pounded with shredded papaya in tam sua, a local take on the ubiquitous papaya salad.

Northern Thais love their khanom jeen as well, and for more than 30 years, one place folks in Chiang Mai have been getting their noodles is Talat San Paa Khoy, a market just east of the Ping River.

During the day, Talat San Paa Khoy is your typical busy fresh market. Come evening, after all the vendors have left, the stalls are wiped down, covered in oilcloth and are converted to clunky dining tables:

The stall does five dishes: kaeng phet (red curry) with pork or beef, green curry with chicken, nam ngiaw and nam yaa kathi, a mild coconut milk-based curry with chicken:

I've tasted all of them, and they range from good to great. The two kaeng phets are mild, and the meat is supplemented with thumb-sized chunks of tender eggplant. The green curry, which I ate served over rice, is surprisingly spicy. The naam yaa is rich and mild. My favourite was probably the nam ngiaw (pictured above), the northern khanom jeen fave, which here is rich and smokey, and arrives studded with pork ribs and just-cooked cherry tomatoes that burst when you eat them.

Khanom Jeen San Paa Khoy Thanon Kong Say, Chiang Mai 4pm-4am Mon-Sat

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Khao-Soi Islam/ข้าวซอยอิสลาม

The narrow lane that runs east of Chiang Mai's touristy Night Bazaar is home to one of the city's oldest Muslim enclaves. It's thought that around the 19th century, Muslims began to settle in the area, also known also as Baan Haw -- haw being the Thai name for Chinese Muslims -- after many centuries of trading along the caravan routes that linked China, Southeast Asia and East Asia.

Today, the neighbourhood remains resolutely Muslim, and is home to a large mosque:

a unique open-air market that unfolds every Friday morning:

and several Thai-Muslim restaurants:

Among the latter, the most famous is probably Khao-Soi Islam. Indeed, depending on which origin story you subscribe to, this area is quite possibly where the eponymous northern Thai noodle dish was introduced to Thailand. Today, Khao-Soi Islam continue to serve a version of khao soi that closely resembles the dish's likely Burmese origins:

That is, a thin, coconuty broth that carries subtle hints of dried spice powder. It's a bit bland for my taste, but I do like the smooth, pale almost spaghetti-like noodles and the pungent Shan-style pickled greens.

If you ask me, the real reason to eat at Khao-Soi Islam is the restaurant's outstanding biryani. On my most recent visit, I ordered the goat version (pictured above), which was easily one of the better versions I've encountered in Thailand. The meat was eat-with-a-spoon tender and deliciously spicy, and the rice was well seasoned and rich. Even the dipping sauce wasn't overly sweet.

And if you're missing the sweetness that typically defines Thai-Muslim food, simply cross the lane to Alee's Rotee for a dessert of roti, a thin, crispy pancake, and a tea:

Khao-Soi Islam do biryani with beef, chicken and fish, as well as Thai-Muslim standards ranging from oxtail soup to satay.

Khao-Soi Islam 22-24 Th Charoenphrathet, Chiang Mai 053 271 484 8am-5pm

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