This week took us to Myanmar, formally known as Burma, to celebrate Peasents’ Day.

Burmese Name, ‘Taungthu lèthama nei”

This is public holiday in Myanmar, and it is to recognize the peasant sector, the flagship of their economy, and it marks the anniversary of General Ne Win’s coup.

So we eat!

The Table

The table. Clockwise from the silver pot: Coconut Spiced Sweet Potato, Spiced Cabbage, Burmese Tea Leaf Salad, Ohn No Khao Swe (curry with noodles and tofu), a big ol pot of rice, and Aloo Hin (potato curry).

The Plate

and onto the dishes…

Spiced Coconut Sweet Potato

This spiced coconut sweet potato curry was crazy spicy. I enjoyed it a lot! The potatoes were simmered in a broth of coconut milk, spices, and 2 fiery hot jalapenos. I got the recipe from asian-recipe.com. I’m gonna post the recipe below, since this webpage looked a little unmanaged, if someone from that site comes across it and wants me to take it down just shoot me a message. Although I loved the spiciness of this dish, if I were to make it again I’d either seed the peppers or use half. My jalapenos were massive by the way.

Spiced Cabbage

Above is a close up of the spicy cabbage,. I used 1 bag of green cabbage from Trader Joes, but when I got home I realized it was only about half of what I needed. Used a bag of coleslaw for the rest, so there’s a bit of red cabbage and some carrots in there as well. I wasn’t crazy about this one, but others said they really enjoyed it. I used a vegan fish sauce I got from an Asain supermarket to fit our diet. I also didn’t find this dish to be very “spicy” in heat. It had garlic and ginger, but other than that nothing that would yield heat. Leftovers the next day somehow packed a little punch. Since I wasn’t a huge fan I made a slurry of peanut butter and leftover coconut milk from the sweet potato and poured it over, and that was delightful! Come to think of it, it totally changed the dish, and I’m going to link the recipe over in my originals. The spicy cabbage link is from Red.

Lahpet Thoke

Close up of the Sencha Pesto for the Tea Leaf Salad

(pronounced “la-pay toe”) which means “green tea”, and thoke, which means “salad” This salad rocked my world. The tea leaf pesto dressing was divine. I couldn’t stop eating it. Angela made this one, and left the dressing here at my place, and I’ve ate it a few times with my hands today. I wonder if there was caffeine in this…not sure if it was the wine or the tea, but I was talking a mile a minute! She got the recipe from The Gourmet Gourmand.

Vegan Ohn No Khao Swe

So this one was to come with a chickpea tofu, but it never set, so we used the magnificent mega firm tofu I’m obsessed with from Trader Joes. Yummy curry served over noodles and tofu with lime. Very good. We ate this one in bowls. Wendy got this recipe from Gormandize which has a section of their blog also dedicated to making international dishes vegan. We may end up using them again for another Thursday!

Aloo Hin

Wendy also made this yummy potato curry from Vegan International on YouTube So that’s it! Another fantastic meal with fantastic people. Next week we travel via our taste buds to Belize! Join us!

Coconut Spiced Sweet Potato

Original Recipe can be found at www.asian-recipe.com

Cuisine: South East Asian

Servings: 4 servings

Author: Yochi

Ingredients

1 Onion chopped
3 Garlic Cloves crushed
1 Large Chili seeded, finely chopped
1 tsp Ground Turmeric
1 tsp freshly grated Root Ginger
salt and black pepper
1 tbsp Soy Sauce
8 oz coconut milk
12 oz water
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 lb Sweet Potato peeled and sliced

Instructions

1. Place all the ingredients apart from the sweet potatoes in a large saucepan, bring to the boil, stirring then reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
2. Add the sweet potato, mix well and simmer for 20 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Serve hot.

Peanut Spiced Cabbage

Adapted from a Burmese cabbage dish I made from Red Online

Course: Side Dish