Burma: Rivers of Flavor

Tastes of Hsipaw. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Salt from a village salt well. Blocks of cane sugar. Thick cane sugar syrup, with a smoky taste and aroma from the fire it’s been cooked over, gets poured into molds; once it has set, it’s cut into blocks and taken to the market for sale. A woman fries doughnuts in a wok.

SAI IS A TALL, good-looking man with a wide face and a full white beard. He and his wife own a little tea shop in Hsipaw, near the edge of town. I stopped by there one day for tea and we fell into conversation. Sai told me about his father, who had died the previous year at the age of ninety-four. He’d come to Burma from India with the British during World War II, then stayed on. He started a yogurt business when Sai was a boy, using milk from local cows, but few people up here in Shan State, near the Chinese border, were prepared to eat yogurt. Sai ate a lot of it when he was growing up—he says he has his father to thank for his height and good health.

Sai offered to take me out of town on his motorcycle to see some food sights. Our first stop was at a peanut-oil press powered by a water mill. It was in a large, airy post-and-beam building that looked like a kind of cluttered wooden cathedral, built over a stream. The whole place smelled invitingly of peanuts. The mill was quiet that day; the owner was busy replacing one of the huge wooden paddles, so the press wasn’t operating. The only action was the frolicking of some fine-boned cats on the wood floors.

Then we rode out to a hamlet where the main business is salt. The villagers pump saltwater from wells in the ground, boil it, and pour it into shallow pans to evaporate, leaving behind the salt. In this region, people have always relied on salt wells. Once, in places like this, the people who controlled the salt grew rich on the trade, but with modern transportation local sources of salt are not so important anymore and salt sells for very little.

Finally, we bumped up a small dirt road to a small village that produces another staple: sugar. On the sloping hillside above the settlement grew tall stands of sugarcane. Stacks of cut cane lay all around. In an open-sided shed, men were feeding teak logs into a large fire pit. At one end of it, a chimney billowed pale smoke. In a long metal pan that lay over the fire, liquid sugar gave off thick steam as it boiled down. Once it becomes solid, the sugar is cut into large blocks and sold in the Hsipaw market.

Next morning at the market before dawn (see “Market by Candlelight,”), the taste of sticky rice sweetened with smoky local sugar transported me right back to the sugar village.

MAKES 12 DOUGHNUTS; SERVES 6

These doughnuts with a difference are made from sticky rice flour. Common in Shan markets in northern Burma, from Kalaw to Hsipaw, they’re also made and sold in northern Thailand, in towns where there are large populations of Shan people.

Street-side cooks deep-fry them in plenty of oil, in large woks, and their doughnuts are about 3 inches across. My home-style method produces smaller versions of the doughnuts, fried in less oil, in small, manageable batches.

Because there is no wheat flour in the doughnuts, they are delicate when cooked. As they cook in the hot oil, they puff up and become hollow. They’re best eaten hot and fresh, but I also like how, once they cool, they soften and sag a little.

You can make the doughnuts with white rice flour only (use 1 cup in that case), but I love the purple-gray tint that black sticky rice flour gives, so I grind a little raw black rice to a powder in my coffee grinder or food processor and add it to the dough.

Traditionally these are drizzled with a little palm sugar syrup after cooking. I prefer a more indulgent approach. I serve them with small bowls of palm sugar sauce, so that guests can dip their doughnuts into it as they eat. Heaven!

Scant 1 cup white sticky rice flour (see Glossary), plus a little extra flour for shaping

1 tablespoon black sticky rice flour (see the headnote; optional)

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup water

PALM SUGAR SYRUP

½ cup palm sugar shavings

½ cup water

Peanut oil for deep-frying

Combine the rice flours, baking soda, salt, and water in a medium bowl and stir to make a dough. Smear it with a wooden spoon or your hand to blend it until very smooth (if it is too stiff or dry, add another tablespoon or so of water, and blend it in). Let stand for 5 minutes.

Put a little rice flour on a plate and put out a second plate. Scoop up 2 teaspoons of the dough. If it is sticky, touch it lightly to the rice flour, then roll it into a ball between your palms and set it on the other plate. Repeat with the remaining dough. You should have 12 balls of dough. Set aside for 30 minutes to firm up.

Meanwhile, prepare the sugar syrup: Combine the palm sugar and the ½ cup water in a small heavy saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat and transfer to one or more small bowls.

Doughnuts frying at the market in Hsipaw.

When ready to proceed, put out two lightly oiled plates or a lightly oiled baking sheet. Pick up a ball of dough and gently roll it back and forth between your palms to make a small rope about 4 to 5 inches long. Press the ends together to make a ring and set on one of the plates or the baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining balls.

Pour 2 inches of oil into a large stable wok, a wide pot, or a deep-fryer and heat over medium-high heat to 350°F. If you don’t have a thermometer, stand a wooden chopstick or wooden spoon handle in the oil; if the oil bubbles up gently along the wood, it is at temperature. (This deep-frying is done at a lower temperature than most, so that the insides of the doughnuts get cooked before the outsides burn.) Put out a spider or slotted spoon and another large platter or plate.

Slide 3 or 4 dough rings into the hot oil, without overlapping, then lower the heat slightly and let them cook, the oil bubbling up around them, for about a minute. (If the rings start to brown in the first minute, lower the heat a little more.) Gently turn them over and continue cooking until they are browned and firmer, 3 to 4 minutes. Use the spider or slotted spoon to lift them out, pausing to let excess oil drain off, and onto the plate.

Serve immediately (the doughnuts soften as they cool), with the small bowls of palm sugar syrup for dunking.

MAKES 8 BUNS; SERVES 4 TO 6

These treats are a breakfast or anytime pleasure served with fresh fruit and tea or coffee. Cooked sticky rice (left over from the night before, or cooked fresh for the purpose) is wrapped around shaved coconut and palm sugar, and the filled “buns” that result are quickly fried to golden. I love the smoky hit of palm sugar when you bite through the crisp outer layers of fried rice kernels into the meltingly sweet center.

Make them just before you want to serve them. Allow one or two per person. The originals were deep-fried, but they work well shallow-fried in a cast-iron skillet or wok.

2 tablespoons fresh or defrosted frozen grated coconut (see Glossary), minced, or substitute a scant 2 tablespoons dried unsweetened grated coconut plus 1 tablespoon warm water

3 tablespoons chopped dark palm sugar, minced

About 2 cups cooked sticky rice, at room temperature

Peanut oil for shallow-frying

Place the coconut and palm sugar in two bowls by your work surface; if using dried coconut, place it in a bowl, add the warm water, stir well, and let soak for 5 minutes.

Make sure your work surface is absolutely dry (a wet surface will make the rice slippery rather than sticky, so that it won’t stick to itself when you are shaping the buns). Turn the rice out onto it. Flatten the mass of rice with the palm of your hand, then use a rolling pin to roll it out to an approximate 9-inch square. Use a dough scraper or a knife to cut it into 4 strips, then cut these crosswise in half, so you have 8 rectangles, about 4½ inches long.

Work with one strip at a time: With your thumb, make a dent about 1 inch from one end of the strip, place 1 teaspoon palm sugar and a scant teaspoon coconut in it, fold the strip over, and press on the edges to seal. You’ll have a flattened rectangular package about ½ inch thick and 2 inches long. Place on a plate, and repeat with the remaining strips and filling.

In my notebook I called these two charmers “goofy girls.” Wearing their mother’s lipstick, they played at looking serious for a moment and then burst into big smiles at the market in Mrauk U, in Rakhine State.

Put a plate and a spider or a slotted spoon by your stovetop. Place a wok or wide heavy skillet over high heat, add peanut oil to a depth of ½ inch, and heat to about 360°F. (If you don’t have a thermometer, test the temperature by standing a wooden chopstick or wooden spoon handle in the oil; if the oil bubbles up vigorously along the wood, it is at temperature.) Slide in one bun, and then a second. The oil will bubble up as the buns start to cook. The rice on the outside will puff up a little and start to turn golden, about 2 minutes. Use the spider or slotted spoon to turn the buns over and fry the second side until well touched with gold, another 2 to 3 minutes. Flip back onto the first side to deepen the color a little, then lift out of the oil, pausing to let excess oil drain off, and put on the plate. Cook the remaining rice buns the same way. Once you are used to the process, you will probably find that you can cook more than 2 at once. (Once the oil has cooled, store it in a clean, dry glass jar and reuse it for stir-fried dishes.)

Serve warm or at room temperature; these are best soon after they are cooked.

TRAVELS WITH SAI