Salads
Burmese salads—thoke—are completely original. To fully understand them, however, you need to abandon the idea that all salads are a mix of lettuce and vegetables with dressing. This is not the land of balsamic vinaigrette.
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There are a couple of reasons why salads are so pervasive in Myanmar. For starters, nearly anything can be turned into a salad. Leftover fried chicken? Make a salad. Samosas from the day before? Slice them up, toss them with cabbage and tamarind water, and you have another salad. Even jerky can be turned into a salad. While on the hours-long drive to Namhsan, the prime tea-growing region in the Shan State, we stretched our legs at a roadside stop serving dried mutton jerky as a salad—shredded and tossed with lime, shallots, and a bit of crushed garlic.
The second reason salads are so important is that they require little from a limited kitchen. If a curry is cooking on the only charcoal burner available, a salad can be tossed together without any need for heat. Peanuts can be mashed in a mortar and pestle and then mixed into a salad of tender fresh tamarind leaves (a must-try salad on any trip to Myanmar). That doesn’t mean these are simple plates: one of the most popular salads served street-side in Yangon is a variation of Rainbow Salad, which is an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink noodle salad.
The most famous of these dishes is laphet thoke, tea leaf salad. Laphet, the star ingredient, is made by fermenting just-picked tea leaves for months (see this page). It creates a dark green “dressing” that lightly coats the rest of the ingredients. While laphet is the highlight, this salad also showcases another key component of all good Burmese salads: texture. It’s full of fried lentils, seeds, garlic, dried shrimp, chickpea flour, and tomato.
These salads are not difficult to put together, but they require planning. The first step is tracking down and preparing the components.
The second part is learning how to compose the salad. Instead of being dressed with a vinaigrette, for instance, these salads are put together by mixing all of the ingredients with some of the oil used to fry onions or garlic. Tamarind water and citrus juice are used to balance out the savory flavors. Toasted chickpea flour often lightly coats the ingredients, thickening the salads just like grated Parmesan enriches a Caesar salad. Having these basics ready to go before you start makes all the difference.
For this book, start with the Ginger Salad and Green Mango Salad before working your way to bigger projects, like Tea Leaf Salad. And don’t be afraid to mix and match ingredients—like swapping out cucumber for fried garlic chips or skipping peanuts—to tailor the salads to suit your tastes. The most important part is giving the salad a good mix before serving. While servers at the restaurants mix the salads with forks at the table, don’t be shy about using your hands (in true Burmese style) when mixing these salads at home. With the exception of the tea leaf salad (which gets a bit messy), it’s the best way to ensure that all the flavors and textures are evenly blended together.
GINGER SALAD
With pickled ginger as the key component, this refreshing salad makes a good counterpoint to any rich curry or stir-fry, especially Pumpkin Pork Stew or Chili Lamb. Japanese pickled ginger is not hard to find at well-stocked grocery stores (opt for white pickled ginger instead of pink, if possible). You can also make your own (see this page). It is especially good when made with young ginger—if you are lucky enough to come across it. Like all good Burmese salads, this recipe does not skimp on all the crunchy bits. Keep them on hand to make more of this salad—you may want to eat it all week. If you happen to have any Ginger Juice left over from making drinks, add a splash to the bowl as you mix the salad.
SERVES 4 AS PART OF A LARGER MEAL
4 cups thinly sliced romaine lettuce (about 1 romaine head)
1½ cups shredded cabbage
3 heaping tablespoons thinly sliced pickled ginger, chopped
2 tablespoons Fried Garlic Chips
3 tablespoons Fried Yellow Split Peas
3 tablespoons coarsely chopped cilantro
2 tablespoons sunflower seeds
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped toasted peanuts
2 tablespoons minced jalapeños
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
1½ tablespoons toasted chickpea flour (see this page)
1½ tablespoons Onion Oil or canola oil
2 tablespoons juice from the ginger pickling liquid
2 teaspoons fish sauce (optional)
¼ teaspoon salt
1 lime or lemon, cut into wedges
In a salad bowl, combine the lettuce, cabbage, pickled ginger, fried garlic, split peas, cilantro, sunflower seeds, peanuts, jalapeños, and sesame seeds. Sprinkle chickpea flour over the top and drizzle with oil and pickling liquid. Add the fish sauce and salt (use more salt if you are not using fish sauce). Squeeze 1 or 2 lime wedges over the top. Using your hands, mix well and taste, adding more salt or lime juice if needed.
MAKING PICKLED GINGER
The best pickled ginger is made with young ginger, but even mature ginger can be pickled. Older ginger will likely be spicier, so you may want to use less of it.
Peel a 3-inch piece of ginger (about 1½ ounces). Slice it very thinly into planks with a sharp knife or a mandoline and transfer to a heatproof container. In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine 2 tablespoons sugar, 5 tablespoons distilled white vinegar, and 2 tablespoons water, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Pour the mixture over the ginger and let it cool to room temperature. Refrigerate until needed.
GREEN MANGO SALAD
Instead of relying only on lime or lemon juice, Burmese salads often use other tart ingredients as a way to bring acidity to salads. In this salad, green mangoes are up for the task. Although available at Asian grocery stores year-round, these underripe mangoes are at their peak in the spring. For the best tart flavor, look for smaller mangoes with smooth, green skin free of blemishes. You won’t need to use a whole green mango to make this salad, so keep extra fried onions, peanuts, and chickpea flour on hand to make this recipe again with the rest of the mango. Or use the mango in the Rainbow Salad in place of the green papaya. Alternatively, you can buy green pickled mango in brine that’s already been sliced into strips (it’s often dyed a yellow color). Avoid Indian-style green mango pickle, which is packed in oil and is a completely different condiment.
SERVES 4 AS PART OF A LARGER MEAL
½ green mango, peeled
4 cups thinly sliced romaine lettuce (about 1 romaine head)
1 cup shredded cabbage
½ cup thinly sliced cucumber
⅓ cup Fried Onions
¼ cup thinly sliced red onion or shallot, soaked in water and drained
3 tablespoons coarsely chopped cilantro
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped toasted peanuts
2 tablespoons minced jalapeño
1½ tablespoons toasted chickpea flour (see this page)
1 teaspoon fish sauce (optional)
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons Onion Oil or canola oil
1 lime or lemon, cut into wedges
Slice the mango into thin planks, then slice the planks crosswise into thin matchsticks. You should have about ½ cup sliced green mango.
In a salad bowl, combine the mango, lettuce, cabbage, cucumbers, fried onions, red onion, cilantro, peanuts, jalapeño, and chickpea flour. Add the fish sauce and salt (use more salt if you are not using fish sauce). Drizzle with the oil and squeeze 1 or 2 lime wedges over the top. Using your hands, mix well and taste, adding more salt or lime juice if needed.
CHICKEN SALAD
This is more evidence that in Burmese cooking, everything can be turned into a salad. The best chicken to use here is leftover cooked chicken—simply pull the leftovers into pieces. Fried chicken or rotisserie chicken is great for this salad. If you do need to cook chicken for this salad, poaching it is the easiest way to go. For 1 large chicken breast or 2 to 3 chicken thighs, put the chicken in a small pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, season the water with a few generous pinches of salt, and then lower the pot to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let the chicken steep for 30 minutes. The chicken will finish cooking as it rests.
SERVES 2; 4 AS PART OF A LARGER MEAL
½ yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 lime, halved
3 tablespoons canola oil
About 2 cups cooked chicken (about 2 rotisserie chicken breasts or 1 large chicken breast, poached), at room temperature
1 cup shredded cabbage and/or romaine lettuce
½ cup thinly sliced cucumber
2 tablespoons seeded and minced jalapeño
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped cilantro
1½ tablespoons toasted chickpea flour (see this page)
1 teaspoon fish sauce
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Fried Garlic Chips, crushed (optional)
Put a quarter of the sliced onion in a small bowl. Squeeze half a lime on top and mix to coat.
In a wok or skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the remaining quarter of a sliced onion, lower the heat to medium, and cook, stirring often, until the onion has evenly browned and turned crisp, about 10 minutes.
Pour the onion and the frying oil into a large mixing bowl. Once the oil has cooled to room temperature, top with the chicken, cabbage, cucumbers, jalapeño, cilantro, and chickpea flour. Add the fish sauce, salt, and reserved raw onion with the lime juice. Using your hands, mix well. Taste, adding more fish sauce, more lime juice, or a pinch of salt if needed. Transfer to a salad bowl and sprinkle fried garlic on top.
GREEN TOMATO SALAD
Mount Popa is a temple that sits atop an extinct volcano jutting out of the plains like an oversized thumb. About a half-day’s trip from the archaeological sites of Bagan, Popa is home to thirty-seven nats, Myanmar’s indigenous spirits, as well as a bunch of bored monkeys. If you go during the slow season (March through October), don’t bring food while climbing the 777 steps (barefoot) to get to the top—and if you do, anticipate getting cornered by some of the beefier chimps demanding the goods. The photographer for this book, John Lee, had to sacrifice his water bottle to get out of a jam. For all we know, these monkeys are merely acting on the will of the nats.
Down the road from the temple are a few restaurants serving travelers who have come to pay Popa a visit. One of those places served up this salad. Green tomato salads are common in Myanmar, with the sour underripe tomatoes playing well against sweet crushed peanuts and peanut oil. After the sweltering hike to the summit, the salad was both cooling and satisfying. If you grow tomatoes, keep this salad in mind for the beginning and end of the season, when it’s easiest to access green tomatoes. You can go all green, or mix and match green and red; cherry tomatoes are fine here too.
SERVES 4 AS PART OF A LARGER MEAL
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 Thai chile, cut into 3 or 4 pieces
¼ teaspoon dried chile flakes
5 green tomatoes (about 1 pound)
½ cup thinly sliced shallot
2 garlic cloves, smashed flat with the blunt side of a knife blade
3 tablespoons crushed roasted peanuts
1 lime, halved
Salt
1 cup cilantro sprigs
In a very small saucepan, heat the oil briefly with the chile and the chile flakes. Pour into a small bowl and let sit while you prepare the other ingredients.
Slice the tomatoes into thin wedges and transfer to a bowl. Add the shallots, garlic, peanuts, reserved chile oil, and a generous couple of pinches of salt. Squeeze half of the lime over the top. Using your hands, mix well and taste, squeezing more lime over the salad or adding more salt if needed. Put the salad and any juices onto a rimmed serving plate and garnish generously with cilantro sprigs.
SAMUSA SALAD
Samusa Salad may be the most underappreciated salad on the Burma Superstar menu—but if it’s ever taken off the menu, its fans will be crushed. It’s actually surprising that its fan base isn’t bigger: it’s hard not to like the combination of crunchy samosas and shredded cabbage drizzled with a tamarind ginger dressing. Besides, the idea of using samosas in salad isn’t so different from using bread to make croutons. If you’re not inclined to make samosas, buying some at the store and popping them in the oven to make this salad works just fine. If you happen to have any Samusa Soup on hand, spoon some of the broth over the salad for a richer flavor.
SERVES 2; 4 AS PART OF A LARGER MEAL
4 Samosas, sliced
2 cups shredded cabbage and/or romaine lettuce
½ cup sliced cucumbers
⅓ cup Fried Onions
¼ cup thinly sliced red onion or shallots, soaked in water and drained
2 tablespoons seeded and minced jalapeños
3 tablespoons coarsely chopped cilantro
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped mint
1 tablespoon toasted chickpea flour (see this page)
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons Onion Oil or canola oil
2 tablespoons Tamarind Ginger Dressing or Tamarind Water
1 lime or lemon, cut into wedges
In a salad bowl, combine the samosas, cabbage, cucumbers, fried onions, red onion, jalapeño, cilantro, mint, chickpea flour, and salt. Drizzle with the oil and tamarind dressing and squeeze 1 or 2 lime wedges over the top. Using your hands, mix well. Taste, adding more salt or lime juice if needed.
SHAN TOFU SALAD
This is another one of those uniquely Burmese salads that makes you rethink what a salad really is. In this case, it’s silky chickpea tofu mixed with crunchy fried garlic and onions and a tamarind ginger dressing. The combination may seem unusual, but it’s easily one of the more refreshing things to eat on a hot afternoon in the tropics. First make the Shan Tofu; one batch will allow you to make two of these salads. Or use half of the tofu to make a salad and deep-fry the other half to eat as a snack.
SERVES 2; 4 AS PART OF A LARGER MEAL
½ yellow onion, thinly sliced
½ lime
Half a recipe (about 8 ounces) Shan Tofu, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons Fried Garlic Chips, crushed slightly
1 Thai chile, thinly sliced (optional)
½ teaspoon dried chile flakes
1 tablespoon toasted chickpea flour (see this page)
2 tablespoons Tamarind Ginger Dressing or Tamarind Water
½ cup coarsely chopped cilantro, plus sprigs for garnishing
3 tablespoons canola oil
½ teaspoon salt
Put a quarter of the sliced onion in a small bowl. Squeeze the lime on top and mix to coat.
In a salad bowl, combine the tofu, fried garlic, fresh and dried chiles, chickpea flour, tamarind dressing, and chopped cilantro.
In a wok or skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the remaining onion, lower the heat to medium, and cook, stirring often, until the onion has evenly browned and turned crisp, about 10 minutes.
Pour the fried onions and the frying oil into the bowl with the tofu. Once the oil has cooled to room temperature, add the reserved raw onion with the lime juice. Add the salt and cilantro sprigs. Using your hands or a spoon, mix gently to evenly coat all the pieces. Taste, adding more salt if needed.
NAMHSAN SALAD
When heading to Namhsan from Lashio or Mandalay, there is only one true roadside stop before beginning the three-hour-plus climb up the mountain. It’s a no-frills place with cell phone advertisements pasted on the walls, dusty dried goods on display, and a small open-air kitchen in the back. But it serves a decent menu, which you can wash down with tea or Myanmar beer. One day, while working on this book, we shared an order of this salad, intrigued by the inclusion of shredded dried mutton. On our way back down the mountain, we stopped at the place again, this time ordering two plates and heading to the kitchen to watch them put it together. We named this salad after that jewel-in-the-rough joint, Namhsan Restaurant.
The dried mutton used in Myanmar is hung to dry as it cures and then is fried or smoked. Since sheep jerky is hard to come by in the United States, this recipe has been modified to use beef jerky. Look for a variety that’s on the firm, savory side. Teriyaki and Asian barbecue flavors tend to be too sweet. To shred the jerky, simply pull it into pieces along the grain so you get longer strips. A little jerky goes a long way, so while this salad only makes a small portion, it’s best to share it as part of a larger meal. It can also be made ahead.
SERVES 4 AS PART OF A LARGER MEAL
1 cup thinly sliced shallot
2 limes, halved
2 tablespoons peanut oil or canola oil
2 small dried chiles, broken into pieces
2 cups loosely packed shredded beef jerky (about 6 ounces)
½ to 1 Thai chile, minced
1 garlic clove, coarsely chopped
Salt
Put the shallot in a small bowl. Squeeze 1 lime on top and mix to coat.
In a very small saucepan, heat the oil with the dried chile until the chile just begins to crisp and darken, about 1 minute. Pour into a mixing bowl and let cool to room temperature.
Add the jerky, Thai chile, garlic, and a pinch of salt. Using your hands, mix well and taste, squeezing in more lime or adding salt if needed.
EAT YOUR TEA: THE STORY OF MYANMAR’S MOST MYSTERIOUS FOOD
Tea shops around Yangon and Myanmar pour gallons of green tea and black tea every day. Yet half of the tea consumed in Myanmar is eaten, not drunk. Made by fermenting just-picked Assam leaves, laphet—or what the Burmese call “pickled tea”—is slightly bitter, deeply savory, and strangely addictive.
It’s remarkable that laphet makes it to the States at all. For years, the fermented tea leaves were nothing more than a mysterious dark green product brought back in suitcases after trips to Southeast Asia. Trade embargos made it impossible to import it directly from Myanmar. Yet the method of fermenting tea leaves for eating has been practiced for centuries among mountain tribes living in the border regions of Myanmar, China, and Thailand. It’s a very old food that somehow, through word of mouth and restaurants like Burma Superstar, has become popular as the main ingredient of one of the most curious Burmese dishes served in America—tea leaf salad.
Part of the draw is novelty. For so long, to get the tea, you needed to know someone who knew someone. Many Americans have tried to make laphet in the States with dried green tea leaves only to find the results didn’t come close to the original. Fortunately, it’s becoming easier to find the real deal.
Namhsan
A few years ago, Desmond started asking around Yangon for information on how laphet (pronounced la-PET) is made. He wanted to learn more about the whole supply chain, but no one would give him a direct answer. After coming to several dead ends, he finally got a lead from Bryan Leung, a well-connected Yangon native. Leung had met a guy who had started a tea growing association in Shan State. That guy, Nelson Rweel, turned out to be the key to unlocking the laphet mystery.
Nelson is part of Myanmar’s emerging entrepreneurial class. Trained as a teacher, he now runs a chain of English-language schools scattered across the country. Yet his family roots are in tea. He grew up in Namhsan, a rural township in Shan State where tea growing and processing is the lifeblood of the ethnic Palaung community. There are other areas of production in Shan State and Kachin State too. But in the world of edible tea, the laphet from Namhsan is considered the best in the country. And the best laphet within Namhsan comes from Zayan, a village in the northern part of the township.
Getting to Namhsan is not easy. By air from Yangon, you fly to Lashio, the closest airport. From Lashio you drive four or five hours on mostly dirt roads, climbing more than 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) in elevation, passing through fog, and encountering the occasional Burmese military truck. (Rebel armies are also active in these parts.) By road from Mandalay, it’s a seven-hour bus ride to Namhsan. During the monsoon season, getting stuck in the red clay mud is part of the experience. The same main road that snakes up the mountains also connects all of the villages. Storefronts and homes are set up right against the road, without room for much of a sidewalk. Some villages are only accessible by mule. The challenge of getting anything to and from Namhsan is more than merely an inconvenience: in the spring of 2016, a devastating fire tore through the area, burning down homes and businesses and displacing more than 1,000 people. Fire trucks had to come from as far away as Lashio on that same road, and the rebuilding effort is ongoing.
When you finally do arrive, however, the view is breathtaking: mountaintops poke through the fog and everything slows down. Ruby Hill, a Buddhist temple filled with golden pagodas, glimmers in the distance like a tiny version of Yangon’s famous Shwedagon. At sunrise, novice monks walk down dirt paths behind the main road, ringing a bell and collecting donations of rice for the monastery. At sundown, the doors and windows close up with heavy shutters, muffling sounds of Burmese soap operas and singing competitions playing on TVs. It’s damp at night but pleasantly cool. When we arrived at dusk in August 2015, the air spelled relief, like when the fog rolls into San Francisco after a series of hot days.
Growing Tea
There’s a Burmese adage about the country’s most prized foods that goes something like this: if it’s meat, it’s pork; if it’s fruit, it’s mango; and if it’s leaf, it’s tea. It’s hard to overstate the importance of tea in Myanmar, and it’s especially hard to overstate the importance of laphet to the Palaung people of Namhsan.
“The only thing we know is the tea leaf business,” U Aung Gyi, a laphet producer, told us when we visited his warehouse. Like many others in Namhsan, he wore a pink Palaung head wrap.
Assam is the main tea variety grown here, but compared with the carefully cultivated Assam plantations in India, Burmese Assam is much wilder, with bushes of various sizes clinging to hillsides. The yields are also significantly lower than in India. Grown with no pesticides, Assam tea from Namhsan is naturally organic. Nelson Rweel calls it “jungle tea.”
For laphet, tea bushes need eight to ten years to reach maturity. After that, the plants can grow for years, turning tree-size. (We were told—but couldn’t confirm due to an impassable road—that there was an 800-year-old tea tree nearby.) While the surrounding areas have heavy red clay soil, the soil in Namhsan is mainly a mix of sand and clay. And in Zayan, it’s mostly all sand. This sandy soil and the pitch of the hills (45 degrees is ideal) ensure good drainage. The resulting equation will sound familiar to anyone who knows a little about making fine wine: making the plant struggle a little to hold onto water means lower yields and more concentrated flavor.
The leaves from Zayan-grown tea also have a higher concentration of antioxidants, which helps preserve color and flavor. So while other laphet turns brown or black as it ages, Zayan laphet remains shades of gold. To test the quality, you rub the leaves between your hands and then inhale. Zayan laphet has a sweet, tropical smell, almost like an overripe mango.
The flavor concentration for any tea varies depending on what time of year the leaves are picked. In Namhsan, the first harvest happens in the hot, dry months of March and April, when the buds are small and have the most concentrated flavor. The second harvest, from May to June, is also good quality but not as desirable as the first. The third—from August and September—is the least flavorful thanks to the rains that pass through that time of year and dilute the crop. In some years, there’s a fourth harvest in the fall after the rains have stopped. Its quality is nearly as good as the first harvest but lower in yield.
There is no sugar-coating the physical nature of picking tea. One farmer we watched had a bag slung over his shoulder and a basket strapped to his back with a sickle tucked into a strap at his waist. Years of picking the buds of tea plants have made his forearms sinewy with muscle. Women and men pick tea together. At the end of the day, they make their way by foot, mule, truck, or scooter to the processing facility.
Making Laphet
At the processing facility, fermentation starts the day the tea leaves have been picked before they can oxidize and turn black. The tea is steamed, pressed to release excess water, and then rolled. The next day, it’s sorted by hand, with the smaller, higher-quality leaves separated from the larger leaves that stay in the local market. Then the tea is packed tightly in plastic-lined burlap sacks, packed down into the bags, and placed in cement containers in the ground. Weights—mostly heavy rocks—are put on top to help compress the leaves. The bags stay there to ferment for at least four months or up to two years, depending on demand from wet tea brokers in Mandalay. While the tea ferments, ink-black oil seeps out of the leaves, staining the bags.
For years it was common for brokers in Mandalay to hold off paying tea farmers and laphet makers for their goods until they sold the products. Brokers took a huge margin. Then there were problems at the tea farms. There wasn’t enough money coming in.
“Up until 1995, our tea price was very good,” Nelson said. “Farmers didn’t have to work too hard. Now younger farmers want to move to cities for more money.” Some tea farms have been abandoned. And since tea farming is seasonal, there’s a chunk of time—from October to April—where no one is harvesting. If cash isn’t coming in, it’s easy to see why there’s a temptation to grow opium poppies during the off-season. (Part of the Shan State is in the Golden Triangle.)
Nelson started the tea grower co-op in 2013, to strengthen growers’ bargaining rights and organize members to recognize the value of having a naturally organic product. With the help of Desmond and a laphet company called Shan Shwe Taung, he has also brought in trainers from Nepal and Holland to help farmers learn better ways organically to care for tea plants all year long. As countries like the United States lifted trade sanctions, international trade has provided better export opportunities. But for Nelson and his co-op, this has also meant protecting the place names of Namhsan and Zayan from being used to sell inferior tea.
“This is the first time we market our tea to the world,” Nelson told a meeting of co-op members in August 2015. Women and men attended, and most of the men wore the pink Palaung head wraps. Some were eating sunflower seeds and many were drinking tea. “We need to do it right and honestly.”
How to Eat Your Tea
There is no question that laphet is beloved in Myanmar, where it is sold in snack packets or served after a meal in special lacquerware. The place to sample the best laphet is Mandalay, the country’s main tea-trading city. Plus, the Burmese say eating tea cools you down, and on steamy summer days in Mandalay, you’ll do whatever you can to cool off.
Downtown Mandalay is a chaotic place, a mix of scooters buzzing around a dusty hodgepodge of low-rise buildings, but the tea shops are excellent. Wet—edible tea—shops sell laphet in a number of ways, from whole-leaf laphet to laphet that’s been crushed and seasoned with various flavors. (Ginger and garlic is a popular combination.) They also sell all the condiments you might want to eat along with it, from toasted sesame seeds to fried garlic, fried peanuts, and dried shrimp.
One of the best-known brands is Shan Shwe Taung. The company was started by U San Aung, who years ago started to bypass brokers to buy directly from Namhsan farmers. The efforts allowed him to become proficient in understanding the differences in quality. Now his son, Myo Win Aung, has taken over the company, which does brisk business in laphet snack packs, the foil packets that hang like bags of chips at shops across the country.
Eating laphet can be as simple as ripping open a packet and eating it with a few crunchy bits. Its caffeine kick makes it popular with students. When money is tight, some will turn a packet into a meal by eating it over plain rice. Serving laphet in a salad is a little more special, but the best laphet is still reserved for serving in lacquerware after a meal. To aid digestion, guests help themselves to a little whole-leaf laphet and season it however they choose from the crunchy bits, toasted sesame seeds, and tiny whole garlic cloves offered at the table. When you first bite into a tea leaf, you mostly taste bitterness. But if you leave it in your mouth long enough—especially if it’s the good stuff—the bitterness mellows, revealing a purely Burmese—and addictive—flavor.
FAKING IT
There’s no easy way to fake the savory flavor of laphet. But by brewing a pot of green tea and saving the leaves, you can get close—kind of.
The hardest part is coaxing out of dried green tea an overripe, bamboo shoot–like aroma that resembles laphet. But leaving used tea leaves out at room temperature for a day or two can help. Once blended with ginger and garlic, they make a nice tea paste for a salad. It’s lighter and more like pesto than laphet, but it still supplies a little caffeine buzz.
To try it, put 2 tablespoons good-quality loose-leaf green tea, such as Chinese Dragon Well or Japanese sencha, in a cup. Add hot water (about 190°F, just below a boil) and steep for 3 minutes to make a cup of tea. (Go ahead and drink the tea; it’s not needed for the paste.) Press out excess water from the leaves, and transfer to a glass or plastic container. Partially cover and leave at room temperature for 2 days. The tea should take on an aroma resembling overripe fruit.
Mince 1 clove of garlic and a teaspoon’s worth of ginger and place in a food processor. Add the tea leaves and ¼ teaspoon salt and pulse briefly to break up the leaves. Drizzle in 3 tablespoons canola oil and season with 1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar. At this point, the blend is ready to be used in the Tea Leaf Salad recipe, but refrigerate it overnight for a deeper flavor.
TEA LEAF DRESSING
In Myanmar, you can buy tea leaves in jars or foil packets that can be stored in the refrigerator for at least a year. After years of hearing customers lament the lack of retail sources for fermented tea leaves, Burma Superstar started selling jars of laphet dressing in 2014 at the restaurants and in stores. The main point is to keep your eyes out because laphet is becoming more available in stores and online.
To turn tea leaves into a dressing for salad, Burmese cooks crush them with oil and seasonings in a mortar and pestle. A brief whirl in a food processor also gets the job done. The key is knowing what kind of laphet you’re working with before you start. Some packs already have salt and even flavorings while others are sold unseasoned. Before you start, taste the tea leaf. If it tastes bitter, with no noticeable salt, it has not been seasoned and you’ll need to add salt. You may also be able to tell if it’s seasoned by its weight. A ¼ cup portion of unseasoned whole-leaf laphet will weigh just under 1 ounce. In comparison, seasoned, more pastelike laphet will weigh upward of 1½ ounces for a ¼ cup. If the unseasoned tea leaf is very bitter, soak it for a few minutes in cold water. You can also buy laphet dressing, which already has oil and seasoning blended in; if you do, skip this recipe and instead use the amount called for in the recipes on this page. Extra paste keeps for about 6 months in the refrigerator. It may darken or turn brown, but it will still be fine to eat.
For those who are still far from a reliable source, we offer a close facsimile (see this page).
Tea Leaf Dressing
½ packed cup (about 2 ounces) whole fermented tea leaves (laphet) or ⅓ packed cup seasoned tea leaf paste (without oil)
⅓ cup canola oil
1 garlic clove, coarsely chopped
¼ teaspoon dried chile flakes
1 teaspoon lime or lemon juice
Salt
If using whole, unseasoned laphet leaves, soak them for 5 minutes in cold water to extract some of the bitterness. Drain, squeezing the leaves to remove excess water. Taste the leaves. If they still taste extremely bitter, soak and drain again. Skip this step if using a seasoned paste.
Put the leaves or paste in a food processor with the garlic and chile flakes and pulse a few times. Add the lemon juice and half of the oil, briefly pulse, and then, with the processor running, drizzle in the rest of the oil. If the leaves are not preseasoned, add 1 teaspoon salt. If the leaves are already seasoned, add only a pinch or two of salt. You will have about ½ cup of tea leaf dressing.
TEA LEAF SALAD
(LAPHET THOKE)
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why tea leaf salad—laphet thoke—is so addictive, but it has something to do with its singular combination of textures and savory, salty, mildly sour flavors—and, of course, the caffeine kick you get after eating it. This version of laphet thoke is served in a large bowl with heaps of peanuts, toasted sesame seeds, crispy garlic, fried yellow split peas, tomato, jalapeño, and shredded lettuce. The textures and flavors all enhance the deep umami quality of the laphet.
SERVES 4 AS PART OF A LARGER MEAL
6 cups thinly sliced romaine lettuce (about 1½ heads romaine)
½ cup Tea Leaf Dressing
¼ cup Fried Garlic Chips
¼ cup Fried Yellow Split Peas
¼ cup coarsely chopped toasted peanuts
¼ cup toasted sunflower seeds
1 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
1 Roma tomato, seeded and diced
1 small jalapeño, seeded and diced (about ¼ cup)
1 tablespoon shrimp powder (see this page)
2 teaspoons fish sauce or a few generous pinches of salt
1 lemon or lime, cut into wedges
To make the salad, place a bed of lettuce in the center of a large plate or platter. Spoon the tea leaf dressing into the center of the lettuce. Around the lettuce, arrange separate piles of fried garlic, split peas, peanuts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, tomato, and jalapeño. Sprinkle with shrimp powder and drizzle with fish sauce. Before serving, squeeze 2 lemon wedges over the plate. Using 2 forks, mix the ingredients together until the tea leaves lightly coat the lettuce. Taste, adding more lemon or fish sauce at the table, if desired.
TEA LEAF RICE SALAD
This is the recipe to make when you happen to have leftover jasmine rice and have found a source for laphet. With shrimp paste, it’s a more pungent take on tea leaf salad with deeper umami flavor. For a spicier version, add half a minced Thai chile. Served at room temperature, it exemplifies the Burmese tradition of making a delicious plate of food out of a few odds and ends.
SERVES 4 AS PART OF A LARGER MEAL
1 cup shredded cabbage
½ teaspoon shrimp paste
1 teaspoon water
2 teaspoons fish sauce
¼ cup Tea Leaf Dressing
3 cups cooked jasmine rice (about 1 cup uncooked)
¼ cup Fried Onions
3 tablespoons Fried Garlic Chips
3 tablespoons toasted sunflower seeds
3 tablespoons toasted crushed peanuts
¼ cup coarsely chopped cilantro
1 lime, halved
Salt
To make the salad, place the cabbage at the base of a serving bowl. In a mixing bowl, mix the shrimp paste with the water and the fish sauce to break up the paste.
Microwave the rice briefly if it’s cold from the refrigerator. If it’s just cooked, scoop the rice out of the rice cooker or pot. Add the rice to the shrimp paste and fish sauce. Mix in the tea leaf dressing. Gently fold in the fried onions, fried garlic, sunflower seeds, peanuts, and cilantro. Squeeze the lime over the top and mix well. Taste, seasoning with salt or more fish sauce if desired. Spoon into the bowl with the cabbage and serve.
