Htamin Lethoke

The half-devoured bean sambal

Eating with your hands?

The overview pic about 75% of the way through the meal

 Before last week, I knew very very little about the country of Burma -- aka The Republic of the Union of Myanmar -- aside from their most famous export, shaving cream, of course. There are so many of these little foreign places to know about, and really one can't care about them all. After all, there are hockey playoffs this week.

One would expect that after preparing a meal in the traditional style, though, one would know more, especially about the cuisine.

One would be wrong.

I still know very, very little about the cuisine -- or the country -- of Burma. 

Despite my ignorance (and that could be my life's motto, by golly), I pulled off a meal last week that was somewhat tasty, marginally entertaining and whimsically surreal all at once.

Htamin Lethoke is a traditional Burmese dish. It translates out to "rice mixed with fingers" but perhaps a less-alarming translation would be "finger-mixed rice". It's akin to many non-Western meals wherein a starch -- or, in this case, three: rice, noodles and potatoes -- is the main ingredient in a meal and multiple tiny dishes of more expensive or intensely-flavoured dishes are eaten in little bites on the side. Indonesia has its sambals, India its thali. If you've ever had a rijsttafel you're halfway there. Except for the whole "eating with your fingers" bit, that is.

I prepared for four people -- EvO and myself plus two guests -- but as it turned out we only had one guest and so there was a hell load of food left over. I made ten little sambals (which, I realize, is probably NOT what the Burmese call them. Good, fine, I'm wrong; I don't care. Please don't bother to send me emails telling me the correct term. I. Don't. Care.) :

• coconut sambal (the orange-red thing; it's flavoured with chilie powder)
• shaved onion and chilie sambal
• roasted onion and garlic
• bean sprout sambal with red and green chilies
• preserved lemon sambal (using my preserved lemons)
• green bean sambal (pictured above)
• cucumbers in coconut milk
• tofu in black curry
• tamarind sambal
• vinegared chilie sambal

I also had two kinds of noodles -- wide rice noodles, like the kind in Pad Thai but bigger, and bean vermicelli like in salad rolls.

From what I've read and seen on the Internet, the more accurate way to eat it would be have a plate of rice and noodles per person onto which little bits of sambal-thingees would be placed and then mixed. Of course I read this AFTER we ate, so we just improvised. As you can see from the pics, we essentially placed a scoop of rice in the centre of the plate and then put little scoops of the sambal around it.

Eating with the fingers was initially a novelty but it soon became invisible and we all forgot that we were doing something so different for our culture. Near the end of the meal I suddenly realized that I had forgotten the cucumbers in the fridge. I pulled them out and gave everyone a scoop of them to try, and what I found very interesting was that we all just casually dug our fingers into a dish of sliced cucumbers in coconut milk without a second thought.

I thought of putting recipes with this post but I don't think you need them, really; it's more of a process than anything. The rice was special, though, and so here's a recipe for it.

Htamin Lethoke style rice

serves 3-6, I guess... normally we'd eat it all but there was lots left over

• 2 cups long grain white rice (I used Jasmine; you could use basmati)
• 4 cups of water
• 2 red Thai chilies, seeded and crushed in your mortar
• Oil and water, about 2 tbsp each
• Salt, to taste, afterwards

Cook rice in rice cooker. If you don't have one, you really should buy one.

Place the smooshed chilies into a small saute pan and add oil and water. Cook until it's all smooshy soft and add to cooked rice. Let rice sit for a while as you converse with your guest(s) or prepare more dishes.

Flip and fold the rice until the chile/oil mix has coated each grain of rice equally. Turn out onto a plate. Salt before you do this, of course -- and this will teach you to read a recipe to the end before starting it.