I hate raining days and dull weather. The whole day, it’s been raining, cold, wet and just sucks. The worse thing is to wake up in the raining morning for work while we’re still half asleep.

Well this is not about how I hate raining day, but it’s about how I love to eat “Yakhine Mont-Te” during cold weather so the weather still counts. So this evening my mom made “Yakhine Mont-Te” and I have two bowls full as soon as I got back from work. There is nothing like the taste of hot-chili-pepper soup to drink in a cold, bad weather like today.

Back in Burma, “Yakhine Mont-Te” is most popular in winter days. You got to eat with lots of pepper and chili and while it’s very hot. If you’re Burmese I bet you know what Yakhine Mont-Te is. But for the sake of my non-Burmese friends, let me do a bit of explaining.

Yakhine : a tribe/group out of hundreds of tribes in Myanmar.
Mont-Te : it has different meanings depending on how u use it. Some cases it means “salad”, in this case it mean mix soup.
So “Yakhine-Mont-Te” means Yakhine soup…or whatever it means. You got the idea. “Yakhine Mont-Te” is a food soup (obviously! ). It’s a specialty of Yakhine people. Well Burmese(Burman) people can make that very well too.

It’s very easy to make and takes only a few minutes if you have all the ingredients. The main ingredients here are some good fish and a good piece of “Nga Pi” (Burmese Chocolate/Fish Paste).

In Burma we use “Ngar Khu”, “Ngar Gyin” (Fish Types) for this. I think my mom use “Wah Lu” fish today, but it’s better with those colored fishes, they’re softer and sweeter. Then you need a good “Yakhine Nga Pi” and lots of grinded dry prawns.

All those gonna make it sweet but it’s not support to be sweet. It’s support to be hot. For that you need lots of black peppers and white pepper afterward. Well the idea is you mix all up in water and let it boil. Put some salt too ofcos. I’m not quite sure whether the fish needs to be cooked first or can use raw one…(will check with mom and update soon).

So that’s done the soup part. But you can’t drink the soup alone. You need vermicelli(Mont-Fat) to mix with. You have to boil vermicelli separately and drain the water out. Put little oil to it so that it’s good to handle.
When the soup ready, put soup and vermicelli in a bowl and done.
Ah…not quite.

To make it better, you need three more things.

• Crushed green chili and garlic in water to make green chili sauce which makes the pepper hot soup – chili-pepper hot.
• Fried Onion with curry power in lots of oil. (Se-Chat) Put a few to color up the soup.
• And ofcos coriander (Nan Nan Pin) for a good smell.

That’s it! You have a perfect “Yakhine Mont-Te”.

I take some shots of it to share with you but I forgot to put coriander in there. Yummy!
If you want proper recipe, go ask my mom.

Technorati Tags: Yakhine Mont-Te, Hot-Chili-Pepper, Vermicelli Soup, Burmese Recipes

က်မ အေမက သူသြင္ေပးေနၾက အာလူးကို ဒီေန႔မွ က်မအား အျမင္ကပ္ ဆႏၵျပၿပီး ကိုယ္ဟာကိုယ္ သြင္္ခိုင္းလိုက္ သျဇင့္၊ ဗိုက္ကဆာဆာ၊ စိတ္ကတိုတိုျဖင့္ အာလူးသြင္ရင္း ထြက္ေပၚ လာေသာ အေတြးအပိုင္းအစေလးမ်ားကို ခ်ေရးလိုက္ျခင္း ျဖစ္ပါသည္။

ေအးစက္ မာေၾကာၿပီး၊ အေရာင္ကင္းမဲ့လွတဲ့၊ က်မရဲ့ လက္ေခ်ာင္းမ်ားဟာ…

• ကီးဘုတ္တစ္ခုေပၚမွာ သြက္လက္လ်င္ျမန္စြာ
  ေျပးလႊား ေဆာ့ကစား တတ္တယ္
• စာရြက္သားျဖဴ တစ္ခုေပၚမွာ၊ ညီညာဝိုင္းစက္တဲ့
  အကၡရာမ်ားကို ခဲသားမ်ားနဲ႔၊ ေရးျခစ္တတ္တယ္
• စုတ္တံတစ္ေခ်ာင္းကို က်င္လည္စြာ ေဝႊ႔ရမ္းၿပီး
  ရုပ္လံုးေပၚေအာင္ ေဆးသားမ်ားနဲ႔ ျခယ္မႉန္းအသက္သြင္းတတ္တယ္
• သိုးေမႊးခ်ည္ခင္ကို အပ္တစ္ေခ်ာင္းႏွင့္
  ဒီဇိုင္းအမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳး ေဖာ္တတ္တယ္
• ဆယ္ေခ်ာင္းေသာ လက္အဆံုကို၊ စည္းခ်က္ညီစြာ
  အကြက္က်က် ယိမ္းႏြဲ႔ၿပီး ကကြက္တစ္ခု ဖန္တီးတတ္တယ္
• ဘတ္တံတစ္ေခ်ာင္းကို အနိမ့္အျမင့္၊ အတိုးအခ် လိုအပ္သလို အားသံုးၿပီး
  ၾကက္ေတာင္တစ္လံုး တဖတ္ကြင္းထဲ က်ေအာင္ ရိုက္တတ္တယ္
• လက္စစ္မ်ားကိုေကြးၿပီး ဂ်စ္ကန္ကန္လုပ္တတ္ေသာ ညီမရဲ့ေခါင္းကို
  ေဒါက္ကနဲ ျမည္ေအာင္ေခါက္တတ္တယ္
• အလြန္အစသန္ေသာ ေမာင္ကို၊ က်စ္က်စ္ဆုပ္ထားတဲ့
  လက္ေခ်ာင္းမ်ားနဲ႔ ထိုးႏွက္ကုတ္ျခစ္တတ္တယ္
• က်မအျမင္ကပ္ေအာင္ လုပ္ေသာသူမ်ားကို၊ က်မရဲ့လက္မ်ားက
  ေတြ႔ရာတုတ္တစ္ေခ်ာင္းကို ေကာက္၍ေသာ္၄င္း
  လက္ခ်ီးသက္သက္ ေသာ္၄င္း
  လွည့္ရိုက္ရန္ ဝန္ေလးေလ့ မရွိခဲ့

ဤမွ် အသံုးဝင္လွေသာ က်မ၏ လက္မ်ားသည္
ဓါးတစ္ေခ်ာင္း၊ အာလူးတစ္လံုးႏွင့္ ေတြ႔မိေသာ အခါ…

ဓါးတစ္ေခ်ာင္း ႏွင့္ အာလူး

ဓါးတစ္ေခ်ာင္းကိုင္ ဆရာမနိုင္
ပြက္ပြက္ညံေအာင္ဆိုးလွ၏။

အာလူးတစ္လံုးသြင္ ရပ္ကြက္တြင္
ျပဲျပဲစင္ေအာင္ ၾကားရ၏။

အရပ္ကူပါ လူဝိုင္းပါ
အေမလာ လွည္ပါ တဆာဆာ။
အျဖစ္ၾကီးက ၾကီးသေနာ္၊
ေမာင္သာမိရဲ႔ ၾကီးေတာ္။
(Ok I don’t know where that come from.)

တစ္လံုးႏႊာ တစ္နာရီ၊ လုပ္ပါအံုး ကုန္ၿပီ
အသားထြင္သလား၊ အခြံႏႊာတာလား

လက္ကတုန္ရင္၊ ဓါးစုတ္က မလႉပ္ခ်င္
အခြံနာက မထြက္၊ ျပတ္တာက ငါ့လက္။

ဖြတ္မရ၊ ဓါးဆံုး၊ ငါ့အာလူးတစ္လံုး
ျပဳတ္လို႔ ထုေထာင္းၿပီး၊
ငပိေထာင္း လုပ္ခဲ့၏ ။ ။

French Fries လုပ္ဖို ၾကိဳးစားေနဆဲ က်မဘဝေလးပါ။

Happy Chinese New Year to all Chinese, part Chinese, half Chinese, quarter Chinese, 10c Chinese, short Chinese, long Chinese , whatever Chinese and whoever celebrating it.

Unfortunately I got nothing to say except for the above wish.

Ok, that’s not true, I got some more to say.
I’m sure some of you notice I got some Chinese blood in me by my look. Big round face, flat nose, big teeth, glass etc.
Yep, I got a few percent Chinese from my Dad’s side. Mind you though, don’t say I’m Chinese in front of me. I hate that alot, I hate whenever people mistaken me as a Chinese girl.
No, I got nothing against Chinese, just that I don’t regard myself as one because I was born in Myanmar and I take pride in being a Burmese.

Well, to think of it, I’m not even a half Burmese. My dad being a 90% Chinese + 10% Shan and my mom being 25% Rakhine (Yakhine)+ 75% Burmese, makes me hmmmm…I don’t know…40%? 25%? Burmese blood in me.

But Yakhine and Shan are counted as one of the 8 major native races of Burma so yah…I count myself as Burmese (as countryman of Burma) but closer toward Rakhine.

One slack thing about being a mix blood is that, you don’t know which side you exactly belong to. Especially in my family, my father is half Chinese but he doesn’t know a single thing about Chinese. I mean he knows Chinese and their culture for sure but I mean in a way that he can’t speak or write or understand anything Chinese. So he can’t say he is Chinese except that he looks like one. That’s the main reason I don’t take myself as a part Chinese. I don’t know how to speak/write Chinese. I don’t belong to that race because I know nothing about them. I don’t know what’s the main significant of this new year celebration and stuffs.

Every year we celebrate do prayers at home. My father being the eldest in his family, he has to carry on the tradition to do the prayers. That’s what my grand mother says but she also doesn’t know how to speak/write/understand Chinese. They just passing along the traditions cos’ they are the eldest in the family and that’s what they are told to do so.

Every year we have a bit of fight regarding Chinese New Year celebration, me and my father (rather with granny). My grandmother says since I’m the eldest in the family, I’ll have to carry on this tradition when I have my own family. I give her a big “No”. I told them since I don’t know a thing about Chinese and I’m no Mahayana Buddhist or Tao Buddhism, I won’t do those Chinese stuffs. I’m 100% Theravada Buddhism so I don’t worship/pray for the deaths. Plus I’ll only do/follow things that I understand the proper significant of. Interesting enough, my dad doesn’t force me or say anything on this.

Anyway today yesterday my mom prepared some meals and we had a nice little feast for Chinese New Year. As usual fried noodles, fried vermicelli with veges, some chicken, pork, fish, prawn and a good soup are the must dishes for us. There are some Chinese sweets too but we forgot to buy “TiKwe” (the brownish chewy sweet thing) this year. Do you know you have to kinda invite your death ancestors forehand (say a day before or so) with proper date and time to visit the house. Kinda freaky huh LOL. And the food…you gotta have whole meat, whole chicken, whole pork kind of thing. I guess, after all those are for deaths/ghosts/whatever and they eat big meat rite? It’s just stupid and I don’t understand it at all. Then you light the candles and scented sticks to say prayers like, may all those deaths look after the family health, wealth, the children education, bless us all blar blar blar. And you hold those scented sticks, bend back and forth three, four times then let the death eat till the candles finished. The people can eat after that, but I can’t wait till the candles finish so I grab some food and dine together with the deaths My granny doesn’t approve of that but hey a gal gotta do what she gotta do when she’s hungry.

When the meal finished, we have to burn some gold papers, silver papers, fake money and stuffs. You make little toys out of those papers. Like a boat or a plane or whatever, we don’t know how to make nice stuffs so only boats we made…they look rather like canoe to me. Anyway I hope my death ancestors enjoy sailing around. :p

Ok, now the whole time I’ve been fooling around with things but my sister is really into it. She do prayers properly, she prepare food and wait till the proper time to eat and help making paper toys and burning them. Gosh I sometime don’t understand her, she’s very cheeky in most of the stuffs but quite religious and follows whatever the father does, after all she’s the dad’s fav gal. My brother and I don’t care much about those, I guess she should be the one who carry on the tradition and not the eldest, Me. :p

Anyway, my apologies to all the Chinese if I offend the traditions in some ways. I don’t understand the proper ways so please do ignore this foolish girl. But hey I love the foods, Chinese foods are always my favorites and I enjoy every single one of them. Deep respect for all the great chefs.

Happy Chinese New Year!!!

This post has been sitting as a draft for quite a long time and finally I got to write about it.
Have you ever wondered the luxury of lazing on the beach, under the sun, reading a favorite novel and drinking fresh green coconut juice?

When I started school here in Fiji Form3, my class mates asked me whether we have any coconut trees and cows back in Burma. I was gonna say “The what?, I’ve never seen/heard of any coconut tree or cows in Burma, and it’s the first time ever to see them in Fiji”, but then they’re just some simple curious kids so I answered them truthfully that we have those back in Burma. Ofcos we were laughing our heads off when I tell my family about it.

(more…)

Some of you might remember, sometime back I’ve written about “Indian Engagement Party”, and guess what, now it’s their wedding.

It’s all started with Sarnil fall in love with Krishma (or the other way round/vise versa, I really don’t know) and left us muddling with projects back in office. Inspite of some of us desperate attempt to hold him back in the office, he got it through and finally tied a knot with Krishma. I was honored to attend to their wedding. It was quite a memorable event and I would definitely remember for sometimes.

It was a beautiful, sunny gloomy, rainy, cold, wet, cloudy morning. I really hate going out in the rainy, wet weather and I almost decided not to go to the wedding. But the rain was in my favor and stopped for an hour, so I rush there around 11:30am. The wedding was supposed to be at 11am but as usual everyone’s on Fiji Time and when I got there, not much guests have arrive yet.

I had a bit of problem finding where/who to give the wedding gift to as the gift table was quite hidden by a group of ladies doing “puja” (I think that’s what they call it).

Note 1: Nobody bother receiving the gifts or welcome the guests in.

Well, I had to blame my four eyes for not looking properly but those eyes did quite well in finding the gang from work. Thanks to Jason and Alesi’s matching outfits.

Note 2: Those outfits, WOW! Very flowery, very distinguishing.

I started taking photo of Sarnil receiving “Puja” with some $$$ in his lap. Then I went out to take a quick snap of the temple and the car. This is the first time I been to Hindu Temple (rather the compound).

Note 3: I see…quite a few $2 notes, I waited for a while hoping to find $5/other notes drop to his lap. Nope. I see only $2s.

The guests started arriving and the wedding was about to start so I went back to my seat and had a bit of nose around about the new face. No doubt, the new guy was Jason’s brother and Mr Sheehy having a bit of problem introducing him, I had to ask first.

Note 4: Oh so that’s #2 out of 6 bros. Look alike but different.

The priest started praying for the groom in the “Mandut” and after a while the bride showed up. There were about 100 or so “Ohn … BaGaWar, etc” prayers, pour some water here and there, spraying rice or some yellow flower petals over the couple heads and the family gave some kisses to the couple.
I couldn’t see all those processes from the back so I went in front to sit with some Indian ladies and had a few chat about :

• What’s the priest doing?,
• What’s the significant of the leaves in front?,
• Why they always use the elephant god image in wedding cards and ceremonies/why other gods not present here?,
• Are you the relative of bride or groom?,
• Where/who are their parents?,
• Why the groom’s mother not present?,
• Why they always do 3 days ceremony?,
• Why are they burning woods?,
• What is that stuffs they mixing to put in the fire?
• And many other stupid questions.

Poor lady couldn’t concentrate on the wedding and had to answer my questions.
I’m not sure she got annoy with some of my questions or she just doesn’t know how to explain so sometime she just give me very unresolved answers like “That’s the way it is”, “We always do like that”, a short “Yes” with no other explanation, etc.
Thank god, the lady didn’t sheeww me away. I can be very annoying sometime. LOL

I just found out that Indian weddings can be very Smokey. You know they had lots of stuffs to burn. I think some scent wood (smell like mixture of sandal wood, KaRa’Mat, NaThaPhyu…I think) were burn up first and when the fire growing, they mixed rice, pop corn? A few things I don’t know and burn them all. The smoke and the smells are incredibly eye tearing.

After those burnings, the couple started going round about. I’m not sure how they do that in Fiji but I’m pretty sure I thought I seen they tie the groom’s shawl with the brides, then the groom walk in front and the bride follow, in most of the Indian movies I’ve seen. But then I might be wrong, I don’t know.
Check out this picture, not quite right … I think.

Note 5: I just think the man usually walks in front and the lady follows. May be “Lady’s First” here.

Now the most memorable thing about this wedding was that we had a bit of tragedy. No, nothing happened to us but the unfortunate bird got its wing and feathers ripped off by the ceiling fan. That little bird has been woozing about in the hall and finally there go a loud puff. I think he might have been drunk or blind I don’t know but the bird just collided with the fan and the feathers flew off everywhere. Everyone attention was now on the bleeding bird, which was just right in front of the Mandut where the couple were started to do their 7 round of walk. If I was not mistaken, it happened on their 2nd round of the walk.

Sarnil gave a big frown to the bird and carry on with the walk. You bet, we all got a bit of shock. It happened just above where I was sitting and I really wanted to take a picture of that bird but everyone was watching and feeling bad about the event, it would be very unwise and rude to go take picture of it. First I stood up, just to go take that photo but I stopped myself and went to sit with our group at the back. According to the witnesses, the poor bird didn’t get killed but couldn’t fly and walked out for the hall itself. Unfortunately I didn’t see the bird, the only thing I saw was lots of feathers and some blood under the front seats.

Note 6: 2 loud bangs(somewhat like car wheel busting), 1 big busted balloon, 1 injured bird. Hmm…something to think about.

Before the ceremony was over, we got hungry and decided to take an early lunch. We were the very first group to eat and some of the meals were still preparing.
Ok now…how should I say…if I say I enjoyed the lunch then I would be lying. Let just say, lunch was alright, others seem to enjoy it quite a lot and even taking another serves. I think my taste bud is different, I didn’t like any of the food there. May be I’m not use to Indian curries. There were about 5/6 different varieties.

• Tomato Chutney
• Beans Sprout curry
• Palau (“Dan Pout” kind of Spicy Rice but totally different from Burmese “Dan Pout”)
  It’s vegetarian Palau, but no vegetable or what so ever in there except for some green peas. Brown cook rice with lots of “Masalas”.
• Tomato and yellow bean curry
• Some sweet round things(which should be more like dessert than proper meal)
• and Puris (but that’s optional – it u take palau then no puri)

It was really hot, I do eat hot stuffs but that was just too hot for me. I can’t eat at all and I took only 2 – 3 bite on potato then me done there.
Man the worst thing is nobody to see to the guests…may be I don’t know anyone there and if you’re relative or indian friends then I don’t know. People were coming to eat and you take your own plate to the back and wash it. I always have a problem with eating hands and I seriously wanted to wash my hands so I took my plate to the back, wash the plate and wash my hands as well.
This was the first wedding where I have to wash my own plate hehe

After the meal, we took some photos with the couple and also as a group. Oh yah the bride cannot come out from the room after the wedding, I don’t know why. So we can only take with one of them each time. There were alot of smiles that day and hehe I just can’t help noticing some of the smiles.

Just another Colgate Ads. Can you guess which is which?

When I got home, I was so hungry and had proper lunch with my fav fish curry, sour leave soup and mixed veges. My mom was shocked to see me so hungry

Final Note:I like Ian’s Shirt, Selena’s Shoe, Alesi’s Dimples and Daniel’s Smile.

There, that was my experiences on last saturday wedding.
I just pray that Sarnil doesn’t get mad at me for talking a bit of cow $hit here.
More photos: Check out the Gallery

Last weekend our family and a friend of us gather to eat “Hta Min Thote”, Burmese Rice Salad. Our friend(uncle KMCho) is very good at cooking and almost every weekend, he would make something special and my mom makes a few more and we eat together. This time, while my mom was preparing for morning (break-lunch) “Hta Min Thote”, uncle called and said he’s preparing to make “Mandalay Mont Tee”. So he brought some stuffs, we added some more and finally quite a lot of ingredients to make “A Thote Sone” (mixed salad).

I had 2 serves of “Hta Min Thote” with lots of chili, seaweeds and green pawpaw. I don’t’ like “Mandalay Mont Tee” because it’s too oily and make you go sleepy. My bro ate 3 types of “Mont Tee” (salad) with different varieties. My mom was the only one who mix stuffs for all of us so she was very busy mixing then.

One thing I love about Burmese Foods is cos’ we have lots of varieties in a single dish. But that’s the very same thing I hate about Burmese Food. It takes a lot of time to prepare and too many stuffs to add.

I’m not good with cooking/chopping/peeling/preparing or anything to do with food matters, except eating. If I’ll have to prepare this kind of meal for myself, I would never ever be able to do that. I take about 7-10 mins just to slice up one onion and think of all those stuffs to slice, chop, boil, mix …. Arrggggghhhhhh … just too much for me.

Just for 15 – 20 min of delicious meal, you’ll need the whole morning to prepare. That’s just not right. But for those who love cooking then they might enjoy doing all those. So here are some of the ingredients you need to make one good “Burmese Hta Min Thote”.

Main Ingredients:

• Cooked Rice, (Hta Min)
• Boiled Vermicelli, (Kyar San)
• Boiled Noodle, (Khout Swal)
• Chicken Curry, (Kyat Thar See Chat)
• Boiled Eggs (Kyat Ou Pyout)
• Dry Prawns (Pa Zon Chout)

Seasonings:

• Chili Powder (Nga Yote Thee Mhont)
• Roasted Pea Powder (Pall Mhont)
• Fish Source (Ngan Pyar Yae)
• Tamarind Juice (Ma Gyee Phyaw Yae)
• Fried Onion (Kyat Thon Nee See Chat)
• Fried Garlic (Kyat Thon Phyu See Chat)
• Seasoning Powder (A Cho Mhont)
• Salt (Sarr)

Veges:

• Beans Sprout (Pal Pin Pout)
• Cabbage (White – slice roughly, Green – slice finely) (Gaw Fee)
• Seaweed (Kyout Kyaw, Yae Nheyit)
• Boiled Potato (Ar luu)
• Green Paw Paw (Thin Paw Thee Chit)
• Spring Onion
• Lime

Side Dish:

• Onion Salad with lime juice (Kyat Thon Nee Thote)
• Chicken Stock Soup (Kyat Thar Sout Pyout)
• Fried Crispy Noodle (Khout Swal Mont Kyout)

Well that’s all we add in our “Hta Min Thote”. If you want, you can add some more like “Tohuu”, “Hta Min Nee”, “Hta Min Sane” etc. The more ingredients you add, the better your “Hta Min Thote” will be, ofcos you also need to know how to mix the right potions of all those stuffs.
Tough job to prepare one good meal huh? Oh mind you though, “Hta Min Thote” is not a main meal for Burmese. It’s just a breakfast kind of thing.

So how’s your weekend meals like?

Ok someone explain me how in the name did they pile those spices that high and in that shape?
My understanding of spices is that they tend to flow over or blown away easily if placed in the open. This one is just amazing, no wind to blow them away or no movement around, make them so still???

I wonder how they sell them…can’t scoop with the spoon from those heaps for sure, may be those are just for show casing and must have ready packed ones for selling.
Hmmm…interesting.

Image via Moveable Feast.