Place: AA’s kitchen

We found a cooking class in the town we stayed in off of Inle Lake and the lady running it, AA, taught us absolutely practically everything I wanted to know about Burmese cuisine! We made shan noodles (more on that below), tea leaf salad, tomato salad, peanut curry, and chicken curry. Let me know if you want recipes!

Burmese food is actually like a fusion of Chinese and Indian foods, which makes a lot of sense given its geographical location. Two things they use heavily for seasoning are soy sauce and turmeric. The ingredients are a lot of the same ones I’d use in Chinese cooking, but then they turn them into curries.

Food: Shan Noodles

By far my favorite food in all of Myanmar, possibly even top 10 in my favorite foods of all time now. It’s a soup noodle, yet it’s made more like Chinese zha jiang mian, with the soup added at the end almost as an after thought by pouring on some of the water you used to boil the noodles! No flavoring from the soup whatsoever. The toppings are what give it all of its flavor. So of course the toppings are a bit on the heavier end for saltiness and savoriness, but boy does it mesh well. The topping is mainly chicken cooked with garlic and ginger and seasoned with turmeric. Some diced onions and tomatoes and a sprinkle of lime, peanuts, spring onions for garnish.