'Burma Superstar'

Burmese cuisine is hard to find in Europe. Personally, altough considering myself both well-travelled and well-feed, with experience in various diverse kitchen from around the world, I can't remember one single Burmese restaurant. Otherwise, I would have know a little bit about this cuisine, before starting to read Burma Superstar.

Therefore, I've read this book as a non-fiction one, more than as an account about the menu served in Oakland's restaurant with the same name. A foodie fix in the area for decades, with affiliates inaugurated in other destinations across the USA, Burma Superstar mixes the gourmet inspiration with the basic ingredients of the meals - most of them street food - served in this part of the world.

A popular neighbourhood restaurant is able to reflect in its menu the culinary Asian melting pot. Which is a good news, especially for those aiming at reproducing those recipes at home, as you can easily find ingredients in the various Asian/Indian stores from across the world. You can easily find the spices and the sauces - oyster or Sriracha - the oils and the specific oils and the rice, the special spinach. The only thing I am not sure I can find is the laphet - the tea, used not only for the brewed drink, but usually in salads or as a dried snack. Something I might be interested to find and try out more about soon.

But besides the laphet, there are many more recipes to try, like various curries and salads, dish and dried lentils or samosas. The list of the ingredients is long and it might take a time until getting used to the flavors but adding them to the recipe is easier than expected. You only have to add them to the pan and learn how much time you need to mix them until you obtain a completely new taste out of all the diverse flavors. Beware, the Burmese cuisine is using generous amounts of oil.

The book introduces Burma/Myanmar not only as a food destination but also scatters various political and historical references - mostly Wikipedia style, neutral and not necessarily critical, but for someone finding out about this country it can be a steady beginning.

What I've found a bit under my usual visual standards was the photography, but when it comes to visual representations, everything at a great extent is relative. I love the kind of photography which completes and beautifies the writing and makes the wording attractive which was not the case here.

Personally, I would not hurry up to prepare any recipe at home until I will eventually have a taste of the professionally prepared one. For the sake of the authenticity, I need to figure out first how my personal creation should taste like. But I am so looking forward to it.

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Everything You Need to Know about Ramen

I had a lot of ramen bowls in my relatively short life, but never thought seriously about the possibility of preparing my own ramen, from step 0 onwards. After all, I suppose that exactly as creating your pasta requires more than cooking skills but also a deep knowledge of texture and combinations of ingredients, for a non-Asian like me, homemade ramen is only worth a try without a guarantee of originality. 

Ramen at Home by Brian MacDuckston is written for someone like me, keeping up with the 'real thing' recipes, but keeping in mind the Westerners. If you are living outside Japan, at the end of the book there is a long list of online resources that helps to source the right ingredients. 

Very often in Japan, the popular saying goes often that many unpleasant things - like strong winds or cold or rains - are coming from China. But there are still some things that are actually pleasant and delicious too, like ramen, which are in fact Chinese noodles whose widespred consumption started only around 1870, during the period when Japan decided to end up its centuries old isolation. It took another century almost until the ramen style actually entered the food fashion. 

Generally, those noodles are made with wheat flour, water and kansui which is an alkaline salt which binds the ingredients together until the usual chevy texture is produced. 'A good bowl of ramen is something personal. Some people like a lot of big, in-your-face flavors, while others want subtle elegance. Some people want huge amounts of fat; the more oil the better. Some bowls can be spicy, some mild. Some people want their ramen to resemble a pizza tomato sauce with a side of anchovies. Nothing is off the table. Good ramen is good ramen'. 

However, experts like Brian MacDuckston - whose culinary encounters can be read on his blog Ramen Adventures - consider that there are two main flavor components of ramen: the impact - usually created by the dried fish spices - and the after taste - the smooth, umami full taste. Last but not least, the tares - the sauce - is the main player in this story, as it can bring the taste or destroy completely the bowl harmony. Yeah, it seems things are getting more and more complicated...

But after reading the book - once, twice, as often and many times you need it to figure out what all the fuss about ramen is all about - you can easily risk a recipe or two. The directions are relatively simple, the recipes are very well organised and even if you fail at least you can slurp your pathetic ramen while looking at the beautiful photos of the real thing. It also helps to offer information about how to match different ingredients or what the recommended side dishes are - pickled cucumber, mayo, friend gyoza, among others. 

Although I am not sure if I will be brave enough in the near future to make my own ramen, at least I am sure will taste my bowl using a completely different angle of (ramen) critical thinking. This is how good cookbooks operate to the foodie brain, probably.

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review