Authentic Burmese Dishes: Cooking With Markus (This Is The Real Burma Book 5)

Mingalabar! Hello and a warm welcome to Burma. My name is Markus Burman and I am excited to share with you authentic Burmese recipes. I am living and working since more than 25 years in this country. I was already here when tanks were rolling on the streets, shots were fired, demonstrators and journalists killed and peaceful demonstrations crushed with brutal force. There is hardly a foreigner here who has been living permanently in Burma, since 1989 also called Myanmar, longer than I do. This has made me an authority on the subject of Burma what includes the Burmese kitchen. That's why I have written this Burmese Cookbook. I may not get Michelin stars and not get into the Michelin Guide because I have no restaurant, I may also not succeed in convincing Paul Bocuse that he has to put at least one of my dishes on his menu (well, I did not yet try) and Burmese cuisine certainly isn't exactly what can be called nouvelle cuisine but I know that the recipes in this book will put you in a position to create wonderful, exotic meals. Have a lot of fun with cooking Markus Burman's recipes and enjoy your meals alone, with family or in the company of good friends. It will in any case be a success story and people will love you even more. OK, let's turn our attention to this book.

No doubt, it is a terrific Burmese cookbook but I am convinced that recipes alone do not make a really interesting cookbook. It needs some additional information (historical and otherwise) to - in a manner of saying - add some spices to them. In other words, in order to better 'understand' and appreciate what you are cooking and eating it is necessary to have some background knowledge. So, here comes some history of Burmese cooking, Burmese dishes and their origins as well as Burmese eating habits.

At first glance it seems to be clear what Burmese cuisine is; it is that what Burmese people are cooking and eating. But taking a closer look reveals that things are not quite as clear as they seem to be. Burma is in many aspects a land of great diversity. There are many different ethnic groups such as the Mon, Shan, Kachin, Chin, Karen, Rakhine, Bamar, etc. And as diverse as the country's ethnicity is its cuisine. In other words, 'Burmese (Myanmar)' cuisine is just a catch-all term. What is called 'Burmese' cuisine is actually the sum total of the many different local (regional) cuisines and the cuisines of the bordering countries Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand for ethnic groups and their cuisines do not know clear cut and in historical terms relatively recently by humans more or less arbitrary drawn borders.

Depending on what kinds of agricultural produce are available, as well as what local and regional flora and fauna have to offer many dishes with the same name are different in taste. Is it a coastal region, is the natural environment mountainous or flat, are there rivers, is it dry and arid or marshy and wet, is it hot, is it temperate, is it cold, is the ground sandy or rocky, what is the quality of the soil, how much water for irrigation is available? These and many other things about which I will tell you in this book are determining factors for what the respective local cuisine has to offer and how it tastes.