It’s fitting, then, that the Strand features prominently on the cover of Robert Carmack and Morrison Polkinghorne’s new Burma Cookbook, which spans the country’s culinary history from the time of empire to the present.
“[The Strand Hotel represents] a hundred years of history, of colonialism and independence, coming to today,” says Carmack.
“It ties the past to the present.”
Sitting side-by-side in the book are traditional Burmese dishes such as mohinga (fish noodle soup) and kha yan chin thee thoke (tomato salad) along with classic colonial fare like lobster thermidor and roast beef, which the authors recently ate at the Candacraig Hotel at Pyin Oo Lwin.
“That’s why it’s called the Burma Cookbook not the Myanmar Cookbook because [we wanted to include that] sort of colonial style and the history of Myanmar,” he says.
The book is the result of more than a decade of research including months criss-crossing Myanmar chatting to locals about recipes and ingredients. Some vintage cookbooks obtained from London booksellers also proved useful for rediscovering some obscure old recipes.
The Strand Hotel too served as a resource as well as an inspiration, with Carmack and Polkinghorne given access to its remaining archives of menus, photos and documents along with its chefs.
“The kitchen staff were very helpful with us, saying, ‘This would be what we would do with this and that,’” Polkinghorne said.
The pair, who are nominally based in Sydney but spend much of their time researching and running Globetrotting Gourmet food tours around Southeast Asia, had different roles on the book.
US-born Carmack, a classically trained chef now specialising in Asian cuisine and the author of five cookbooks, did the writing, while Polkinghorne, an Australian textile designer and importer, was responsible for the photos and look.
“We did it with an Edwardian flavour to connote that history, with an Edwardian font and we took elements of Edwardian design but it is distinctly a fun retro look,” Carmack says. “It’s very contemporary but respectful.”
Both modern and colonial recipes are included in the book.
Polkinghorne also had the job of testing all the recipes to make sure they would work in a typical Western kitchen.
“We worked on the poori puffball recipe a lot,” said Polkinghorne. “You have to make a very flat dough and then when you fry it in the oil a minute it’s supposed to puff up into a great big ball. Getting that technique right, learning how to do the thickness and the size and the edges, and writing that all down was fabulous.
“We made quite a few mistakes there but to finally achieve that little puffball was just phenomenal to do.”
Carmack said he strove for approachability while retaining authenticity with the recipes, adding footnotes with variations instead of changing ingredients.
“Some are easy, some more complex, but they are not dumbed down or bastardised,” Carmack said.
“We don’t want people to feel intimidated thinking that these are ethnic or Asian dishes I’ll never make. All of these would work in a Western kitchen.” – The Phnom Penh Post
The Burma Cookbook is available now from Monument Books.
source: The Myanmar Times
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