Gourmand award-winning author Mohana Gill hopes to give Myanmar cuisine its long overdue recognition.
For a country that borders gastronomical heavens that are India, China and Thailand, it is unfortunate that the food of Myanmar is much less well-known, if not completely obscure.
Hoping to bring about a change and introduce its delicious cuisine – and in the process, Myanmar’s beautiful culture and customs – is culinary exponent and five-time Gourmand World Cookbook Award winner Mohana Gill.
In her latest book Myanmar: Cuisine, Culture and Customs, Mohana writes about the country of her birth and shares more than 70 recipes featuring the authentic tastes and flavours of the sovereign state.
Seated in her spacious home in Bukit Gasing, Petaling Jaya, Mohana speaks passionately about her family and food, two of her favourite things in life, and her eyes light up when the topic turns to Myanmar.
“I was born and brought up in Myanmar and lived the first 20-odd years of my life over there. I wanted to write a book on Myanmar cuisine because the country has been in obscurity for the last 50 years. Nobody knows anything about its cuisine, let alone the culture, custom and the people,” says the author who is now in her seventies.
Culinary exponent and five-time World Cookbook Gourmand Award winner Mohana Gill wants to share the tasty and healthy Myanmar cuisine with the world.
Culinary exponent and five-time World Cookbook Gourmand Award winner Mohana Gill wants to share the tasty and healthy Myanmar cuisine with the world.
“It is only in the last couple of years that Myanmar has opened up and I really want to present to the world new cuisines from there.”
A sprightly mother of three, Mohana is a firm believer in leading a healthy lifestyle and eating healthy, which is how she describes the food from that particular South-East Asian country.
“They eat a lot of vegetables, sometimes raw like ulam and there are many soup-based dishes in their meals. Because I’m a non-meat eater, the recipes that I feature in the book are mainly vegetarian and seafood-based. However, the Burmese do eat meat, so there are a few meat-based dishes in the book as well,” she says, adding that the book could be used as a reference to understand Myanmar cuisine.
She explains that Myanmar cuisine is definitely influenced by the Chinese, Indian and Thai way of cooking although, it also has its own unique elements.
“The people in Myanmar love to enjoy their food separately, unlike us here who have our nasi campur and what not. There, they will spread every dish on the table and enjoy it one dish after another. They will have a little bit of rice, and have it with some fish, then some vegetables, then some meat. That way, they are able to enjoy each dish as it should be enjoyed,” she explains.
The recipes in her book are mostly for dishes Mohana enjoyed eating and cooking while growing up, which she describes as a wonderful experience having spent it understanding and exploring different cultures and cuisines.
“During the Japanese occupation, we had to move from the city to a village and we lived in a terrace house, with neighbours from different races. I had Bengali and Tamil neighbours and I used to try their food.
Mohana Gill's Myanmar: Cuisine, Culture and Customs won the Best in the World award at the recent Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.
Mistress of spices: There are over 70 recipes in Mohana Gill’s Myanmar: Cuisine, Culture and Customs, which won the Best in the World award at the recent Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.
“I got curious about the different tastes and cuisine and every time I had the chance, I would go into the kitchen and experiment,” says Mohana who has lived in Malaysia for over 46 years.
The author adds that although her mother prepared basically Indian food, it was inevitably influenced by the Myanmar way of cooking – from the addition of ingredients like galangal and lemongrass.
“When we were growing up, it wasn’t the culture to go out and eat. Everyone would cook at home, and my mother would cook Indian food, and experiment with mee rebus from Myanmar, mee goreng, and try different food just to spice things up,” she says.
It is these food experience that Mohana wants to share with her readers that inspired her to pen Myanmar: Cuisine, Culture and Customs. It took about two years to put the book together, and Mohana wanted the experience to be as authentic as possible which is why she returned to where it all began.
“I wanted it to be a ‘real’ Burmese book, and wanted to go to Myanmar to recreate the cuisine and shoot the photos. I decided to use a Burmese photographer, and had a food designer who helped with the styling of the food,” she reveals.
In her book, Mohana makes it a point to introduce six divisions in Myanmar that have a special place in her heart, starting from Pathein (Bassein), where she was born. She describes the place and the memories they hold before moving on to Pyin U Lwin (Maymyo) where her father was born, and where they had a summer house.
“Myanmar is so big and I chose only six divisions – places that I have direct connections to and wanted to tell stories about. This gives you an idea of the different kind of culture, people and food that you can find there.”
Although she left Myanmar in 1965, Mohana still has a strong connection to the country and the people there. “I speak, read and write Burmese fluently, and have friends and former students who are still living there,” says Mohana who taught at the University of Rangoon before moving to the Faculty of Economics and Administration at Universiti Malaya in the late 60s.
Mohana visited Myanmar four times through the duration of writing the cookbook – travelling to find inspiration and images for her books and basically reconnecting with her roots. One of her good friends offered her home in Yangon for Mohana and her crew to use for about 10 days, where they prepared the food and did the photography.
Mistress of spices: There are over 70 recipes in Mohana Gill's Myanmar: Cuisine, Culture and Customs, which won the Best in the World award at the recent Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.
“I call this my happy book because it made me really happy to do this book. We all worked as a team and sometimes, when you work with people, you are not in a good mood or the others are not in a good mood. But that was not the case here. We were all happy and for the entire 10 days, we were cooking, eating and just had a great time,” Mohana reminisces. She shares that her favourite recipe in the book is Mohinga, which is something like mee rebus in Myanmar.
Mohana feels that her mother would have been very proud of the cookbook, which contains so many happy memories of their time in Myanmar.
“The recipes are from my mother, which came from her mother but of course, some of them changed according to the availability of ingredients,” says Mohana, adding that none of her three boys has a passion for cooking and may have to refer to the cookbook if they want to recreate her dishes.
Myanmar: Cuisine, Culture and Customs is the latest of Mohana’s cookbooks to win a Gourmand World Cookbook Award – the others have been on cooking with fruits and with vegetables.
“This (writing cookbooks) is my passion. I am at an age where I don’t write these books with an idea to make money. I am telling these stories so that the people can know what there is out there, hoping that they would in turn tell someone else,” she says.
http://www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/Food/News/2014/07/19/A-taste-to-remember/
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