Recipe : Manglorean Burmese Khow Suey / Ohn No Khao Swe (Vegan Option)

Many many years ago, I posted an alternative recipe for Khow Suey and I promised to share my regular recipe too. It's only taken me 10 years to post this! 🤦

Khow Suey is a Burmese noodle soup with coconut milk which I have accompanied with Burmese split pea crackers (channa dhal) among other toppings.

I’m not sure how “authentic” my recipe is, given that I broadly follow one from the Manglorean Ladies Club Cookery Book that is over 25 years old. (My copy is the 5th edition in 1988, but the first edition was in 1978) So I suspect that this may be heavily modified - Russian Salad anyone?

But we love the flavours, so I continue to make it this way. The curry is very yum and can also be eaten with Rice or rotis, especially if you have leftovers.

While I make this curry with chicken, you can use boiled eggs, potatoes, veggies of your choice, tofu, or rehydrated beans, thus making this dish vegetarian or vegan as per your choice.

Ingredients :

750 gms boneless chicken - clean & cut into tikka size cubes

1/2 kg onions

2" ginger cleaned

1 pod garlic cleaned

20 long dry red chillies destemmed

1 tbsp fresh ground turmeric or 1/2 tsp turmeric powder

1 can coconut milk (or milk of 1 coconut)

1 tbsp oil

salt to taste

4 - 6 nests Egg noodles - cooked as per instructions on packet

Method:

Grind together half the onions (250 gms), ginger, garlic, red chillies.

In a pan, heat some oil.

Add the other half of the onions and fry till opaque.

Add turmeric and fry for a minute or so, until the raw smell goes away.

Now, add the ground masala and fry on a medium flame till cooked and the oil seperates. You can add masala water (water got from rinsing your grinder jar) or thin coconut milk to maintain moisture as you are cooking.

When the masala is cooked, add chicken (or veggies / tofu) and cook till tender.

Now add the coconut milk (medium flame) and cook till it boils. If you want to add any veggies that just need a bit of a steam, add them now.

I added 200 gms sugar snap peas and 200 gms mangetout.

Turn off the flame.

Serve noodles and curry separately with an array of toppings, so everyone can assemble their own.

Toppings Ideas:

Fried noodles

Lime wedges,

Fried onion

Chilli flakes

Fresh coriander

Fried garlic

Boiled eggs

Green chillies

Fresh onion

Pe kyaw

Roasted peanuts

Recipe: Burmese Khowswey

My friend Sheryl blogged the other day about making Khowswey for a dinner party that she hosted. I hadn't made Khowswey in awhile and the idea was planted in my head with the cravings increasing daily.

My usual recipe is closer to Sheryl's Khowswey Recipe with a fair amount of cutting and grinding involved. But I'd recently picked up a copy of Tushita Patel's Flash in the Pan which had a much much simpler recipe and that's the one I decided to try today.

As my regular readers know, I can never adhere to instructions in a recipe, so I did tweak it a bit. Here's the recipe I used, with my alterations. I do like my gravy thicker, so it feels more like a curry and less like a soup, but you can change the amount of liquid to suit you. I made the dish for 2 of us, but it can be easily ramped up for large parties.

Ingredients:
1/2 kg chicken (I used thighs today, but I think boneless tikka kebab sized pieces work best)
1 tsp gram flour (besan)
2 cups thin coconut milk (I diluted a 200ml pack of Coconut milk to 500 ml thin milk)
1 packet egg noodles - cook as per instructions on packet.
1 tbsp oil

Marinade:
3 tsp garlic paste
1 tsp ginger paste
2 tbsp oil
2 tsp chilli powder (adjust to taste)
1 tsp Turmeric powder
2 tbsp fish sauce (I'm not sure how I feel about this ingredient, in this dish. It gave a fishy smell to the gravy which overpowered the kitchen when cooking, but was very lightly flavored once cooked)
salt to taste

Toppings:

1 Finely sliced Onion
4-5 cloves of garlic Finely sliced
1 spring onion chopped
crushed peanuts
red chilli flakes
chopped corriander
lime wedges
Sliced hard boiled egg

Method:
Mix all the ingredients for the marinade and marinate the chicken in this for at least one hour.

In a pan, warm the oil.
Fry the garlic slices till crisp and light brown, remove. Reserve for topping
In the same oil, fry the sliced onion till crisp and caramelised, remove.
To the same oil, add the marinated chicken and the marinade. Cook for 15 minutes.
Stir in the gram flour and the coconut milk and cook on low heat till the chicken is completely cooked.

If serving khowswey at a dinner, its really pretty and attractive to serve each topping in its own bowl and let the guests assemble and flavour their own portions. See Sheryl's Khowswey Post for serving ideas.

Since I was cooking it for just the 2 of us, I assembled each dish myself. Noodles on the bottom, Add some curry and chicken and then sprinkle whichever toppings you like on it.

You can add any number of toppings. You can add vegetables like baby corn, snap peas and broccolli to the curry in the final cooking stage, if you want to sneak veggies into the dish.

Maybe I will post my other recipe too sometime. Tastewise I prefer the other one, but this is so quick to assemble that its worth adding to your files.

Edited on 17th October to add:
A big question with Khowswey is what to do with leftovers. Especially the toppings.
Fresh ingredients like chopped spring onions, onions, green chillies, corriander, don't keep very well for more than 12 hours, even refrigerated. So I normally add these to the curry before refrigerating leftovers.
The fried garlic, fried onions, boiled eggs will keep relatively well. So pack them individually in air tight boxes. Onions and garlic will keep outside for a couple of days depending on temperature and humidity. Eggs go in the fridge.
Peanuts, chilli flakes can be put into their original boxes if they have remained clean and dry.

If I don't have much left, I just put them all into the curry before refrigerating it.

If you have a lot of curry left and not too much noodles, you can serve the curry with rice the next day. Warm it up and add some fresh herbs on top.

If like me, you run out of curry, you can turn it into a stir fry. I shredded the chicken and stir fried what was left of it with the noodles, some baby corn and topped it with some fresh herbs. (Mushrooms too are ideal at this stage, but I didnt have any fresh ones in stock)