If no fish available, prawns can do!
Written by Money Tai Tai
Last Friday night after a bite of Burmese lahpet (or laphed) salad introduced by my Burmese neighbor, I got addicted to it. If there is any tea leaves available now, ones would not be surprised that I could probably going to pickle my own Kuching lahpet. It is one of the best salads I ever tasted, its’ texture is unique. This is also one of the best dishes for vegetarians, you can eat the lahpet salad simply with the rice and you will feel very satisfy after the meal, and I heard that it is one of the most favorite dishes amongst Burmese students.
As laphet becomes a limited item even amongst limited numbers of Burmese in Kuching, my Burmese neighbor even gave me a pack, but I treasure it only for special occasion.
Lahpet is a fermented tea leaves, in wet form almost taste like Chinese pickled kan lan chai (pickled olive vegetable), but almost as hot as (mild) Kuching version Korean kimji. What Burmese did is they rolled the lahpet with a kind of big leaves into cylindrical long tube shape.
If you have this kind of cylindrical long tube in hand, what you do is once unwrapped it you have to rinse the lahpet with water in order to get rid of the strong tangy bitter tea taste. Prepare a mortar pounding the fermented tea leaves with green chili and slices of young ginger to half-mash. The laypet dressing is ready after you add salt, ajinomoto and at last add generous amount of sesame oil to the mash. Use (or use softened (by salt) long white cabbage) lettuce, cucumber or tomatoes, garnished with assorted Burmese laypet assorted crunchy nuts (fried dried prawns, pumpkin seeds, broad beans, chick peas, peanuts, and sesame seeds before adding laypet dressing.
So if ones really can’t get the fermented tea leaves, another converted version you can prepare easily is using the green preserved olives. Use the mashed olives to replace the laypet dressing; you can add olive oil instead of sesame oil in this case. For assorted nuts you can replace it with pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, peanuts, toasted sesame seeds, almond slice, broad beans, cashew nuts, walnuts.
Bon appetite!
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