Talabaw (Karen Bamboo Shoot Soup)

Name: Talabaw (Karen Bamboo Shoot Soup)
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Karen
Ingredients: 400 g Fresh or vacuum-packed bamboo shoots, sliced; 400 g Snakehead fish (or any firm white fish), in chunks; 3 tbsp Jasmine rice; 1.5 L Water; 4 Shallots, sliced; 4 Garlic cloves, crushed; 1 stalk Lemongrass, bruised; 3 Bird's-eye chillies, crushed; 2 tbsp Fish sauce; 1 tsp Salt; 20 g Thai basil leaves; ½ Lime

'The great soup' of the Karen people — bamboo shoots and snakehead fish simmered with basil, thickened with a handful of rice. Born as a way to stretch scarce rice with abundant forest bamboo, and now the dish that stands for Karen cooking.

Pinagmulan

Recipe ni Karen home kitchens · 🏺 Traditional · The cooking of the Karen people of the eastern hills — foraged bamboo, river fish and a lot of soup with a little rice, a cuisine shaped by the forest rather than the market.

Karen State · the 'great soup' — An ownerless regional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms talabaw as a Karen soup of bamboo shoots, snakehead fish and basil with a small amount of rice, eaten in quantity with a little rice to conserve the grain, and its standing as the essential dish of Karen cuisine. The aromatics, the basil-off-the-heat rule, timings and quantities are this book's own.

Karagdagang impormasyon sa Wikipedia ↗

Panoorin habang niluluto · 3 na video

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⏱ 45 min🍽 4 na serving🔥 260 kcal🇲🇲 Myanmar🌶️🌶️

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Mga hakbang

Bring the water to a boil with the shallots, garlic, lemongrass and chillies. Add the rice and simmer 15 minutes, stirring now and then, until the grains burst and start to cloud the broth.
💡 Stir from the bottom. Rice sinks and catches, and a scorched pot tastes of nothing else.
Add the bamboo shoots and cook 10 minutes.
Season with fish sauce and salt, then slide in the fish. Simmer gently 6–8 minutes until it flakes — do not stir, or it breaks up.
Turn off the heat, add the basil and a squeeze of lime, and put the lid on for 2 minutes so the basil wilts into the soup.
💡 Basil off the heat. Boiled basil turns black and bitter; wilted basil stays green and tastes of itself.
Serve in deep bowls with a small mound of rice on the side — a lot of soup, a little rice, the way it has always been eaten.

💡 Mga tip

Shredded chicken or a few prawns can go in with the fish; the Karen used whatever the day brought.
If the soup gets too thick as it sits, loosen it with hot water — the rice keeps swelling.