Sanwin Makin - A Little Bit Of Burma

sanwin makin

Senwei mekei or senway mackay - that's how my friend's family, where I was introduced to a selection of food from Myanmar/Burma, used to pronounce it. Years later, when the Internet came to India I would type in those words and get nowhere. I don't remember how I finally found out - maybe I searched for 'Burmese dessert with coconut milk' or something like that, maybe my friend told me- but I realised it was spelt 'sanwin makin'. I think I tried it once before and failed, or maybe I haven't - I'm not remembering a lot of things right at the beginning of this post! But that aside, when my friend's mother made it, it would look so lovely. It was a translucent brown, and puddingy, rather like a China Grass dessert than like cake. Aunty would set it in a plate, cut it into diamonds and sprinkle poppy seed over it.

As a student of marketing strategy for the last 15 years, I have picked up some jargon from the field, including the words 'pull' and 'push'. They mean one thing in marketing but in this post, they mean quite something else! Sometimes the pull of a memory is so strong that it's almost a physical sensation, but this is not why I attempted this dessert. It was push - I needed to push out some brown semolina (brown sooji/godhuma rava - I had the fine variety) from my kitchen. A good way to exhaust it is to find things to make with it other than upma with vegetables, which seems to be the most common use for it. You can use ordinary white sooji/semolina.

Then I did something that marketers, especially retailers, are unhappy about. When I went to look for the coconut milk cartons that I usually buy, I saw that they were dated April. And this was September. I scrabbled further into the dark recesses of the shelf and found some packed in July. I took all half a dozen of them and paid for them. (One retailer actually protested when I said I always look for the most recently packed ones - he said I had a duty to pick up the oldest ones which were at the front because if everyone did what I did, the old ones wouldn't sell. Well, I'm not having any of that!)

I had been looking at various recipes for sanwin makin and finally followed this. It was like making a rawa porridge with coconut milk, adding the eggs after the mixture had cooled and then baking it. There were two differences from the original method: I used coconut milk instead of coconut cream and I did not manage to separate the eggs as the whites and yellows just plopped into the bowl one after the other. I ended up beating them and adding them to the pan after it had cooled, at Step 4. For about 25 minutes after I put it in the oven, it stayed flat. Then it rose gloriously.

Then it went back to normal after a while, and came out as a dense cake, moist, mildly sweet and even mildly coconutty - that was because I used coconut milk instead of coconut cream, I suppose. It was a hit at work, and someone who was on a strict diet and had lost 8 kg took it home because it was only mildly sweet.

After it had cooled

Dessert Coconut milk Burmese food Sanwin makin

Why Don't You Read Me Anymore? Some Questions on Turning Eight

This blog turned eight a few days ago, over the weekend. This is the first time I didn't put out an anniversary post on time. I did not feel like it. Given what my statistics tell me everyday, I did not think many of you would see it, let alone read it. I am more curious than sorrowful as to why so few of you visit here these days.

I'm not asking why you are not commenting. Oh no! I've gotten better at accepting that - but I am interested in knowing why my readership numbers are falling. I have never been wildly popular in numerical terms. If I were to borrow a leaf from a friend who worked in PR, I would call this a "niche blog", a "boutique blog". (But I won't borrow it - I confess that I do want to be wildly popular and wildly successful.) The readers are not many, but they were regular. They come/came for the stories, the discussion, the chat, not the photos, not even the recipes, I would guess. There would be a decent spike in readership as soon as I put out a new post and it would slow down to normal till the next post came up.

But this has changed over the past one year. Readership has plummeted, and the spike has lost its sharpness. And I am trying to understand why.

Is it because I do not blog as often as earlier? Are my posts less interesting? Is it me? Is it the death of Google Reader, because that's when I began to notice the drop in visitors. Had frequency of posts been the reason, the numbers should have started falling earlier as I had not been blogging frequently for a few months before that.

The one bright spot in recent times was this post - A Pox on Plagiarists - which took the first day's readership to an all-time high. And plummeted only on the third day, instead of the second. Of course, it touched a chord in the blogging world.

As I said, I am more curious than sorrowful, so let me know, will you, why my niche is shrinking. As much as I love blogging and want to continue it forever despite everything, I would be grateful for some cheering.

As always, thank you, dear readers, for helping sustain my blog all through these years.


Weekend Herb Blogging Curds/Yoghurt Gluten-free Potatoes

How to Rehash an Old Post - and a Recipe for Lazy Potatoes

This earlier recipe of mine was a big hit. This was in the good old golden days of blogging, in 2008. Those potatoes attained glory by sheer accident - I was busy with all manner of things, most of all an animated conversation with my friend about whose city was better to live in, when I was cooking them so they just kept roasting on the fire and attained that look! In retrospect, I realise my earlier camera was very good too, it had a food setting, but my current camera, which was much more expensive, does not.

This photo, though, was taken with The Spouse's phone. This potato curry was put together a couple of days ago when I got back home from work at 9 30 pm and could not face another meal made up of leftovers. It's less involved than even the lazy potatoes of six-and-a-half years ago - it's simple to put together when you get someone else to boil and peel the baby potatoes, which The Spouse did with far greater success than I have done in a long time.

Baby potatoes: 500 gm
Turmeric: 1 tsp
Sambaar kaaram/special chilli powder: 2 tsp
Salt: to taste
Mustard seed: 1 tsp
Black gram dal, split, hulled (urad dal): 1 tsp
Cumin: 1 tsp
Oil: 2 tbsp

Boil/pressure cook the potatoes until just tender. We let the pressure cooker whistle about 8-10 times. When the pressure drops, open the cooker, drain the potatoes, cool and then peel them.

In a pan, heat the oil. Pop the mustard seed, then add the cumin and black gram.

As the black gram turns brown add the peeled potatoes.

Now add the turmeric, the sambaar kaaram and salt to the pan, mix well. Let fry again for a while.

Serve with rice, pappucharu and curds. They make a nice snack by themselves too.

  Potatoes