Burmese · Main
Wet Tha See Byan
- Intermediate
- 40 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, an earthy, grounding base, finishing long and savory.
Ingredients
- 800 g pork belly, skin on, in 4 cm pieces
- 250 g red shallots
- 40 g garlic
- 30 g fresh ginger
- 200 ml peanut oil
- 12 g mild dried red chilli powder
- 5 g ground turmeric
- 10 g ngapi, fermented fish paste
- 30 ml fish sauce
- 6 g salt
- 300 ml water
The skills inside
FermentationThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
Allergen screen
Found: nuts · peanuts · fish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Blend shallots, garlic and ginger with 50 ml water to a smooth paste with no visible shreds.
- Heat the oil until a drop of paste sizzles at once, take the pot off the flame, stir in turmeric and chilli for five seconds so they bloom without scorching, then add the paste.
- Fry on medium for 20 to 25 minutes, scraping the base: the paste goes from pale and loose to brick red and thick, pulls away in one mass, and oil weeps out at the edges. 25 min
- Add pork, ngapi, fish sauce and salt, turn to coat every piece, then pour in water to sit just below the meat and simmer covered until a skewer meets no resistance.
- Take the lid off, raise the heat and cook down until the water has gone and a clear red oil floats a finger deep over the meat.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Fermentation 53 recipes
- Held somewhere with a steady temperature it can actually work at, chosen on purpose rather than wherever there happened to be room.
- There is visible activity before it is called started: bubbles, rise, or movement in the liquid. A ferment showing nothing after its first hours is not slow, it is not going.
- It smells clean: sour, yeasty, or alcoholic, with nothing putrid, and with nothing fuzzy or coloured growing where air meets it.
- Everything is under the liquid or under a cover, as the method requires: nothing solid left sitting dry in the air to spoil while the rest works.
- Judged by taste and behaviour and then STOPPED: chilled, baked, or refrigerated at the point wanted, rather than left running because the stated hours had not elapsed.
Where it goes wrong It was run on the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed. Fermentation is a rate and not a duration, so the same number of hours gives an under-developed ferment in a cold room and a slack, over-soured one in a warm one, and only tasting it would have said which.
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes
- Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
- The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
- The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
- The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
- Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.
Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Vermentino or Sauvignon Blanc
- Also Right
- Albariño
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus
Lean fish, bright acid, done: coastal whites built beside the same boats; the fresher the fish, the leaner the pour.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.