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Under 150 calories per serving, this mild Burmese eggplant curry recipe, with its deliciously silky eggplant in a creamy, piquant gravy, is a perfect blend of sweet, sour, and spicy flavours.
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I, like a lot of the Shan people, prefer my curries to be mild, with only a little kick… but you can make yours as hot as you like. A word of warning though, if you’re using Thai chillies, don’t be fooled by the size or colour; tiny green bird’s eye chillies can pack a huge punch, whereas very often, the large red ones can be quite mild. My advice, unless you have a high tolerance for Thai chillies, stick with the ones you know!
Burmese food in Chiang Mai
One of our favourite places to eat when we lived in Chiang Mai was a really cheap hole-in-the-wall Burmese café; it was very basic but goodness, the food they served there was out of this world. For around £2 ($3), we could have two curries, two portions of rice, and an enormous bowl of lentil soup, plus all the water we could drink.
(That’s £2 for the two of us, not each!)
I miss that place sooo much!
(Sorry for the poor quality of the following couple of pics – I took them a few years ago with my very ageing iPhone 3GS!)
I’d love to tell you that I learned to make this Burmese curry while spending time in Myanmar but the truth is that there were plenty of Burmese people in Chiang Mai from whom I could learn. Most of them were construction workers and their families – some of whom I taught while volunteering at the Baan Dek Foundation.
One of the cooks there, Jeni, was the first person to teach me to cook SE Asian food, and I will always be grateful to her for introducing my tastebuds to a whole new world of flavours!
Try these Southeast Asian recipes, too!
- Som tam
- Tom yam
- Yum som-o
- Phad pak boong fai daeng
- Phad si io (pat see ew)
- Phad Thai
- Massaman curry
You’ll love my Burmese eggplant curry
Because it’s…
- creamy
- mild
- tangy
- quick and easy to make
- low-calorie
- gluten-free (if you use tamari)
- oil-free
- soy-free (if you use coconut aminos)
- full of goodness
- completely scrumptious
Serve this curry with a little rice and a couple of Burmese salads, and you’ll have a feast fit to grace any table! Enjoy!
