Mat Pe Kyaw

Mandalay's black gram fritters: soaked black gram ground coarse with onion, garlic, and chilli, fried into small crisp rounds, and eaten at the teashop with a sour tamarind dip

Origin: Mandalay & Upper Burma, Myanmar

From the journey of Black Gram.

Burmese fritters, a-kyaw, belong to the teashop. They are bought hot at breakfast or in the afternoon, eaten on their own with a sour-sweet tamarind sauce, or broken over other dishes, and they are made from almost anything that can be battered: gourd, onion, chickpea, shrimp, and above all beans and pulses. Mat pe kyaw is the black gram fritter. Mat pe is the Burmese name for black gram, which is soaked, ground to a coarse, sticky paste, seasoned with onion, garlic, and chilli, and fried in small flat rounds until crisp at the edges. It is also called Mandalay baya kyaw, to tell it apart from the baya kyaw of Yangon, which is made from yellow split peas. Myanmar grows more black gram than any country except India, most of it in the lowland regions of Bago and Ayeyarwady, and since the late 1980s it has grown the crop largely for export, selling the greater part of its harvest to India. But the pulse is a Burmese food as well as a Burmese commodity, eaten at home in soups, pastes, noodles, and sprouts, and in this fritter. The nearest relative of mat pe kyaw is the South Asian vada, and for the same reason: ground black gram holds air better than any other pulse, so a black gram fritter is lighter and crisper than one made from split peas. The record does not say whether the Burmese fritter descends from the vada or grew up alongside it.

Ingredients

Fritters

  • 200 g split skinned black gram (mat pe or urad dal), soaked in cold water for 6 to 8 hours
  • 4 shallots or 1 small onion, finely chopped
  • 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp fresh ginger, finely grated
  • 2 dried red chillies, crumbled, or 1 fresh green chilli, finely chopped
  • 0.5 tsp cumin seeds
  • 0.25 tsp ground turmeric
  • 1 tsp salt
  • Groundnut oil, for deep frying

Tamarind Dip

  • 2 tbsp tamarind pulp
  • 100 ml warm water
  • 1 garlic clove, crushed
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1 pinch chilli flakes and salt

Method

  1. Make the dip first. Soak the tamarind pulp in the warm water for 10 minutes, squeeze and stir it, and strain out the seeds and fibre. Stir in the garlic, sugar, chilli flakes, and salt, and set aside.
  2. Drain the black gram well and grind it in a food processor or grinder with no more than a spoonful or two of water, to a thick, coarse paste with a little texture left in it.
  3. Tip the paste into a bowl, add the shallots, garlic, ginger, chillies, cumin, turmeric, and salt, and beat it with your hand or a spoon for 2 minutes.
  4. Heat the oil in a wok or deep pan to 175°C, or until a small drop of paste rises at once with steady bubbles.
  5. With wet fingers, take a tablespoon of the paste, flatten it into a round about 5 cm across, and slide it into the oil. Fry a few at a time for 3 to 4 minutes, turning once, until deep golden and crisp.
  6. Lift out and drain on kitchen paper. Serve hot with the tamarind dip and a cup of tea.

Notes

Whole black gram with its black skin on gives a darker, earthier fritter; soak and rub off as much skin as you like. The paste can be ground a few hours ahead and kept in the fridge; beat it again before frying. This is a different fritter from the Yangon baya kyaw, which is made from yellow split peas and is flatter and denser.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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