Hello friends! Let’s get right to it. Khaut Swe.
This dish is my favorite Burmese dish EVER. And, it’s the one that I always, always remember Auntie May making and the one that Brother and I begged Mom to make. We didn’t know what it was- we merely called it the very technical and no doubt correct name of “coconut chicken.” Later I’d learn it was actually called ohn-no khaut swe (pronounced cow-swai), though it’ll always be coconut chicken to me.
There are numerous recipes out there, but I knew I had to get Auntie May’s recipe since that was the one that I know and love. After reading a bunch of them, I realized that Auntie May’s was very different in one major respect: she used yellow lentils as a base rather than the soybean or miso paste I found in so many other recipes. No surprise there, lentils were as common place in my house as milk.
So I asked Mom for the recipe and this is what she handed me a very inprecise list of ingredients. Not a recipe.
I handed it straight back to her and insist that she do better.
And so she’s done her best to create an exact recipe from the “little of this, little of that” method of cooking, and it came out perfectly, just as I remembered. And it’s so easy, I scold myself for not making it before. I vow to make it more regularly going forward.
The other thing about this, and probably one of the reasons that Brother and I loved it so much as kids, is that, unlike the Mohinga, is very mild with almost no heat at all. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t add any of those condiments I told you about a few days ago. And, like the Mohinga, you eat this with rice vermicelli.
Khaut Swe
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken, cut into pieces (wings, legs, breasts, etc)
- turmeric enough to coat the chicken pieces
- Hungarian paprika enough to coat the chicken pieces
For the base lentils
- 1 cup dry yellow lentils
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 inch ginger, chopped
For the soup
- 3 TB vegetable oil
- 3 yellow onions (about 3 cups) thickly sliced
- 3 inches fresh ginger sliced into thin toothpick size
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 TB fish sauce
- 1 15-oz can coconut milk (lite or full fat, as you prefer)
- 4 eggs, hard-boiled
- 2 cups chicken broth or stock
- 1 box vermicelli noodles, cooked to package directions
- limes/lime juice to serve
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 cup fresh cilantro to serve
Instructions
Make the base lentils
- Cook the lentils according to package directions but add 1 clove of garlic and 1" ginger root to the cooking water. Set aside. This step can be done well in advance.
Make the rest of the soup
- Sprinkle the cut chicken pieces with turmeric and paprika to coat. Sauté the chicken pieces in a deep stock pot with about 2 TB oil, about 3 minutes on each side. Remove from the pot.
- Back to the same pot, add the garlic, ginger and onions, and cook down about 4-5 minutes until soft.
- Add the coconut milk, chicken broth, fish sauce and cooked lentils to the pot. Add the chicken and cover.
- Simmer about thirty minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Add the eggs, quartered, right before serving. Serve atop the noodles and garnish with cilantro and lime.
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