"Recipe-6"

Ginger salad--- for an Acquaintance

We, Myanmars are known to be very friendly and hospitable people who never hesitate to invite to their homes, friends relatives or even acquaintances, to offer them typical Myanmar hospitality and traditional Myanmar snacks.
Mentioning traditional snacks, Let's talk about “gin thoke” or ginger salad. Which like our other famous snack, “Let-Phet-Thoke” pickled tea salad is consumed by the whole country.
Now, let's go into the details of making this mouth watering and exotic “gin thoke”. The ingredients to make a good “gin thoke” (or) ginger salad are sour ginger, fried coconut, fried banana, fried lablab beans, fried gram beans, fried peanuts, fried pounded sesame and bean powder to be mixed with just the right amount of oil and salt to be added.

Okay! To prepare our salad, first of all the ginger has to be cut into very thin slices. Then you take them and mixed them with salt and knead them well with you hands and later, squeeze out the juice from the ginger, rinsing it of its hot flavour. Then we put the squeezed ginger into tamarind juice for about two days, where we will get reddish colour ginger, which will have a sour taste but tantalize your taste buds.

After that, we slice our coconuts very thinly and then, fry them. In this way, we peel away the skin from the bananas, which are also thinly sliced and fry them also.

After the frying of the coconuts and bananas, we will have to sift out the excess oil. You later on fry the lablab and gram beans until they are well flaked. The peanuts and sesame have to be fried, separately.
All right, you are preparing the salad. Be sure you add just the right amount of oil and salt to the fried fritters and the sour ginger and voila--- you gave your “gin-thoke” ready, waiting for you.
Let me disclose to you a little secret in which we learnt that pilgrims visiting and paying homage to the Zalun Pyi Daw Pyan Buddha Inage in Ayeyarwaddy Division, always take back home as a take away souvenir, the famous Zalun gin thoke on ginger salad for the folks back home.
So, when visiting our lovely and hospitable country, we welcome you to taste our exotic ginger salad, and don't leave for home, without it.