Breakfast
Mohinga
Mohinga is the national dish of Myanmar. Mohinga is fish soup made with rice noodles, typically served as a hearty breakfast. It features a rich broth flavored with lemongrass, turmeric, and fish sauce, often garnished with boiled eggs, cilantro, and crispy fritters. Mohinga is readily available in most parts of the country, sold by street hawkers and roadside stalls in larger cities. Mohinga is traditionally eaten for breakfast, but today is eaten at any time of day. Egg, onions or herbs can be added into the dish.
The main ingredients of mohinga are gram flour and/or crushed toasted rice, garlic, shallots or onions, lemongrass, ginger, fish paste, fish sauce, and catfish (or other types of fishes, such as Mrigal carp). The ingredients are combined in a rich broth, which is cooked and kept on the boil. Mohinga is served with rice vermicelli, dressed and garnished with fish sauce, a squeeze of lime, crisp fried onions, coriander, spring onions, crushed dried chillis, and, as optional toppings, deep-fried Burmese fritters such as split chickpeas, urad dal, gourd, sliced pieces of youtiao, as well as boiled egg and fried ngapi fish cake. Mohinga is eaten with Chinese soup spoons, which are known as mohinga zun (lit. 'mohinga spoons') in Burmese.
Mohinga is a very common breakfast dish in Myanmar, and available as an "all-day breakfast" in many towns and cities. Mohinga can be served as a formal dish made from scratch as well as from a ready-made powder used for making the broth. Mohinga used to be available only early in the morning and at street pwès (open air stage performances), zat pwès (open air dance performances) or theatres at night. Street hawkers often sell mohinga, with some carrying the soup cauldron on a stove on one side of a shoulder pole, with rice vermicelli and other ingredients, along with bowls and spoons, on the other. Trishaw peddlers began to appear in the 1960s and some of them set up pavement stalls making mohinga available all day.[citation needed]
