Lethok: Burmese salad mixed by hand
Posted by: Fats in: Takaw at Sursur!One of my favorites in Burma is the lethok or the raw salad mixed by hand. The first time I tried it I thought that it was vegetable sautee and thus I was eating it with rice. When I learned that it was actually “salad” (which is a term used to refer to what is actually “lethok” which in Burma means “mixed with the hands”), I was still eating it with rice because the wonderful flavor really made eating with rice so good. 
Lethok is vegetable salad and mixing is always done by hand (as in really mixing and mashing everything together with the hands). I tried mixing with utensils but it was really different - mixing by hand does make a difference in terms of texture and therefore taste.
Basic ingredients for the lethok are the following:
Salty taste: fish sauce, salt or soy sauce
Heavier taste: shrimp paste or soybean powder
Sour taste: lime, tamarind, vinegar, tomato or sour fruit or vegetable (shredded)
For moistness: the above flovors in liquid form
For filling and counter-acting moistness: shrimp powder, gram flour, peanuts, soybean, sesame seeds
For blending: oil, cooked and raw; sesame and peanut oil.
Fragrance, color and finish: chili oil, fried onion, fried garlic, roasted chilli, raw sliced onin, raw pounded garlic, coriander, mint, citron leaf, lemon grass.
Below is a recipe for simple raw cabbage salad taken from Mi Mi Khaing’s “Cook and Entertain the Burmese Way.”
Raw Cabbage Salad
3 cups finely cut cabbage
1 large onion, sliced
3 green chillies
2 tablespoons shrimp powder
1 tablespoon cooked oil
Salt to taste
1 large lime
Cabbage should be cut ahead of time and soaked in water for about two hours.
Just before serving, drain cabbage well. Put in salad bowl with sliced onion, green chillies cut finely, shrimp powder, oil, and a little salt.
Squeeze lime over this and mix well. Crush cabbage slightly in mixing. Taste and add more salt and lime as needed.
What Ma Cho prepares for us in Burma is my favorite which also uses raw cabbage. However, Ma Cho uses peanuts - roasted skinned and powdered. The peanuts are just great in the salad especially when powdered (just pound them in a mortar and pestle). Ma cho also puts lots of garlic in the salad which I really love - the garlic must be pounded too which brings out its wonderful flavor much better than slicing.
My oil of preference is peanut oil which was a bit difficult to find locally. When I arrived from Burma I immediately bought a bottle of peanut oil at the Duty Free Shop, however in the grocery near our home, good peanut oil is rarely available.
I also love the sour taste that is added in the salad. What was quite special with Ma Cho’s salad was citrus leaves cut into very fine pieces. I have a 1-year old citrus (calamansi) plant here where I could get the leaves. Lime juice is also added in the salad.
And then of course, the spicy flavors - the green chillies cut finely. I love to have lots of these in the salad!
Burmese shrimp and fish paste (I bought several varieties) are quite different, so the salads I prepare at home are not exactly like those that I had in Burma. I have tried putting fillet featherback (ngape) in salad which was so good - as well other pressed fish types from Burma such as ngape aung, ngabut, ngakhonman, ngahpama. I tied the local tuyo (salted fish) which I filleted and fried in oil when I ran out of ngape.
Now I’m getting hungry.
