Khow suey

 I've grown up being told that this was a burmese dish that somehow got wildly popular in India in the 70s/80s. I'm not sure there is anyone in Burma that would recognize this dish but I love it. I recently came across another recipe called Khow soi that purports to being a coconut curry/noodle soup from Burma by way of Thailand, so the truth, as they say, is out there.

Ingredients

Soup: 

• 1 kg chicken (I used chicken thighs, bone-in or boneless, cut into smaller pieces)
• 2 chopped onions
• 2 Tbsp Ginger-Garlic paste
• 6 Tbsp Chickpea flour/ besan
• 5 bowls water
• 1/2 - 1 cup desiccated or fresh/ frozen shredded coconut

Toppings:

• 6 eggs
• Limes
• Fried onions
• Fried Garlic
• Cashewnuts
• Salli/ Laccha

Carbs:

• Egg noodles
• Rice Noodles
• Rice

Method

1. Boil Eggs to hard, cool peel. Slice and fry onions and garlic separately to brown. Drain on paper towels. Quarter limes. 
2. Heat a table spoon of oil until shimmering hot, then add the onions and fry for about 5 minutes
3. Lower the heat to medium-low, add ginger-garlic paste and fry until fragrant.
4. Throw in salt, red chilli powder and saute for maybe 10 seconds, then add in the chicken and fry until the chicken has a bit of surface.
5. Add in the besan and then fry until fragrant (the smell changes, thats what you're looking for)
6. Add in the water and then boil until the chicken is cooked
7. Add in the coconut and boil for another 5 minutes. At this point, when we've used frozen fresh coconut before, we noticed the shreds were really long and would have been hard to eat, so we pulled out the chicken and used an immersion blender to make the soup smooth.
8. Boil the noodles/cook rice etc as needed
9. Assemble bowls: put noodles/rice in the bottom of a bowl and ladle on lots and lots of soup. Add on toppings, halved boiled egg and lots of lime (this is v. important, v. v. It really needs lime)

Notes

1. This recipe scales really well. Mum's rule of thumb is that you add a Tbsp of besan for every bowl of khow suey you want and about a bowl of water. At this volume as written, since the chicken and other ingredients increase the volume by around a bowl, I only used 5 bowls of water.