Mainland Southeast Asia · Volume 42, The Tea Leaf, the Curry Oil and the Caravan Road
Lahpet Thoke
Fermented tea leaf salad, grown in the Shan hills, eaten across the whole of Myanmar
Illustration
- Time
- 20 minutes
- Researched
- 12 sources cited
As tradition built it
Serves 4 as a starter. About 20 minutes, once the tea leaf is fermented.
Ingredients
The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.
- fermented tea leaf (lahpet), see the ferment bench below
- as available fried garlic, roasted sesame, fried yellow split peas, fried peanuts, dried shrimp
- as available tomato, sliced
- to taste fresh chilli
- 5 to 10% by weight of the fermented leaf garlic, to dress
- 5 to 10% by weight of the fermented leaf ground chilli, to dress
- 1 to 2% by weight of the fermented leaf salt, to dress
- 1 to 2% by weight of the fermented leaf lime juice, to dress
- 20 to 30% by weight of the fermented leaf peanut oil, to dress
Method
- Dress the fermented tea leaf with minced garlic and ground chilli at roughly 5 to 10% of the leaf's weight each, salt at 1 to 2%, fresh lime juice at 1 to 2%, and peanut oil worked through at 20 to 30% of the leaf's weight.
- Arrange the dressed leaf with the fried garlic, roasted sesame, fried split peas, fried peanuts, dried shrimp, sliced tomato and fresh chilli in separate small piles rather than pre-mixed.
- Toss everything together at the table, not in the kitchen. The dish's whole point is a diner controlling the ratio of ferment to crunch as it's eaten, not a fixed composition.
What a modern chef changes
The service moved deliberately to the table, and a genuine dehydrator ferment offered where months-long lahpet cannot be sourced
Rung 3
Method
- If genuine lahpet is available, respect its months of fermentation and change nothing about the leaf itself. This chapter does not modernise the ferment, only the assembly.
- Where lahpet cannot be sourced, ferment your own quick version: good loose-leaf green tea, briefly steeped and pressed dry, packed under a coffee filter in a sterilised jar, held at 28 to 32°C in a dehydrator on its lowest setting for seven to ten days. Say plainly on the plate that this is a compromise, not the genuine article.
- Serve every component separate and let the diner build the dish themselves, following Desmond Tan's own correction of the pre-mixed version most diaspora restaurants serve: composed table-side, the crunch stays crunch.