I made the following stew on Sunday and have been feasting on the leftovers for the last two nights. It has no actual connection to Burma (or Myanmar), other than the combination of South and Southeast Asian flavors which I believe to be characteristic of the country. The inspiration here, other than the ingredients at hand, is the memory of the stews that one of the other students in my dorm at the University of Chicago would cook in the kitchen there. I don’t know what part of Southeast Asia she was from — almost certainly not Burma — and I never got up the courage to ask to try one of the stews, but they always looked mysterious and smelled great.

The recipe should work as well with beef or even, I’d guess, goat. You don’t want a fine cut of meat for this: in the long cooking, the fat and connective cookie dissolve and combine with the coconut milk into an luxurious, even unctuous broth.

I served this over a Japanese medium-grain rice, but a Southeast-Asian sticky rice, or even arborio would work as well. In fact, the combination of the creamy broth with moist and slightly chewy rice is reminiscent of risotto. I would avoid Basmati or Jasmine rice … the broth should coat the rice, not be absorbed by it.

 "Burmese" Lamb Stew

  1.5lbs bone-in lamb stew, cut in 2 inch chunks

  1/3 cup canned coconut milk
    1 tbsp fish sauce
    1 small onion finely diced
    2 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
    2 tsp fresh marjoram, finely chopped

    2 tsp fresh ginger, cut into fine shreds
    1 tsp ground coriander
  1/2 tsp turmeric
  1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
    4 whole green cardamon pods
    2 bay leafs
    8 black peppercorns

      Peanut oil

 Brown the lamb on all sides in oil over medium-low heat in a
 dutch oven or similar. Use multiple batches if necessary to
 avoid overcrowding the pan. Remove lamb from pan and drain on
 paper towels.

 Refresh oil if needed, add onion, and cook over low heat until
 the onion is soft and beginning to brown. Add ginger, whole and ground
 dried spices and saute briefly until the spices are fragrant.
 Add lamb and 3-4 cups water (enough to just cover the lamb), bring
 to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer partially covered for 2 hours.

 Add potatoes and fish sauce, cook for 20 more minutes until the
 potatoes are cooked, add coconut milk, return to a simmer, taste
 and add salt if the dish is insufficiently salty from the
 fish sauce.

 Serve over medium grain rice with a side salad of yogurt, cucumbers,
 and finely chopped red onion. Makes 3 small but rib-sticking
 portions.

Notes: All quantities above are approximate and from memory. The lamb should be completely tender and coming off the bone, but the potatoes should keep their shape. Don’t eat the cardamon pods, bay leaves, or peppercorns.

On Saturday we cooked Indian: a dish of tomatoes and masoor daal (based on a recipe titled rasam, but it didn’t come out remotely like that, though it was tasty enough), potatos and eggplant with fenugreek seeds, and rice with fresh fenugreek leaves.

Monday, I made one of my favorite dishes … a Southeast Asian (quasi-Vietnamese) chicken soup with rice noodles. It’s all about the garnishes: we had bean sprouts, fresh mint and coriander, sliced chiles, lime wedges, and ginger paste.

Tuesday, we made a dish that Alice learned from her brother: rigatoni with winter squash. You basically cook the squash until it is soft, mash it with parmesan and black pepper, and then mix in the cooked pasta. Very good and not at all something that I’d normally make myself. We made it with buttercup squash which gave the whole dish a slightly flourescent yellowish-green color. Apparently it is even better when made with pumpkin.

On Wednesday we cooked cod with the remaining fresh fenugreek, together with couscous with dried cranberries (something that I picked up from Rosanna and Jonathan recently), and a relish of apple, minced serrano peppers, mint, and lemon juice. A real treat and less than a half hour of total preparation and cooking time.

Tonight we took leftover mashed squash from the pasta, and combined it with leftover chicken stock from the soup on Monday night, cooked it for a while with some pieces of star anise, then pureed it, and added a bit of cream. Voila, winter squash soup. We had that with good bread from Whole Foods and a cheese and bean sprout omelet.

All in all, it’s been a fun and tasty week.

So, how do you cook and eat corn? You husk it, drop it in boiling water for as short as time as possible (5-6 minutes is about right), butter it, salt it, and as soon as you can pick up the ear without burning yourself, dive in. I take no position on eating pattern; linear, spiral, and random access all work.

Corn goes well with other summer flavors. Tomatoes, fresh basil, grilled meats, and so forth. In fact, fresh corn and fresh tomatoes, with nothing but butter and salt for the corn and salt for the tomatoes is a meal fit for a king. I haven’t seen good tomatoes yet this year, but I’ve had good luck the last few weeks with other accompaniments. Last Saturday, in celebration of the beginning of corn season, I had broiled lamb chops with a peach-habeñero salsa. (slightly green peach, onion, finely chopped habeñero, red wine vinegar). This week, I made a Thai-inspired sautée of scallops with basil, garlic, fish sauce, and strips of chili. Both were easy to make, really tasty. Both went well with the corn. In the end analysis I probably preferred the scallops because they distracted less from the corn. Which, after all, was the real point of the meal. Most things you can cook 52 weeks a year these days. Corn season is 6 weeks a year, if you are lucky. Or 6 weeks after 6 years if you’ve been living down south.