Name: Dawei Fish Soup
Yield: Serves 4 or 5
Cuisine: Myanmar (Burma)
Ingredients: ½ pound cleaned squid, chopped into bite-sized pieces (optional); 1 cup sliced shallots; 1½ cups chopped Napa cabbage (optional); ¾ cup loosely packed coriander leaves and fine stems, coarsely chopped; 2 ounces bean threads (optional); Juice of 1 lime, or to taste; 3 pounds fish heads and bones from ocean fish such as kingfish, sea bream, or snapper (not salmon), thoroughly rinsed; 2 tablespoons sliced galangal; 3 tablespoons sliced ginger; About 7 cups water; 1 teaspoon turmeric; ¼ cup very thinly sliced lemongrass; 4 green cayenne chiles, or to taste; 2 teaspoons salt, plus additional to taste

Preparation info

Serves
4 or 5

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Burma

By Naomi Duguid

Published 2012

About

Dawei, until recently known as Tavoy, is an attractive town halfway down Burma’s tail-of-the-kite south coast. The fish in its markets gleam with freshness and are wonderfully varied. The women in Kana Market, Dawei’s main wet market, watched me taking photos and more photos, laughing when they saw how amazed I was by the beauty of the fish they were selling.

The fish dishes for which Dawei is famous may originally have been Mon dishes, since this stretch of the Tenasserim coast was