Charity: Time for Giving, Nurturing and Celebration!

In this season of giving and celebration, I am grateful for all the blessings I have in my life and entering our 12 years with Saffron59 Catering & Event Planning. I am especially aware of the plight of others who are less than fortunate.   

That’s why I am so proud of the children from the orphanage in Myanmar that I have been supporting all these years.  Every time they get a cup of water they are deeply grateful for the new water purification system installed just last year.

I was especially pleased to hear from them from a recent phone call, that some of the girls (out of around 74 girls) who have blossomed under their care - are about to enter college.  Education is something that I have always supported for these children and it is truly a great feat to be able to obtain a better way of life.

This holiday season, please consider your good fortune in life and make every day a celebration.  Have a happy and joyous holiday!

Fundraiser: Here's to Summer Cocktails!

It’s my favorite time of the year!  But when the heat is sweltering, there’s nothing better than a nice, cool cocktail by the pool.  Serve these summery Saffron59 favorites at your next BBQ or just for yourself!

At a recent Cetana fundraiser to raise money for the educational future of Burma, our Burma Rise cocktail was a hit:

Recipe: Burma Rise

Ingredients:

½ cup vodka

¼ cup lime juice

¼ cup ginger infused simple syrup

¼ cup pomegranate juice

½ cup club soda

Muddled Thai basil leaves

Instructions:
Mix all ingredients except club soda and Thai Basil into a pitcher and stir to mix.  To serve, pour into glass of ice and add 3-4 leaves per glass of Thai Basil and top off with club soda.

Blood Orange Sangria

Classic Fish Recipes From Cambodia and Myanmar

I would like to share two simple classic fish dishes from Cambodia and Myanmar. It is an all-time favorite of mine and created for my previous restaurant Road to Mandalay.  You can substitute the white fish (the firmer, the better) with large shrimp or any seafood you have on hand.

Si Byan (Burmese Fish) in 15 minutes

Makes: 4 servings

INGREDIENTS

2 lbs cod fillet or halibut, sea bass, etc - into 1-inch chunks

1-inch chunk ginger

2 tsp turmeric powder

¼ cup of vegetable oil

3 med. tomatoes, small chunks

3 med. onions, minced

5 cloves of garlic, minced

1 1/2 inch of ginger, minced

2 tbsp sweet paprika 1 tsp hot paprika or 2 fresh chili peppers

 1 1/2 tbsp fish sauce

¼ cup of vegetable or fish stock

½ cup cilantro leaves (reserve some for garnish)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a mixing bowl, marinade the fish with salt, pepper and turmeric for five minutes.

2. In a frying pan, heat the oil and mix in the onion till lightly brown and add in ginger, chili (if not using paprika) and garlic till fragrant.  Add in the paprika then immediately the fish and let it seared then stir in tomatoes, liquid stock and cook for five minutes.

3. Lower the heat and add fish sauce, coriander and simmer for another

2 minutes.  Garnish with cilantro leaves and serve hot with steamed jasmine rice.

Amok Fish Steamed in Coconut Shell

Cambodian Fish Amok 

Makes: 4 servings

INGREDIENTS

1lb White Fish Fillets, e.g. (Catfish, Cod, Haddock, Sole, etc)
1 Garlic Clove, chopped

1 Red Onion, chopped

Travel: Visit of the Year: Myanmar/Burma, Yangon

This year my trip takes me to an ancient city of Cambodia, as a guest of His Excellency Roland Eng for a week of Royal visit to his homeland followed by a detour visit to sleepy fishing village of Ngwe Saung by the Bay of Bengal in Myanmar.

Another week in Yangon (Rangoon), this city is the gateway to Myanmar. The century-old buildings are maintaining the heritage landscape in the midst of the city's cosmopolitan life that is rapidly growing. Always green with lush tropical trees, shady parks and beautiful lakes, Yangon is known as the Garden City of the East.  Besides visiting the magnificent Shwedagon Pagoda here are a few of my own personal favorites.

A vendor at the bay

Travel: Asia Trip 2011-2012

Holiday Greetings!  Please follow me on Twitter & Facebook for the next three weeks for travel updates for my Asia trip this year.

In mean while, I have been busy this past month with holiday events at Saffron 59 as well as being my own travel agent; planning (numerous) connecting flights, itineraries, meeting with acquaintances and booking my old friends for breakfast on Chao Praya or dinner along the Mekong riverside.

I have not been to Cambodia since 1998. My main plan is to visit  the Angkor Hospital for Children to get a private tour from William, the Executive Director. I have been on their committee for over a decade. This hospital started as a small children’s hospital.  Today, they have treated over a million patients with a visitor’s center for those who travel from the far away villages. Last time I was in Siem Reap, there were only three hotels to open and some home inns.   Since then, there are now spas, French restaurants and trendy boutiques.

Angkor Hospital for Children Photo: Daniel C. Rothenberg, www.photoasia.org

And of course a stop in Burma to visit the orphanage in Yangon that I am involved in with my parents.

Recipe: Happy Lunar New Year: Gong Xi Fa Choi!

Double Happiness Bowls

Growing up in Myanmar, we celebrated Chú Xī, commonly known as Lunar New Year. Along with my parents, brother and sister, I would go to the night market and shop for the New Years decorations and sweets. My parents bought new outfits for all of us, and I would help my mom to stuff the red envelopes to give away, while she prepared feasts for the start of the New Year.

This year, I thought I'd ask my friend Grace Young, author of Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge (the James Beard’s award winning author) what she and her family cook for the New Year.

According to her:

The New Year’s Eve dinner is the most important meal of the two week New Year’s celebration and of the entire year. Today many people choose to go to a restaurant because it’s more convenient but my family always gathered for dinner at home. Every family’s meal is slightly different while still being designed around meaning-laden foods.

July 4th: Personal & Country Independence Day

This year marked the 30^th Anniversary of my family arriving in America. I remember being at John F Kennedy Airport seeing all ethnicities at immigration and the overwhelming crowd.

So different from my small city of Yagon, Myanmar.             

Scorching hot summers, sprinklers on the fire hydrants along the highway, as my mom’s friends picked up all eight of us and drove along the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.

Given how time flies, I thank my parents for bring us this far and see how all of us has accomplished. Now they have nine grandchildren. Yes, July 4th is also our personal Independence Day! This year and the past 30 years--never fail--it's been our annual big cook-out feast. The largest hit was BBQ Rib Eye Steak..

Ingredients:

•  8 lb. rib eye steak -1 1/2 inch thick
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons sake (or rice wine or sherry)
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 8 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 scallions (green onions), minced
• 2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions:

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix until the sugar has dissolved. This can be prepared and marinate a nite before.
Preheat the grill to 450 degree.Charred the steak for 2 min. each side.  let cook and sliced 1/4 inch thick...
served with basil parsley garlic pesto sauce. 

Travel: Spice Souk by The Arabian Gulf

Every year in October, while booking all the holiday functions for my catering company, Saffron 59, I start getting restless at the same time to book a flight to Asia to visit the orphanage I sponsor in Burma. As a certified travel agent, I have to figure out routes to avoid crowded flights with different destinations to Asia during this time of the year. 

This trip, I experienced from the sublime to the ridiculous; by stopping over in the Middle East, in a country with the tallest towers in the world being built - Dubai, who are planning to air condition their beach when the temp hits 50 degrees Celsius in the summer. However, this is also a country with old-style values; the bustling ancient markets start at dusk with fish arriving from the gulf and spices trading with the neighboring countries of Iran, Oman and even India.

Visiting the aromatic spice souk, with canvas bags full of saffron colored turmeric, from roots to black
salt; strolling by the creek puts me back a few centuries. I imagine witnessing the traders auctioning off
their commodities and now the ridiculous part of this trip would be to Myanmar, where I will be spending the next two weeks, a country that turns on the electricity only from 6-9 pm daily and the internet is almost non existent.

Update on Burma

Morning offering for the nuns at the Shwen Dagon Pagoda

Dear friends,

I would like to thank you all for your calls and emails about my family and the orphanage in Yangon. I was about to prepare a note to update some of you on the progress we have made with the orphanage that I have been supporting for eight years, and then devastation that hit Yangon area last Saturday, and it is deeply sad that the orphanage is severely damaged.

Last nite, I heard from my friend Kit Young, who runs the music school, Gitameit . She wrote to me that she will drive over with the American consulate jeep to check on the orphanage and some of my family members today. And here is her note below to those that wrote to me about contribution.

Gitameit has turned into a disaster relief organization. The musicians and I drove to outlying townships today. In our Gitameit Center backyard alone and - the hindu temple ceremony hall - there are 800 people camped out with less than satisfactory sanitation, diminishing clean water supply and very little else than rice porridge in the last two days.

The Karen Women's Group will assess the most urgent needs of families there and tell us tomorrow. The Myanmar Red Cross was in today - but does not have enough supplies of rice orwater and needs donations.

The regime is busy chopping up fallen trees on roads - beginning to work on electric poles - in rich areas of town. Survival for the poor or communication with citizenry is not their fault. They even neglect their own... As I passed some soldiers cutting trees yesterday, I asked if they'd eaten breakfast. Of course not! So, I went back home to get them some bread.

There is a big issue of Myanmar gov't wanting supplies but not relief personnel to come into the country. After today's slight confrontation with this Shwebaukan thug trying to control things, I understand why.

We've identified these communities linked to us already - around 3000+ people. We figure we will need to raise at least $150,000 in the coming weeks - just to keep these communities afloat until some of the markets get up and running. We will try to put progress reports up on the Gitameit website, there is paypal system at http://www.foundationburma.org the Foundation for the People of Burma website –thank you so much for your support, Kit.

p.s. the contribution to the orphanage and the cyclone victim checks are written out to Friend without borders, 59 fourth avenue, New York, NY 10003..att: irene khin wong…I will wire the fund directly to kit.

Thingyan Water Festival: Time to Purify

Happy Thingyan! Wash it all out, may the water clean all bad spirits within us and bring peace, prosperity for whole year!

People in Myanmar, also Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, celebrate Thingyan Water Festival every month of Tagu, which means the first month of the 12 months of Myanmar Calendar. I remember the streets are full of people pouring and sprinkling water on each other to purify the bad, evil spirits. Young and old, man and woman, everyone is out to celebrate the Water Festival and welcome the new year in hope of prosperity and happiness to come.

This time of year, I celebrate Thingyan Festival with Ginger Salad, it is one of my favorite, fresh and tasty salad from Burma...

Burmese Ginger Salad (Jin Thoke)

SERVES 4

Some recipes for this salad call for bottled pickled sliced ginger, but the homemade version tastes much fresher. Although it takes two days to make, little hands-on effort is required. We recommend using young ginger, which has very thin, delicate skin and is more succulent than mature ginger. Young ginger is easiest to find in markets during the spring; if it's not available, use the smaller knobs of only very fresh, plump mature ginger.

3" piece young ginger, peeled and thinly sliced lengthwise
Salt
Juice of 2 limes
2 tbsp. channa dal (hulled split dried small chickpeas)
1⁄2 cup peanut oil
10 shallots, peeled and thinly sliced
6 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
1⁄2 tsp. fish saucehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/saffron59/
1⁄4 cup peeled, roasted, unsalted peanuts
2 tsp. toasted sesame seeds
4 green bird's-eye chiles, stemmed

1. Toss ginger and 1 tsp. salt together in a medium glass or ceramic bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 24 hours, stirring every 8 hours. Rinse ginger, drain well, and put into a clean glass or ceramic bowl. Add lime juice and mix with your fingers until ginger is well coated. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 24 hours, stirring every 8 hours. Soak chickpeas in a small bowl of water for 8 hours.

2. Drain ginger, then slice into long thin strips. Put ginger into a clean medium glass or ceramic bowl and set aside. Drain chickpeas, thoroughly dry with paper towels, and set aside.

3. Heat oil in a wok or a large heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat. Add shallots and fry, stirring constantly with a slotted spoon, until lightly golden and crisp, 6–8 minutes. Transfer shallots with slotted spoon to paper towels to drain. Fry garlic in the hot oil, stirring constantly, until just beginning to turn golden around the edges, 1–2 minutes, then transfer to paper towels to drain. Fry chickpeas in the hot oil, stirring constantly, until golden, 4–5 minutes, then transfer to paper towels to drain, setting wok with oil aside. Set shallots, ginger, and chickpeas aside separately to cool completely.

4. Add fish sauce, peanuts, sesame seeds, and fresh chiles to bowl with ginger. Add fried shallots, garlic, and chickpeas and 2 tsp. of the frying oil, season to taste with salt, and toss well. Adjust seasonings. Serve at room temperature.