Burmese cuisine is hard to find in Europe. Personally, altough considering myself both well-travelled and well-feed, with experience in various diverse kitchen from around the world, I can't remember one single Burmese restaurant. Otherwise, I would have know a little bit about this cuisine, before starting to read Burma Superstar.

Therefore, I've read this book as a non-fiction one, more than as an account about the menu served in Oakland's restaurant with the same name. A foodie fix in the area for decades, with affiliates inaugurated in other destinations across the USA, Burma Superstar mixes the gourmet inspiration with the basic ingredients of the meals - most of them street food - served in this part of the world.

A popular neighbourhood restaurant is able to reflect in its menu the culinary Asian melting pot. Which is a good news, especially for those aiming at reproducing those recipes at home, as you can easily find ingredients in the various Asian/Indian stores from across the world. You can easily find the spices and the sauces - oyster or Sriracha - the oils and the specific oils and the rice, the special spinach. The only thing I am not sure I can find is the laphet - the tea, used not only for the brewed drink, but usually in salads or as a dried snack. Something I might be interested to find and try out more about soon.

But besides the laphet, there are many more recipes to try, like various curries and salads, dish and dried lentils or samosas. The list of the ingredients is long and it might take a time until getting used to the flavors but adding them to the recipe is easier than expected. You only have to add them to the pan and learn how much time you need to mix them until you obtain a completely new taste out of all the diverse flavors. Beware, the Burmese cuisine is using generous amounts of oil.

The book introduces Burma/Myanmar not only as a food destination but also scatters various political and historical references - mostly Wikipedia style, neutral and not necessarily critical, but for someone finding out about this country it can be a steady beginning.

What I've found a bit under my usual visual standards was the photography, but when it comes to visual representations, everything at a great extent is relative. I love the kind of photography which completes and beautifies the writing and makes the wording attractive which was not the case here.

Personally, I would not hurry up to prepare any recipe at home until I will eventually have a taste of the professionally prepared one. For the sake of the authenticity, I need to figure out first how my personal creation should taste like. But I am so looking forward to it.

If I worked at a public library instead of an academic library, I would recommend this for purchase in an absolute heartbeat! This is a wonderful introduction to the richly diverse world of Burmese cooking. Not only is it packed with delicious recipes that anyone can easily prepare at home, but it does readers the favor of providing a quick background of Myanmar and thus giving them a better grasp of the roots and nature of cuisine that many will enthusiastically test inside their own kitchens.

If you're like me, you probably wouldn't think you know anything about Burmese cooking. There are a lot of familiar elements to these recipes though. It draws on elements from Indian, Chinese, and other Southeast Asian cuisines. There is a lot of flavor packed into these recipes. I've only had a chance to make one of them so far (the Coconut Chicken Curry, which is featured on the Amazon page for the book), and it was delicious. I marked so many recipes in this book that I wanted to try that I will have to pick up a physical copy to add to my bookshelves.

Beyond the recipes, this book has a lot to offer. It begins with the story behind the restaurant, Burma Superstar, in San Francisco. Added to this is some Burmese history and culture. The writers go beyond the culinary history of the region, while remaining true to the spirit. The photos are gorgeous. Every single picture of the food looks delicious. The pictures of the people and the locations add to the feeling of the book.

I also loved the way it is laid out. It felt a little backward at first, but after a brief introduction, they jump right into the recipes. Information on hardware and ingredients is included at the back of the book. I think this is a good move because having it up front might seem intimidating, especially if you don't have many of the items. There are enough recommendations for substitutes on certain ingredients throughout the book that its easy to get comfortable with things first. This book hooked me and I'm looking forward to getting an opportunity to explore it in more detail.

I really enjoyed this book, and look at it as much more than just giving recipes. Burmese home cooks give insight and inspiration. I would very much like to visit one of the Burma Superstar restaurants in San Francisco one day. Recommended.

TITLE: Interesting recipes that will give your Southeast Asian cooking another dimension

If you are a fan of Burma Superstar, this is a must-have for your cookbook collection. If you are a transplanted Burman, of Burmese ancestry, or just very curious about Burma / Myanmar food and recent history, this is definitely a book to check out. If you've traveled to Myanmar and loved the food there, this book will help you recreate it at home. The book is filled with interesting recipes, mouth-watering pictures of prepared dishes, beautiful photography of popular Burmese / Myanmar sites. (Country's name changed from Burma to Myanmar in 1989.)

It is a book to study, a book to review and contemplate, and if you don't, you will probably miss the special nuances that make this country's dishes different from other Southeast Asian foods. There are more similarities than differences. And, having at hand so many dishes from the restaurant Burma Superstar, the differences are further clouded.

How to explain the somewhat familiar-sounding recipes in this book? Because it is quite a mix up in my own (third generation American) mind.....I can only attempt to do so by telling some of the author's history, hoping you'll get the picture: The author of this book, Desmond Tan, never learned to cook--so he says. He was born in Burma and moved to the US in late 1977. Even though his mother kept the Burmese traditions alive and served familiar Burmese dishes at home, they patronized Burma Superstar--a restaurant in their San Francisco neighborhood. When it came up for sale, Tan bought it. Now he travels from his home in California to his familial home in Yangon several times a year. His family's ethnicity is mostly Chinese. His wife, who does take part in the restaurant's decisions is Chinese.

The recipes in this book are not necessarily quick and easy. Instructions are clear, but somewhat involved and not all that personably told. Ingredient lists are fairly long. And you will have difficulty finding some of them. You will find many curries and stir fries, noodles and rice, fish and vegetables, peas and lentils. The taste is a combination of spice, heat, salty and sour, not so much sweet. The flavors that mingle: Ginger, garlic, turmeric, paprika, onions and chiles, curry spices, sour citrus and leaves, fish sauce, sometimes coconut and fruits.

Putting a cookbook like this together cannot be an easy task. I greatly admire the efforts of this family in their attempt to preserve their heritage. It seems to be the right time in America to get something like this put together, as I've seen several books like this lately. And I must admit that I am somewhat envious of what they have accomplished. I wish I had a cookbook like this to fall back on when I'm looking to cook my own ethnic meal. I wish someone in my family had written down the recipes of my grandmothers and great grandmothers.

*Several months ago I received a temporary download of this cookbook from the publisher, and I have been working with it diligently prior to writing down my thoughts about the book in this review.

When we lived in the SF Bay area, Burma Superstar was our favorite Friday night takeout. Now that we live in Maine, Burmese food is but a distant memory, so I was super-psyched to get this book.

I enjoyed that this book made Burmese cooking feel really accessible, even to someone now living where the nearest Asian market is a 2.5 hour drive. While some of the recipes require specialty ingredients, many of them are down-to-earth enough that I can even find the ingredients in rural Maine. The Rainbow Salad was one of our go-tos off the menu when we lived near the restaurant, so it was the first recipe I tried from this book. It didn't disappoint, although be forewarned -- it's fiddly because it has so many ingredients and they all need chopping/frying/boiling. I did a bit of substituting here, like using pre-fried shallots from our last trip to the Asian market rather than frying onions myself, and not using all the different kinds of noodles. It was still delicious, though, and I appreciated that the authors gave me "permission" to tweak as needed. I was also excited to see that the book included recipes for some of the drinks the restaurant serves, because they are delicious! On the rare occasion we did eat in the restaurant instead of doing take-away, I always enjoyed the Burma Cooler, and now I can have it at home!

Just a couple of quibbles: First, I really, really hate cookbooks where the list of ingredients goes onto the second page. I don't mind if the recipe instructions cross pages, but when the ingredients do, it's really easy to miss the ones on the second page and only realize when it's far too late to do anything about it. Oh, and I was really sad that there was no recipe for my favorite noodle dish from the restaurant, Bun Tay Kauser. :-)

Delicious and bright, I enjoyed exploring the flavors in this book.

Interesting story of how this restaurant came to be. Beautiful photography and wonderful recipes including Garlic Noodles and their amazing Tea Leaf Salad. I highly recommend this cookbook.

Burmese cooking from curry , Noodles , dessert , rice bowls are well explained .

Interesting read. It gave me a lot of insight into the culture, traditions, and food. Not necessarily my cup of tea, but a good book to pass the time when you just wanted something educations and informative to read.