Mont (food)

In the Burmese language, the term mont (Burmese: မုန့်; pronounced [mo̰ʊɴ]) translates to "snack", and refers to a wide variety of prepared foods, ranging from sweet desserts to savory food items that may be cooked by steaming, baking, frying, deep-frying, or boiling. Foods made from wheat or rice flour are generally called mont, but the term may also refer to certain varieties of noodle dishes, such as mohinga.

Mont

A Burmese hawker making mont lin maya
Type	Snack or dessert
Place of origin	Myanmar (Burma)
Region or state	Southeast Asia
Associated national cuisine	Burmese
Main ingredients	Various
Similar dishes	bánh, khanom, kue
Cookbook:

Each variety of mont is designated by a descriptive word or phrase that precedes or follows the word mont, such as htoe mont (literally "snack that is prodded") or mont lone yay baw (lit. "floating snack balls").

In Burmese, the term mont is not limited to Burmese cuisine: it applies equally to items as varied as Western-style breads (ပေါင်မုန့် or paung mont), Chinese moon cakes (လမုန့် or la mont), ice cream (ရေခဲမုန့် or yay ge mont) and tinned biscuits (မုန့်သေတ္တာ or mont thitta).

Ingredients

Lower-amylose rice varieties are commonly used as a key ingredient in Burmese mont.[1] Sweet Burmese mont are generally less sweet than counterparts in other parts of Southeast Asia, instead deriving their natural sweetness from constituent ingredients (e.g., grated coconut, coconut milk, sticky rice, etc.).[2]

Varieties

There is a nearly endless variety of named dishes with the prefix or suffix mont. What follows is a list of the most typical traditional varieties of mont.

Noodles

Noodle dishes made with rice vermicelli, which is called mont phat (မုန့်ဖတ်), are typically prefixed with the term mont, including:

• Mohinga (မုန့်ဟင်းခါး) - savory noodle soup made in a fish broth
• Mont di (မုန့်တီ)
• Mandalay mont di (မန္တ​လေးမုန့်တီ)

Savory snacks

A hawker preparing yay mont.

• Mont baing daung (မုန့်ဗိုင်းတောင့်) - steamed rice flour slivers sprinkled with roasted sesame seeds, salt, and coconut shavings
• Mont kya gwet (မုန့်ကြာခွက်) or mont salin daung (မုန့်စလင်းထောင်) - pancake made of rice flour and palm sugar batter
• Mont lay bway (မုန့်လေပွေ) - glutinous rice crisps
• Mont lin maya (မုန့်လင်မယား)
• Mont oh gin gat (မုန့်အိုးကင်းကပ်) - rice flour griddle cake
• Mont kyo lein (မုန့်ကြိုးလိမ်) - pretzel-like snack made of rice and bean flour
• Nga mont (ငါးမုန့်)
• Yay mont (ရေမုန့်) - paper-thin crisp pancake of rice batter

Desserts

Mont lone yay baw is a traditional Thingyan snack.

Mont pya thalet, a honeycomb-shaped batter cake snack.

• Aung bala mont (အောင်ဗလမုန့်) - rice pancake topped with syrup
• Bein mont (ဘိန်းမုန့်) - pancake made of rice flour, palm sugar, coconut chips, and peanuts, garnished with poppy seeds[3]
• Gadut mont (ကတွတ်မုန့်) - Indian sweetmeat
• Kayay kaya mont (ကရေကရာမုန့်)
• Khauk mont (ခေါက်မုန့်) - folded pancake made with rice flour, palm sugar, and coconut[4], similar to Thai khanom bueang
• Malaing mont (မလိုင်မုန့်) - Burmese-style dairy desserts, similar to ras malai
• Mayway mont (မရွေးမုန့်) - puffed grains of early ripened glutinous rice congealed into a mass with palm sugar syrup, similar to Chinese sachima
• Mont baung (မုန့်ပေါင်း) steamed rice cakes, similar to Indonesian putu piring[5]
• Mont gaung ohn[1]
• Mont kalama (မုန့်ကလားမ)
• Mont khaw byin - steamed glutinous rice cake garnished with coconut shavings
• Mont kyazi (မုန့်ကြာစေ့) - small balls of boiled glutinous rice in palm sugar syrup
• Mont kyet u (မုန့်ကြက်အူ) or mont gyo thwin (မုန့်ချိုသွင်း) - rice flour strings, similar to Indian jalebi
• Mont kywe the (မုန့်ကျွဲသည်း) - rice flour pudding sweetened with jaggery[6]
• Mont let hsaung (မုန့်လက်ဆောင်း)
• Mont let kauk (မုန့်လက်ကောက်) - glutinous rice donuts
• Mont lone yay baw (မုန့်လုံးရေပေါ်)
• Mont leikpya (မုန့်လိပ်ပြာ) - griddle cake of course rice, served with peas or jaggery[1]
• Mont nat (မုန့်နပ်) - fine rice flour mixed with palm sugar boiled into a thick fudge
• Mont on nauk (မုန့်ဦးနှောက်) - steamed rice flour jelly
• Mont phet htok (မုန့်ဖက်ထုပ်) - steamed sticky rice dumplings, similar to Chinese zongzi[7]
• Mont pya thalet (မုန့်ပျားသလက်) - batter cake shaped like a honeycomb, made of rice flour with or without palm sugar syrup[1]
• Mont pya tu on (မုန့်ပျားတူအုံ) - spongy cake of rice flour and palm sugar batter shaped like a vespiary
• Mont sein baung (မုန့်စိမ်းပေါင်း) - steamed rice cake
• Mont thaing gyon (မုန့်သိုင်းခြုံ) - rice flour griddle cake
• Mont hsatthapu (မုန့်ဆပ်သွားဖူး) - griddle cake of rice flour covered with coconut shreds, palm sugar syrup and folded
• Mont hsi gyaw (မုန့်ဆီကြော်) - fried sweet pancakes made from glutinous rice
• Mont zan (မုန့်ဆန်း) - glutinous rice flakes
• Pashu mont (ပသျှူးမုန့်) - confection of roasted glutinous rice flour mixed with sugar and coconut shreds
• Sanwin makin (ဆနွင်းမကင်း) - semolina pudding mad with sugar, coconut, and butter[1]
• Saw hlaing mont (စောလှိုင်မုန့်) - a baked sweet, made from millet, raisins, coconut and butter
• Salu mont (စလူမုန့်)
• Htoe mont (ထိုးမုန့်) - pudding made of glutinous rice, sugar, coconut and oil[8]

References

1. Tun, Ye Tint; IRIE, Kenji; SEIN, THAN; SHIRATA, Kazuto; TOYOHARA, Hidekazu; KIKUCHI, Fumio; FUJIMAKI, Hiroshi (2006), Diverse Utilization of Myanmar Rice with Varied Amylose Contents, Japanese Society for Tropical Agriculture, doi:10.11248/jsta1957.50.42, retrieved 2020-04-11
2. Bush, Austin. "10 foods to try in Myanmar -- from tea leaf salad to Shan-style rice". CNN. Retrieved 2020-05-31.
3. "ဘိန်းမုန့်". Food Magazine Myanmar. Retrieved 2019-11-13.
4. ခေါက်မုန့်ဆို ထန်းလျက်ရည် နဲ့ အုန်းသီးများများနဲ့မှ (in Burmese), retrieved 2019-11-13
5. "မြန်မာ့ရိုးရာအစားအစာ မုန့်ပေါင်း". Mizzima Myanmar News and Insight. Retrieved 2019-11-13.
6. "မုန့်ကျွဲသည်း". MyFood Myanmar (in Burmese). Retrieved 2019-11-13.
7. "မုန့်ဖက်ထုပ်". Food Magazine Myanmar. Retrieved 2019-11-13.
8. "မြန်မာ့အစား အစာ". Myawady. Retrieved 2019-11-13.

See also

• Burmese cuisine
• Bánh
• Kue