Mont di

Mont di (Burmese: မုန့်တီ [mo̰ʊɴ tì]) is a collective term for Rakhine dishes made with thin rice noodles. The vermicelli is used fresh, as it ferments quickly in Myanmar's tropical climate. There are a number of mont di dishes, and the Rakhine mont di of the Arakanese from western Myanmar is the most popular. Mandalay mont di is another well-known dish.

Mont di
Rakhine mont di fish soup with garnish
Alternative namesRakhine mont di, Mandalay mont di
CourseBreakfast, Lunch
Place of originRakhine State, Myanmar
Region or stateRakhine State, Mandalay Region
Main ingredientsFor Rakhine variant only: rice vermicelli, any white fish(mostly Daggertooth blade conger), ngapi, lemongrass, pepper, garlic, red chili sauce, green chili paste, crisp garlic garnish, coriander

Variations

All the variants of "mont di" are often accompanied by Burmese fritters (အကြော်), of one's choice.

Rakhine mont di
A Rakhine mont ti street vendor in Yangon.

Rakhine mont di (Burmese: ရခိုင်မုန့်တီ) is the most popular dish in association with the Rakhine people. It is a semi staple dish of the Rakhine State. It comes in two forms: salad or soup.

The soup is the more common version, in which rice vermicelli is mixed with a thin soup made of daggertooth pike conger,called thinbaw htoe (သင်္ဘောထိုး) in Arakanese, nga shwe (ငါးရွှေ) in Burmese[1]), Rakhine ngapi and lemongrass. Dry roasted pike conger eel flakes, fried onion and garlic, fresh coriander, red and green chili paste are added. It is also called arpu sharpu (အာပူရှာပူ) which roughly means 'hot throat, hot tongue', due to the green chili paste. Some add fried pulverised nga phe and pork rind.

In the dry salad form, the same ingredients are mixed into a colourful combination. The green chili paste gives the white rice vermicelli a slight greenish in colour.

Mandalay mont di

Mandalay mont di (Burmese: မန္တလေးမုန့်တီ) is quite different from Rakhine mont di. It uses meat instead of marine fish, as Mandalay is an inland city located in Central Myanmar.

The meat is cooked as a sauce and added to the noodles like a salad (in some recipes only). Many authentic shops uses a variation of daal flour (powder) and its different flavoured oils to bring about its unique Mandalay flavours.

Most mont di shops will prepare the dish based on the customers' preferences for specific tastes and offers the option of "mixing" (tossing) it for the customer.

Another difference is that larger rice noodles are used instead, similar to nan gyi thoke.

Yodaya mont di

During the 1700s, the influx of Ayutthayans following the Burmese–Siamese wars to Mandalay also created an infusion Central Thai-inspired dishes, one of which is known as Yodaya mont di (ယိုးဒယားမုန့်တီ, lit. "Ayutthayan mont ti"). The rice noodle dish uses fish as the main protein instead of chicken, and is prepared using slivers of curled rice vermicelli strands (khanom chin) tossed in a turmeric-infused oil, and served with fried onions and raw green beans.[2] A unique rendition of Yodaya mont di, served with bean flour, dried shrimps, and a thicker gravy, can be found in Mandalay's Minthazu ward.[2]

Yangon mont di

Yangon mont di (Burmese: ရန်ကုန်မုန့်တီ) is very similar to the Rakhine mont di. The only difference is that oil is added to the salad, reflecting the Burmese preference for oiliness.

See also

References
  1. Seafood of South-East Asia: A Comprehensive Guide with Recipes - Alan Davidson
  2. ဘိုဘို (2019-02-22). "မန္တလေးမှာ ယိုးဒယားမုန့်တီ လစဉ်လုပ်စားသူ မိသားစု". BBC (in Burmese). Retrieved 2019-11-15.
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