Mont
A plate of mont kywe the, a rice flour cake sweetened with jaggery and garnished with grated coconut
TypeSnack or dessert
Place of originMyanmar (Burma)
Region or stateSoutheast Asia
Associated cuisineBurmese cuisine
Main ingredientsVarious
Similar dishesBánh, Kakanin, Khanom, Kue, Kuih
This article contains Burmese script. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Burmese script.

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. Burmese mont are typically eaten with tea during breakfast or afternoon tea time.[1]

Each variety of mont is designated by a descriptive word or phrase that precedes or follows the word mont, such as htoe mont (lit. 'snack that is prodded') or mont lone yay baw (lit. 'floating snack balls'). The term mont has been borrowed into several regional languages, including into Shan as မုၼ်း and into Jingpho as muk.

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

A Burmese hawker making mont lin maya in Yangon.

Lower-amylose rice varieties are commonly used as a key ingredient in Burmese mont.[2] 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, glutinous rice, etc.).[3][1]

Varieties

A hawker near Kyaiktiyo Pagoda selling a variety of traditional mont

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

Savory snacks

A hawker preparing yay mont.

Desserts

Mont lone yay baw is a traditional Thingyan snack.
Mont pya thalet, a honeycomb-shaped batter cake.
Mont sein baung

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Burmese sweets". Austin Bush. Retrieved 2021-01-08.
  2. ^ a b c d e 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 Journal of Tropical Agriculture, Japanese Society for Tropical Agriculture, 50, doi:10.11248/jsta1957.50.42
  3. ^ Bush, Austin. "10 foods to try in Myanmar -- from tea leaf salad to Shan-style rice". CNN. Retrieved 2020-05-31.
  4. ^ "လှည်းတန်းတစ်ဝိုက်မုန့်စားကြမယ်". Yangon Life (in Burmese). Archived from the original on 14 January 2021. Retrieved 2021-01-14.
  5. ^ "ဘိန်းမုန့်". Food Magazine Myanmar. Retrieved 2019-11-13.
  6. ^ "မြန်မာ့အစား အစာ". Myawady. Retrieved 2019-11-13.
  7. ^ Myo Wai Thu (2020-08-26). "ကောက်လှိုင်းတီမုန့်ပူပူလေး". Yangon Style (in Burmese). Retrieved 2021-01-09.
  8. ^ ခေါက်မုန့်ဆို ထန်းလျက်ရည် နဲ့ အုန်းသီးများများနဲ့မှ (in Burmese), retrieved 2019-11-13
  9. ^ "မြန်မာ့ရိုးရာအစားအစာ မုန့်ပေါင်း". Mizzima Myanmar News and Insight. Retrieved 2019-11-13.
  10. ^ a b c ဘိုဘို (2019-02-06). "ခေါက်ဆွဲစားတဲ့ မြန်မာများ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 2021-01-14.
  11. ^ "မုန့်ကြွေလိပ်". Taste Window Magazine (in Burmese). Retrieved 2022-02-27.
  12. ^ "မုန့်ကျွဲသည်း". MyFood Myanmar (in Burmese). Retrieved 2019-11-13.
  13. ^ "မုန့်ဖက်ထုပ်". Food Magazine Myanmar (in Burmese). Retrieved 2019-11-13.
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