Currents & Spice

The many faces of pepper soup

This Mulligatawny soup recipe is inspired by the pepper broths served alongside chicken biryani at Burmese danbauk stalls — bright, fiery, and far from the stodgy versions you might know. Red lentils, tamarind, and black pepper do the heavy lifting.

In 2012, my partner and I travelled around Burma during preparations for the by-election that would see Aung San Suu Kyi’s party win its first parliamentary seats. The atmosphere was electric and jubilant. There was so much hope and excitement about the potential for political change.

Throughout the country, pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi plastered tea-shops, restaurants and private dwellings, almost (but not quite) competing with the ever-present Buddhist iconography. This excitement seemed to pervade most conversations with locals, who eagerly discussed the political change process, their hopes for the future, and of course, The Lady. That being said, not all Burmese were optimistic — one taxi driver noted that he was cynical about the changes; as a Generation ’88 veteran, he had seen hope rise and watched it collapse before. Unfortunately, he was right.

Burma was the first Asian country we visited; I had wanted to go based on childhood memories of poring over photos of Bagan in my parents’ photo albums. While I’ve since developed a robust palate (and my doctor assures me, a robust tolerance for bacteria), we were not so adventurous during this trip. One of the meals we did eat was chicken biryani. Sold at stalls run by Burma’s Muslim communities, chicken biryani is served with a suite of sides designed to complement the heavy, ghee-laden rice. My favourite was the side soup — a brilliant piece of culinary fusion that takes the peppery backbone of a South Indian rasam and sharpens it with the umami-rich acidity of Burmese flavours.
When I returned home, I went searching for recipes to recreate that flavour. In the early 2010s, there wasn’t much available online about Burmese cuisine, and my searching led me to Mulligatawny. Mulligatawny originates in the British colonial era in India, where Indian cooks sought to satisfy the British demand for soup by taking the thin, fiery Miḷagutanni (pepper water) and padding it out with meat and flour. Mulligatawny has since drifted further from these fiery roots, and many recipes are bland and overly sweet with the addition of apple.

I’ve since developed a soup that sits somewhere between a Mulligatawny and a rasam. It retains the electric pepper and bright acidity of the soup I remember from Burma, but incorporates a greater ratio of red lentils (dal), along with carrot, celery, and tomato to make it a meal in a bowl.