This week we share the interview that Stephen Anderson gave us, one of the two co-authors of the book A history of Burma: cocina, family and rebellion, written with his sister Bridget. Stephen Andersen is currently an English chef with Burmese roots who runs two restaurants in Valencia. the book, autopublicado, both in Spanish and English, It is full of recipes from Burmese cuisine from the colonial era. A history of Burma has been awarded the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards Winner 2019 for Spain in the Asia category, and finalist for the André Simon Food and Drink Book Awards in London. Stephen participated as a guest chef on the TVE television program Masterchef Celebrity in its fourth edition. GINÉS J. VERA
A history of Burma: cocina, family and rebellion It is written from a personal perspective, family and culinary. With meticulous historical research behind it by his sister Brittet Anderson.
The book is written by both, It's really based on conversations my sister had with my grandmother.. He was born in Burma at the beginning of the 20th century., his mother was called Ma Khin. She is the woman who appears on the cover of the book and the one who gives the restaurant its name.. Ma Khin married my great-grandfather who was an English judge. So it was frowned upon by the English authorities that one of their senior officials, what my great-grandfather was like, being a judge, had a relationship with a native woman. Evidently what they wanted was to maintain relationships with English women., but there weren't many English women in Burma back then. My great-grandfather met Ma Khin and after having a relationship, she was like a concubine, let's say, since he lived in his house, something that was not very common, and they had two children. They got married and had more children.. This relationship was also unusual because at that time for an English man to have a relationship with a native woman, vale, even that he had children with her. But it was thought that over time he would end up meeting an English woman and marrying her and the Burmese concubine., with any child, He would disappear with twenty pounds and messages to his town... and he would forget about her.
I imagine they didn't have it easy at that time..
No. My great-grandfather and great-grandmother had problems because of this relationship.. From that relationship my grandmother was born. And my grandmother was a very intelligent woman who studied a degree in English., she was an english teacher. She was also a woman with her own ideas to such an extent that even though her mother was Burmese, she had married an English man., Ma Khin wanted her children to marry Englishmen. She didn't want her children to have the problems she had because of her marriage.. But my grandmother was very stubborn and fell in love with a Burmese man.. His parents didn't want him to have this relationship., but my grandmother fell in love with my Burmese grandfather, a very funny man, a bit of a womanizer, believe, and very handsome. After World War II my grandparents divorced., a little because of my grandfather's womanizing, he saw the wolf's ears. We are also children of a mixed relationship. My father is Welsh and my mother is more Burmese than anything else.. Our grandmother took great care of us since my mother was a doctor and when she worked, When we came back from school it was my grandmother who took care of us and prepared dinner for us.. And while he prepared dinner he told us the stories of his life in Burma. Fascinating stories of a country that for us only existed in our imagination.
I read a curious thing, that his grandmother preferred that these stories not be published as a book.
Talking to my sister, she told me that she wanted to record these stories because she didn't want them to be lost.. Besides, my grandmother told them very well. My sister interviewed my grandmother with a tape recorder for many months, recording and transcribing conversations, and made a manuscript based on my grandmother's life. This is what makes 25 o 30 years. He had his reluctance to have it published, because my grandmother was active in the nationalist movement. Even though his father was English, My grandmother was a supporter of Burmese independence.. She became friends with many nationalist people who wanted independence. My grandparents knew the intellectual leaders of the nationalist movement. My grandmother was not an important person in the nationalist movement but she moved in these circles. His close friends were activists. In the recordings he tells this whole story, Maybe he thought there were certain details that he preferred not to come to light..
Tell us about the recipes included throughout the book. They are mostly Burmese, although there are also those from other Asian countries.
There is a criterion in the selection of recipes. They are chosen so that for some reason they are associated with Burma, It may be good because they are recipes that are now made in Burma, recipes that the colonialists took with them, either because populations that existed before the current borders of Burma there was a movement of dishes from Thailand the movement of the Chinese or Indian population towards Burma. Many Indian dishes are found in Burma today, chinos, Thai, The selection of the recipes has been recipes that in some way can be associated with today's Burma.
