Myanmar’s national dish, mohinga, varies from region to region depending on the availability of ingredients.

MOHINGA, the mouth-watering scent of Myanmar itself, is all things to all lovers of fine food – both in this country and overseas. The unmistakeable aroma of the hot fish-paste soup over rice noodles is inextricably linked with the food traditions of the country.

Fast food it is not. More than 10 ingredients, and several separate steps, are required to prepare mohinga. The main component is fish paste.

Fish – nga gyee, nga gyinn, nga khue, nga yant are boiled until the flesh is tender enough to slip from the bones, to the accompaniment of ginger and zaba lin (lemon grass).

At the same time, onion, garlic and lemon grass are pounded or crushed thoroughly into a paste ready to be folded into the sizzling cooking oil. When it turns golden brown, add the fish paste.

Then come the boiled groundnuts or chickpeas crushed into pastes to make the soup thick and tasty. Thin broth from the fish bones is mixed with rice flour, with pastes made from the cooked fish and from peas. The fish makes the taste sweet.

A plate of hot steaming mohinga demands a crispy accompaniment. People like to add spring onion, with coriander for extra flavour. For a Myanmar, nothing says “breakfast” like mohinga. But the dish varies in the different regions of the country.

Mohinga in the seafood-rich Ayeyarwaddy delta naturally make more use of fish, whose potent extracts strengthen the sweet taste of the soup. The vermicelli they serve with the dish, being hand-made, is slightly bigger than in Yangon. They also elaborate the dish with fried fish roes, steamed glutinous rice, steamed peas and other regional products. But Yangonites prefer their mohinga thinner.

If fish are less plentiful, as in Pyay and Taungoo, mohinga is thickened with bean powder. In central Myanmar, where fish are scarce and lean even if they can be had, the soup is fleshed out with chicken as well as bean powder. Though some say that chicken is no substitute for the sweetness of fish, it seems to go down well with the residents of the arid plains.

“We normally cook with chicken, which is very popular with our customers, but we have to use fish for the pilgrims who come from Yangon for the pagoda festival,” said U Htay Aung, who sells mohinga in Nyaung Oo.

He said Yangonites and people from the delta will eat chicken mohinga mainly out of curiosity, but revert to the hearty fish taste when they can.

Mohinga fashioned around the plentiful fish nga pheinn , a kind of carp from Inle Lake, is a treat for the people of Shan State. The Intha people also use plenty of carp to sweeten their soup.

The Rakhine coast takes the prize for the hottest mohinga. In their cuisine, besides the abundance of fish, peppers and aromatic herbs in ginger are added to turn up the heat. The soup is thin, hot and tasty, and guaranteed to get the perspiration flowing.

Sea fish is also a prominent feature of Mohinga down along the Tanintharyi coast, where the locals like to add nga pywe ue, sliced banana pith, though some say it dulls the sweetness of the fish. But devotees find it agreeably crunchy, and its railway-tracks shape is a welcome sight floating in the soup.

Myaung Mya Daw Cho, Tin Tin Aye, Khin Htwe Yee and Sein U are well known mohinga shops in Yangon. Each of their soups is slightly different, as the portions of ingredients vary.

For Myanmar overseas, when the hunger for mohinga grows too strong to withstand, they are forced to turn to dry paste. Daw Myint Myint Than, the owner of Myaung Mya Daw Cho mohinga shop said ready-made mohinga packs are a best-selling gift.

“Though consumers prefer fresh-cooked soup, they also like to keep ready-made packs for later use and to give as presents to their friends,” she said.

She said the instant dry paste used only nga yant – a fish inferior in flavour to the fresh-cooked soup.

“The main difference is garlic, which enriches the texture of the soup. Though instant dry pastes are poor in flavour, they are greatly appreciated,” she said, adding that the dry pastes were invented particularly for people who can’t find a mohinga shop or are too busy to cook at home.

Whichever method you prefer, you can cook the simplest or the most elaborate mohinga at home – or just go to the nearest shop, and enjoy.