Lunch Break

Rangoon Sisters’ Simple Fish Curry Recipe Recalls Burmese Days

Family history adds spice to a dish that’s easy to make at home.

The Rangoon Sisters' fish curry.

Source: Ebury

It was only after my father died, in 1972, that I learned he had been born in Burma. Thus began, for me, a decades-long fascination with the country that is now officially called Myanmar.

I first visited in 1981, when the communist government restricted tourist visas to one week and only about half a dozen cities were open to foreigners. It was like entering a time warp. The broken streets of the capital of Rangoon (now Yangon) were lined with decaying colonial-era buildings and people got around in ancient buses like transport-museum pieces.