An Buti, the Meatless Corn Soup

An buti is what the Chin hills eat when the smokehouse has nothing to offer — and it is nobody's consolation prize. The buti pot of hominy corn stays the same as in sabuti, the region's great soup; what changes is the backbone. An — the word Chin languages use for the vegetable side of the meal — announces that beans, pumpkin, and greens will do the work meat usually does. Red ricebeans bring starch, pumpkin brings sweetness and body, and the crush of soft kernels against the pot brings the cloudy, faintly porridge-like broth that separates a buti from vegetables in water.

The dish is documented the way most Chin food is documented — thinly, and recently. Tourism writing on Chin State lists an buti and its white-bean sibling rabuti by name beside sabuti; everything else about it lives in kitchens, not books, and we say so plainly. What can be dated is the produce: corn, beans of this family, and pumpkin are American crops that reached Burma's ports in the busy trading centuries of the Taungoo era and climbed into the hills together, where they grow happily in fields rice refuses. The Chin planted the three sisters without ever hearing the name.

Cook it with restraint. Salt is the only seasoning added; ginger and onion are background; the thickness comes from crushing, not from flour. Then put something fierce beside it — shan-nan-nan, the pounded herb-and-chili relish, is the traditional escort — and let the gentle pot and the sharp spoonful argue pleasantly all dinner long.