Buthi Kyaw, Bottle Gourd Fritters

Walk any Yangon street in the late afternoon and you will hear buthi kyaw before you see it — the hiss of thin batter hitting hot oil from a stand that has been in the same spot longer than the buildings around it. This is the a-kyaw tradition, the fritter canon of Burmese street food, and the bottle gourd version is its gentlest star: mild, sweet flesh going soft and steamy inside a shell of lacy, turmeric-gold crunch.

Fritter frying on this scale is a city habit, and it grew up with the city — colonial Rangoon's crowds, Indian traders' besan, and street commerce on every corner made the fried snack a fixture by the early twentieth century. The form has not changed since: batons dragged through thin batter, fried in a blackened wok, hung to drain over the oil, handed over in newsprint with a plastic bag of sweet-sour tamarind dip knotted at the top. In the rainy season, when the whole city smells of wet pavement, a hot bag of a-kyaw is close to a civic right.

Everything hangs on the batter's thinness. It should coat the gourd like a wet veil, so the vegetable steams inside while the shell shatters — and the stray drips that trail off in the oil become the crisp lace that separates a street fritter from a cafeteria one. Mix the batter at the last minute, fry hot, drain on a rack, and eat standing up.