Monnyin Chin Thoke, Pickled Mustard Green Salad

Walk through any market in the Shan hills in the cool season and you will pass basins of olive-green pickled mustard, sold by the handful, the brine smelling sharp enough to organize your thoughts. Monnyin chin — soured mustard greens — is the workhorse pickle of the highlands, and this thoke is its simplest, most beloved form: squeezed, chopped, and tossed with tomato, garlic oil, sesame, and peanuts.

Mustard greens love the Shan plateau's altitude, and souring them is the old answer to having more greens than meals. How old is honestly unclear — the technique is surely ancient in these hills, but the pickle enters the written record mostly through colonial-era market accounts, when Taunggyi grew into a garrison and market town and hill produce began moving down the new roads and rails. We date it there, and note that the grandmothers were plainly at it long before anyone wrote it down.

The salad succeeds or fails on two small disciplines. Squeeze the greens dry — brine left in the leaves waterlogs the dressing and everything tastes dilute. And fry the garlic slowly to pale gold, no further; its oil should taste sweet and round, because it is doing the work that fat does in richer salads. The result is crunchy, sour, faintly funky, and completely addictive — the sort of thing that starts as a side dish and ends with someone scraping the plate.