Pazun Kyaw, Coastal Prawn Fritters

A-kyaw — the great Burmese family of fritters — is everywhere in Myanmar, but on the Rakhine coast the fryer faces the sea. Where inland stalls fill their batter with gourd or split peas, the western coast reaches for what the boats bring in: small prawns, folded whole into a turmeric-tinted rice batter and fried into wide, lacy rafts. Fritter stalls of this kind flourished with the colonial-era street economy of Akyab — today's Sittwe — though frying snacks for passersby is surely older than any record of it; what the ledgers tracked was the prawns, not the pleasure.

Pazun kyaw is judged entirely on its crunch. The batter is deliberately thin — rice flour for glassy crispness, a little chickpea flour for color and a nutty spine — and there should never be quite enough of it, so that prawns and shallot petals stick out of every edge and fry to a frazzle. Eaten hot off the wire rack with a sour-sweet chili-tamarind dip, they are monsoon food of the first order: when the rain hammers down and the boats stay in, the smell of turmeric batter in hot oil is the whole street's consolation.

Two things make or break it. Keep the batter cold and thin — it should run like light cream, not coat like paint. And fry in small batches at a confident heat; the difference between lace and sponge is about fifteen degrees of oil temperature and one over-eager ladle.