Sabuti, the Chin Corn Soup

Sabuti is what the Chin hills sound like at dinnertime — a pot of hominy corn knocking against smoked pork, somewhere above the cloud line in Myanmar's rugged west. It is frugal cooking of the most honest kind. The corn was pounded and dried at harvest; the pork was smoked black over the kitchen hearth because there was no other way to keep it; and the soup that brings them together needs nothing else but ginger, salt, and hours.

The honest history: corn is not ancient here. It is an American crop that crossed the oceans after Columbus and worked its way up-country along the trade routes of the Taungoo era, when Burmese ports were busier than they had ever been. The hills adopted it because it grows where rice will not, and the Chin folded it into their kitchens so thoroughly that sabuti now sits at the center of the table at festivals and funerals alike. Tradition has a start date more often than we admit.

Two things make the pot. The corn must cook until each kernel bursts open like a small flower — taste it, because dried corn keeps its own schedule. And some of those kernels must be crushed against the pot near the end, so their starch clouds the broth into something with real body. Season with salt alone and resist improving it; the smoke is doing more work than any sauce could.