Back in 2009 Caroline and I started frequenting Little Rangoon restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona. By that time they’d already been there for a year and a half but we didn’t live in the area and so it took a while before we discovered them one day while driving by. Immediately we were smitten and became regular customers, sadly we alone couldn’t sustain their business, and about a year after we had fallen in love with Elizabeth’s amazing take on Burmese cooking, they were closing for good.

Along the way, we were rewarded with off-menu dishes or invited in when no one else was in the place to try things like various preparations of durian. Before they shut their doors I was invited into the kitchen to pick up a few tips and tricks so Caroline and I could continue to enjoy some of our favorite dishes. Those notes have languished unshared with anyone else until now, though we have resorted to them time and again for our own fond culinary memories. As a matter of fact, this very recipe and these photos were shared back in 2009 in a blog entry in which I first spoke of Little Rangoon. I wasn’t a food blogger so I tried to avoid featuring too many entries about the subject and now I regret it. But I can move to rectify that as I have all the photos and notes to share now. Over the next weeks, I’ll try my best to post as much as I can for the sake of permanently preserving these recipes which I hope will survive on the internet well into the future.

I have to admit it’s been more than 7 or 8 years since I made this Chili Onion Salad for myself. Caroline won’t eat it, nor would Elizabeth or her husband Alfred. This is peasant food and one of the most unlikely dishes for me to fall in love with. When I was a kid I hated raw onions: the basis of this dish is raw onions and some incredibly hot chili flakes.

There is one bit of preparation that could take place before setting in to make your salad and that is roasting the chili flakes. There are no special requirements for the chili flakes, any old ones will do, maybe even a few packets that are given away with pizzas would work. Simply roast them in a dry frying pan until they start to darken, but don’t burn them.

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp oil of your preference such as peanut, canola, or avocado
• 2 Tbsp of roasted chili flakes
• 1 Tsp salt
• 1/2 Cup of thinly sliced red onion
• 1 wedge of fresh lemon

Preparation:

Mix all the ingredients in a small bowl, preferably by hand, and that’s it.

I’d have this served with a bowl of hot steamed brown rice as brown is my preference but any hot rice will do. Like all Burmese salads we’ve had, rice plays a role in being the contrasting temperature complement to the colder, raw, and crunchy other ingredients. This salad is not for the faint of heart as it’s the only thing I’ve ever eaten that has made my eyelids sweat. While this dish may sound simple, the complexity of its ingredients after the lemon and salt go to work on “cooking” the onions and melding the flavors, are far greater than the sum of the parts.

There are almost two dozen recipes in my old notebook and about 300 photos I took in the restaurant and the kitchen. Little Rangoon was our first favorite restaurant in all of Arizona and we miss the place more than any other restaurant we’ve visited. Oh, how I’d like to sit down with Elizabeth and Alfred just one more time for one of her incredible meals.