Bamboo-tube sticky rice which we called Kauk Nyin Kyidauk, is one of the favourite seasonal food among many traditional foods made with Myanmar rural products.
There are various types of bamboo in Myanmar, among them, “ Tin-wa” “ pencil tube bamboo” is used in making Bamboo-tube sticky rice.
Old-age bamboo and newly fresh sticky rice are used to get an aromatic seasonal food called Bamboo-tube sticky rice.
Firstly, Bamboos are cut up by a saw to have hollow bamboo opening with one-joint-end closed, and then cleaned and unsoiled sticky rice, which has been immersed in clean water for four hours, is slowly poured into each piece of hollow bamboo-tube. Each tube fully filled-up with sticky rice is struck against the ground to become dense.
After that, the bamboo sticks are kept vertically in serial in a large container. And then each stick is placed one by one vertically across the fire stove to bake. Then, they are backed on open fire using dried leaves and bamboo wastes.
The bamboo sticks are continuously heated and when the water in the bamboo sticks begins to boil, you have to turn each stick around. When the sticky rice bamboo tubes are boiled up again, each sticky rice bamboo stick opening is closed with straw and then they are turned upside down and continued to keep them on fire with the remaining heat.
When these heated bamboo-sticks are cooled, the blocks of straw at each end of sticks are then removed and the outer-coverings of bamboo-sticks are peeled off by chopping with knife.
Then the closed-end of bamboo-joints is marked with small chopper cuts to open the bamboo-sticks easily.
When the bamboo strips are peeled off, you have a lovely cylinder of sticky rice encased in a thin membrane only from the type of Tin-wa “Pencil tube bamboo”. It gives a pleasant flavour.
The chunks of sticky rice are eaten not only with sugar, but also with grounded sesame (or) coconut fiber.
We, Myanmar people, usually take this seasonal food with Myanmar green tea in the presence of friends and relatives.
