When Will Angkor Wat Be Sold To China?

A column I wrote for Khmer 440...

I was quite surprised by the fuss this week over the announcement that a full-scale replica of the world-famous temple of Angkor Wat is to built thousands of miles away on the banks of the Ganges in India.

The trust behind the $18m project says the new temple, some 25 miles outside the Bihar state capital of Patna, in east India, will take 10 years to build, be even bigger than the original, and standing at 222ft will result in the world’s tallest Hindu temple.

Cambodian officials – clearly worried it might divert confused holidaymakers from the country’s big money-spinner near Siem Reap – came out in force to slam the venture. They branded it a “fake” and said it was an outrage that the temple would be even bigger than the real thing.

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Killer Curry In Cambodia: The Verdict

It was 6.15pm when I turned the curry off and tasted it for the last time. I was dripping with sweat. I was as wet as a Thai police officer during Songkran. I realised how out of practice I was, but I’d never cooked in a tropical kitchen before. Tom was hovering near the door, holding his neck. I asked him how hot he wanted it, saying it was just under the radar of what I’d call a medium hot curry.

“Well, it can’t be too hot, or the Western customers won’t eat it,” he grimaced. “But the Khmers will – they’ll eat anything.”

He washed a spoon and dipped in.

“Oh yes, that’s good. It’s got a kick, you can feel it,” he said, clutching his throat as he swallowed. “I don’t think it needs to be any hotter than that.”

I wasn’t convinced. I was sure the panel of food experts at the bar were looking for a hot curry.

Tom and Josh went off in a huddle in front of the now fixed computer to work out a price. It really looked like they knew what they were doing. They decided on $4 for a bowl of curry with rice or a baguette.

I reckoned there were at least 16 servings in the pot – even with the huge portions they served. The ingredients had cost a maximum of $30 (£20), even if you took the tuk tuk into account, and it looked like I was cooking for free – there hadn’t been any mention of money - so they were left with a $34 gross profit if they sold it all, plus whatever they made on drinks.

Normally in the UK, you’d go for a 30% food cost, meaning if you bought £30 of food, you’d sell it for £100. We were working at around a 50% food cost, but the overheads and wages are much less in Cambodia – the monthly rent on the restaurant was just $300, plus $20 to the police, and the odd crate of beer to the real police force in town, the tuk tuk drivers. And as for wages, cooks and waiters get a paltry $15 to $30 a week for 12-hour days and two days off a month – which is why Tom and Josh rarely did anything at the restaurant.

A 50% gross profit margin was good money in Cambodia, especially compared to some of the Khmer restaurants in town. One up the road served a delicious chicken cordon bleu I’d ordered a couple of times. I’d been in the kitchen to see them make it.

I had no idea how they could make it for the money. It was 11,000 riel (just less than $3) for two big chicken breasts stuffed with slices of ham and cheese, and coated in Japanese-style breadcrumbs, and it came with salad and a mound of mashed potato. They were probably making 50 cents on the dish – if that.

I went back to my room, had a cold shower, and lay on the bed for an hour, bathing in the tickling chill breeze of the air conditioning unit. It felt good to be back in the kitchen. Very good.

I met the old Aussie in the street on my way to the bar. He was looking at Josh’s specials board. Most nights he had cottage pie in there.

“You can’t sell it like that! Gorr, how long did it take him to come up with that one?” he said.

We both looked at the board. All it said was “chicken curry $4”.

We headed up to the bar. Josh turned up later with a bowl of curry for his supper. All the food experts were there. I ordered another drink, sat at the bar, and waited for the verdict. I couldn’t bear to turn round. The suspense was awful.

“Oh, ten out of ten,” said the boxer. And I knew I was saved.

There were five orders and another three from across the street, and I don’t know how many they’d sold down at the restaurant.

“That’s a proper, proper curry. Yep, that’s a good curry,” Josh said, but he still made me pay for my own one.

We chatted away until the small hours. By the end Josh and the bar owner Rodney were trying to persuade me to open my own restaurant down at the beach. Josh said there was one going for $13,000.

“You’re never going to make a billion, no you won’t make a billion,” said Josh. “But you can make a good living here, especially if you can cook like that.”

I went to bed happy and exhausted, but like everything in catering, it wasn’t to last.

The next day, Josh told me they’d sold out of curry. I walked past in the afternoon, and there was a new sign up. I was furious.

They’d stolen my recipe! I stood in the street for a while, wondering what to do. The food experts had mocked Josh about his sign, and when he’d asked me what it should be called I said it was a Madras-style curry. And there it was, less than 24 hours later.

Dee must have remembered everything I told her. They’d got the spices I’d bought, so they knew what was in it, and I’d shown her every part of the recipe. I stood there steaming in the heat, then I returned to the restaurant.

Killer Curry In Cambodia: In The Kitchen

Luckily there was a 2kg tin of tomatoes being used as a doorstop back at the restaurant. Dee, one of the Cambodian cooks, was serving a few customers. Josh told me to come back at 4pm when the broom cupboard kitchen would be quieter. I had between 4pm and 6.30pm to get a killer curry made before another two cooks turned up.

Dee was finishing her last order when I returned. Josh was fretting around behind me.

“So what do you need? What do you need?”

Thankfully, he soon left us to it and returned to his card game with a man on red wine. I borrowed a chopper, board, and a plastic bag for the off-cuts and got to work on the sack of onions.

Dee was standing around, watching me anxiously. She still had no idea what the strange long nose was doing in her kitchen. All Josh had said was “we make curry.” She obviously wanted to chop the onions, but I wasn’t taking any chances. The onions had to be right. I’d had enough set-backs already without ballsing up the onions.

I got her to peel some garlic, and then I realised just how good a cook she was. She blitzed the garlic, then started on the meat. I showed her how I wanted the breast cut up, with six cubes out of each one, and two minutes later there was a mountain of glistening, perfect cubes. She told me she’d started in the kitchen as a pot wash at 14, and had worked for the past six years under a series of long nose chefs. It was in her blood.

I threw chopped onions, ginger, garlic, red chillies, and two scoops of sea salt into a huge pot with plenty of vegetable oil, and started cooking the curry base down. I didn’t want to rush the sauce, but the clock was ticking and another order had come in to mess things up. I let the onions simmer for 30 minutes until they had that sweet, melted confit texture you’d use for onion marmalade.

I started thinking about the customers again. They were no doubt already down the bar swigging ice cold Anchor and talking about their curry. They’d probably even written out score boards. I knew they were anxiously waiting for me to mess things up. One of them, a huge pit bull of a man, had already cracked jokes about if his curry wasn’t good enough, he wasn’t going to pay for it. But as he’d survived five years in a Thai jail I wasn’t going to argue with him.

Dee was fascinated by the curry, and I could tell she was taking it all in. I said Tom and Josh were lucky to have such a good chef, and told her to ask for a pay rise. I got her to sniff each of the spices as I threw them into the onions and explained how it was important to cook the sauce for a long time. I fried the spices for a few minutes and then added two fat cinnamon sticks and three bay leaves, and more water to stop the paste catching on the bottom.

Dee finished chopping the tomatoes, and added them to the pan with the juice from the tin. We’d let them cook down for another 45 minutes. It gave us about 30 minutes to finish the dish. Josh popped his head in, and showed me the blender he’d promised. It was about the size of a coke can.

I had about 10 litres of sauce to blitz. I didn’t have another big vessel to pour the pureed sauce into, and there wasn’t the time or the surface space to fill up a load of plastic containers.

I was just glad I’d finely diced the onions, and got Dee to do the same with the tomatoes. With plenty of oil and cooking it should almost go down to a smooth sauce, but again it wouldn’t be perfect. Then Josh came back and said he couldn’t find the grinder for the fenugreek. I thought about the boxer again and his freshly made curry pastes on the Curry Mile.

The onions had almost dissolved by the time I put the chicken in. I let the curry gently cook for another 30 minutes or so. I added more salt and some lemon juice, sugar, and tomato ketchup (the secret ingredient in Indian restaurants). It was as good as any I’d made at home, I was sure of it, but then it was hard to remember. I was in foreign climes, nursing myself with gin and tonics to quell the afternoon sun, my mouth salivating at the very thought of curry. I was in no position to judge.

But somehow there was still something missing. I tried more lemon juice and vinegar, but there was a sharpness missing. Then I reached for the bottle with the cobra curled up inside.