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I’ve just booked my ticket home to the UK after more
than a year in Cambodia, and I still think I know less about the food than when
I first got here. In truth, I’ve barely even scratched the surface of Cambodian
cooking. I’ve not eaten every dish this beautiful country has to offer, far
from it, and sometimes when I go to a new province I’ll find a dish that I’ve
never even heard of.
My research hasn’t been helped by the fact that
there are only a handful of books on Cambodian food, and only a couple of blogs
worth reading. But I wanted to give you a list of dishes you should try if you
do come here - the ones that really made an impact on me.
I began this blog scribbling in a roadside cafe in
Phnom Penh, and tried to draw up a list of my top 10 Cambodian dishes. It
wasn’t easy. I don’t mean finding ten, I mean whittling it down from the 20 or
so I’d scrawled into my Moleskin notebook.
Which ones would I leave out? Would I shove in a
couple of desserts for balance, or just the ones I liked best? In the end I
settled for 11 dishes - I couldn’t see a way of cutting it down to 10 and I still
had to leave out some excellent ones like squid with green Kampot pepper (pic above). So
here goes...
1. Cambodian Beef Soup
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This is a great dish and one of the best communal
meals I’ve ever had. Cambodians love eating - they graze all day - and are very
passionate about food. And I love the arguments that develop about whether, or
when, the noodles should go in, whether the thinly-sliced raw beef fillet
should be mixed with beaten egg first. And how long should it poach for? Forty
seconds? There are few finer things in life than friends
sitting around a table squabbling about food while topping themselves up with
endless jugs of beer.
It begins as a bubbling bowl of beef stock
containing chunks of tougher cuts that have been cooked until they dissolve in
your mouth in a pleasing squelch of fat and gristle. The bowl is put on a gas
burner on the table and so many side plates appear that there is hardly room
for the beer jugs.
There are plates of vegetables, fresh herbs like
mint, holy basil, and culantro (saw-toothed coriander), a couple of raw eggs, beef
fillet, yellow balls of egg noodles, white balls of rice noodles, chillies,
prahok, lemongrass, salt and always Kampot pepper. So many in fact that you
could probably order the dish 100 times and never have it the same way twice -
depending on who’s doing the cooking that is.
2. Prahok Ling
This is an incredibly powerful dish, flavoured with Cambodia’s
notoriously foul-smelling fermented fish paste, prahok. The paste is fried with
hand-chopped pork, onion, garlic, egg, and chilli.
And it’s so strong there are strict Government laws
in place to ensure you only get a small saucer of the stuff, which you eat with
boiled jasmine rice and chunks of raw aubergine, cucumber, green tomato, and white
cabbage to take the edge off the extremely pungent taste.
I’ve always been into bold, salty flavours, and for
me it’s absolutely delicious, but it wouldn’t suit everyone. Recipe here...
3. Spit-Roast Calf (Koo Dut)
When I first got here, you used to see whole calves being
slowly cooked in the street, and what a lovely sight it was too. But a couple
of months ago, the Cambodian government, in its wisdom, decided to ban restaurants
and stalls from spit-roasting cows in public – over claims they incite violence
and are bad for the image of Cambodia.
Now you won't see a spit-roast calf on display
anywhere in Cambodia (they're being cooked in kitchens and yards at the back). But
although the theatre has gone, and Phnom Penh’s stretch of koo dut restaurants
are noticeably quieter as a result, it’s still a dish worth trying.
The hunks of grilled veal are always served the same
way, with a tray of crudités, salt, pepper and lime dip (tuk meric), and prahok
sauce. The cooks get to work early in the day by butchering and washing the
carcass, and then filling the belly with lemon grass, lime leaves and rice
paddy herbs before sewing up the cavity. The beast then slowly spit-roasts for
hours over charcoal and wood.
4. Salt, Pepper And Lime Dip (Tuk Meric)
Tuk meric is an incredibly simple dip made from
salt, Cambodia’s wonderful Kampot pepper, and lime juice. But my God it works.
You’ll get it with everything from hunks of barbecued calf to Cambodia’s
horrendous beef lok lak, a version of Vietnam’s far better dish of the same
name.
But it goes best with freshly-boiled seafood,
particularly blue swimmer crabs, which although contain little brown head meat,
and virtually no morsels in the claws, more than make up for it with the
generously fleshy chine.
In restaurants, they usually serve a mix of two
thirds freshly-ground black pepper to one third salt, then carefully squeeze in
two or three lime quarters and mix it in front of you. It might seem a laughably simple procedure that
would scarcely trouble even the most cack-handed cook. But they take it as
seriously as a chef de rang would the preparation of crepe suzette, pressed
duck, or table-carved rib of beef, squeezing in the ‘correct’ amount of lime
juice until there is the right moistness to the sauce.
You’ll have few better days than sitting at a
restaurant in Kep’s famous crab market, looking out to sea, while supping cold
beer and dipping freshly-boiled crab into this incredible dip.
5. Khor Trey Swey Kchey
This is freshwater fish braised in a mildly-spiced
palm sugar sauce with grated green mango on top. I’ve had the dish a few times
and it’s wonderful.
It sums up the rustic nature of Cambodian food - the
contrast of the different flavours in the dish rather than how balanced it is -
a common feature in cuisines that haven’t been refined.
There’s a delicious
combination between the sweetness of the fish, and its sticky, slightly
caramelised sauce, and the very sour green mango on top with the herbs, and
then the crunch of raw vegetables like green tomato and cucumber.
6. Chicken And Salted Lime Soup
This is traditionally served at weddings out here,
but is actually of Chinese origin - a country that has probably had the biggest
influence on Cambodian food.
Ngam ngov (salted limes) were brought to Cambodia by
Chinese immigrants more than 700 years ago. The limes are dried in the sun and
then stored in brine, so they soften and take on an incredibly sour, slightly
soapy flavour.
The duck or chicken is deep-fried and then cooked in
water flavoured with kaffir lime leaves, galangal, lemon grass, garlic, fish
sauce, and the salted limes. Generally, the limes are used in soup, but you
sometimes find them chopped up in Chinese-style stir-fry dishes, usually with strips
of chicken and herbs. Recipe here
7. Chicken Porridge Soup
Cambodia is truly the land of soups. I don’t think
you’ll find a country with such a high proportion of soups on restaurant menus,
and there is nearly always a broth at every family meal. But of all the great
broths in Cambodia, and there are plenty, chicken porridge soup (bo bor sachmoan) is my favourite.
It’s traditionally eaten at breakfast and topped
with nutty, browned, but not burnt garlic, and the herby fragrance of chopped
culantro. As you dig in, there is the occasional limp crunch of bean sprouts
poached in the heat of the broth, and the pleasing discovery of a little piece
of chicken or bone to suck on.
Then there is the chicken stock, hinting of lime
leaf and lemon grass, and julienne strips of fresh ginger that are, like the
bean sprouts, stirred in at the end moments before service so they take on an
increasingly cooked texture as you finish the soup.
Then there’s the soapy richness of the cubes of
blood pudding, made from pork and chicken blood, and the yolks taken from the
hens' ovaries, which glint like amber pearls. I could go on...
8. Fried Pork With Chilli, Lemon Grass And Holy
Basil
Generally, Cambodians don’t use too many chillies in
their food, the same way as say Thais do. Instead, they serve it separately –
usually sliced chilli in a saucer, pickled tiny chillies in a jar, and a fiery
relish of sliced red chillies and garlic, so people can put as much on as they
want.
But this brilliant dish helps destroy the popular
myth that Cambodian food is never spicy. I’ve tasted the dish in many
restaurants and homes, and it’s always eye-wateringly hot - just like the green
mango, papaya, and Khmer beef salads they serve, particularly in the Battambang
region.
A huge handful of holy basil is thrown in, and cooks
down like spinach. Its clove-like taste works well with the chopped fresh and
dried chilli, and gives the dish a deep, spicy flavour, which is lightened by
the zesty, perfumed taste of lemon grass - an integral ingredient to Khmer
cuisine.
It needs no accompaniment, other than a soup, a bowl
of sticky rice, and a kettle of cold tea poured into a mug of ice and drunk
through a straw.
9. Cambodian Dried Fish Omelette
The best version I had was made with smoked fish
that had been soaked in brine, and then grilled over smouldering wood for eight
hours until they were hard and chewy. But mostly salted, dried fish are used.
The fish is broken up into small pieces and then
added to a pan with chopped onion and garlic and fried for a couple of minutes.
A couple of beaten eggs and black pepper are added, and the omelette is served very
thin and dry with a plate of raw vegetables and rice. It makes a very savoury, rich
breakfast.
10. Samlor Ktis
This is one of the many sour soups you’ll find in
Cambodia, and is incredibly easy and quick to make. But like most good dishes,
its strength lies in its simplicity.
It’s usually made from fish or chicken and flavoured
with chunks of fresh pineapple, Cambodia’s mild kroeung curry paste, and coconut
water - an almost colourless liquid found in young, green coconuts. It’s
amazing the fresh, clean flavour achieved from just a handful of ingredients. Recipe here...
11. Grilled Pork With Rice And Pickles
This has become one of my favourite breakfasts. There’s
something incredible in the way the pickled vegetables, chewy slices of grilled
pork, and the pork and chicken broth work together with pickled chillies from
the condiment trays to make something amazing.
The pork is marinated for hours and then slowly
grilled. It has such a deliciously salty flavour and intense red colour that I
can’t get enough of it. You pour spoonfuls of the clear broth over the rice and
pork and then dig in.
The pickle is usually made from carrot, cucumber and
daikon. They are cut on a mandolin into julienne strips and then salted. The
water produced is drained off and then they are soused in a pickling mixture of
water, white vinegar, sugar, salt and spices. Think kimchi without all the PR.
MORE: Cambodian Food: The Chef Hailed As A Genius By Raymond Blanc
:: My new book 'Down And Out In Padstow And London' about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck, Rick Stein's and other restaurants, is available as a paperback and eBook on Amazon CLICK HERE
:: My new book 'Down And Out In Padstow And London' about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck, Rick Stein's and other restaurants, is available as a paperback and eBook on Amazon CLICK HERE
