Author: Phil

Black Panther Stout

Cambodian Beer - Black Panther Stout by Cambrew
Brewer: Cambrew

To let the cat out of the bag is an especially cruel idiom for anyone who has actually either seen a bagged cat or attempted to bag one for themselves. Folk etymology has it that the idiom developed from the practice of unscrupulous suckling pig vendors substituting a live cat for a pig, (‘the pig in a poke’). Letting the cat out of the bag discloses a horrible and much less-tasty secret. Cambrew have let the cat out of the bag, a bag that they should sink back into the aphotic depths of the Tonle Sap filled with horseshoes.

Cambrew says“Black Panther Stout is a stout named after the powerful symbol for strength, energy and health. Black Panther Stout embodies the full quality of a stout with an alcohol content of 8% to 8.3% by volume. Black Panther Stout is robust, full bodied with special bitterness and a strong hoppy aroma, to put back what the day has taken out.”

I say: I was hoping for an imperial stout that did Huey P. Newton proud. J. Edgar Hoover called the Black Panthers ‘the greatest threat to internal security in the United States’ and I believe that this beer is an equal threat to the security of my internal organs. Alcohol content is 8%, so Black Panther burns on the way down like setting fire to Watts in 1966 and then beats you about the liver like a COINTELPRO agent. Thin head, burnt butter and molasses flavours. Finish is dry and astringent.

Availability: Widely available, can only

If this beer was an animal, it would be: A jive turkey

The Minimalist Cambodian Ginger Fry

Jinja tipped me off about a recipe in the New York Times for The Minimalist Cambodian Ginger Fry (login required). NYT’s coverage of Cambodia (and food) is always good for a laugh, so here is their version of trei chien chnay.

Neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn, as needed
½ pound ginger, preferably thin-skinned
1½ pounds snapper, sea bass, catfish or other firm, white-fleshed fillet, cut into large chunks
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup flour
1 cup cornstarch
4 scallions, trimmed and cut into 2-inch lengths
1 tablespoon good soy sauce or fish sauce (nam pla)
Cilantro leaves for garnish.

1. Choose a pot that will accommodate the fish chunks in one layer. Add 2 to 3 inches of oil, turn heat to medium-high, and bring to 350 degrees.

2. Meanwhile, peel ginger (if skin is thin, this is best accomplished with a spoon) and julienne it, slice it thinly, or peel strips with a vegetable peeler. When oil is hot, fry ginger until lightly browned, about 10 minutes, adjusting heat as necessary so the temperature remains nearly constant. Meanwhile, season the fish with salt and pepper, and combine flour and cornstarch in bowl.

3. Remove ginger with slotted spoon and set aside. Dredge fish lightly in the cornstarch-flour mixture, tapping to remove excess, and slowly add pieces to oil, again adjusting heat as necessary so temperature remains nearly constant. Fry, turning once or twice, until fish is lightly browned and cooked through (a skewer or a thin-blade knife will pass through each chunk with little resistance). Remove with slotted spoon, and drain on paper towels.

4. Fry scallions for 15 seconds and remove with a slotted spoon; drain. Refry the ginger for about 30 seconds, then remove and drain. Put fish on plate and garnish with ginger and scallions; drizzle with soy sauce or fish sauce, top with cilantro, and serve.

Yield: 4 servings

I haven’t eaten the actual Cambodian reference point for this recipe. The closest thing that I can think of is much more similar to Mylinh’s recipe at Khmer Krom Recipes with the whole fish deep-fried and a good handful of non-fried ginger shards over the top. Interesting.

Tip Off: Talkin’ to a Stranger has proper beer

As you may have guessed from my Cambodian beer reviews, I sorely miss a bottle-conditioned beer. As if St. Arnold had answered my hop-infused prayers, Talkin’ to a Stranger now has it in the form of South Australian beers, Coopers Sparkling Ale and Coopers Pale Ale. At $3 a bottle, I’ll drop by whenever my palate needs resetting.

Location: Talkin’ to A Stranger, #21, Street 294, not far from the corner of Sothearos.

Recipes: Zombie Chicken

“You take the chicken, and you pluck the chicken while it’s still alive, and you baste the skin with a mixture of soya, wheat germ and dripping, I think it was. And apparently this makes it look like the skin’s been roasted. You then put the head of this live chicken under its tummy and rock it to sleep. Then you get two other chickens and you roast them. And you bring these three chickens out on a tray to the table. You start carving one of the roasted chickens. And. . .the one that is still alive but sleeping goes sort of ‘Wha!’ — head pops up — and it runs off down the table…

And that’s Part 1. Then you take this poor chicken, and you kill it, and you stuff its neck with a mixture of quicksilver, which is mercury, and sulfur, and then stitch it up. And apparently — obviously I haven’t tried this at home, or at work — the expanding air in the neck cavity as you roast causes the mercury and the sulfur to react and somehow creates a clucking noise.”

Sweet Zombie Jesus.

The New York Times delivers us an interview with Heston Blumenthal of Fat Duck, speaking of 14th Century French food. Yes, completely unrelated to Cambodian food but so entirely compelling. Not to mention that it would take balls of solid steel to carve a chicken full of boiling quicksilver at the table.

Ever dreamt of owning a piece of colonial Kep?

hedonkep

Since March 2004, a group of foreign investors has rehabilitated what is most likely THE most historically valuable and charming piece of real estate on the Cambodian seaside. As of April 2006, it is 90% complete, the old mansion turned into a restaurant, bar and reception; scattered in the 1,3 ha (3,33 acres) park are 14 cottages offering 17 luxurious rooms for guests. Infrastructure has been designed and executed following international standards.

The disappearance of project’s founder has now forced the owners to offer it for sale. None of them can operate the projected eco-touristic resort.

I was looking forward to this restaurant opening because from the building alone, it was shaping up as an excellent counterpoint to eating a cheap crab meal in dodgier surrounds. You’ve never really experienced the true joy of operating a business in Cambodia until a key element of it goes missing.

Looking to buy? see: www.hedonkep.com

Drinking the Google Kool Aid

Recently I’ve hooked Phnomenon up with Google Analyticsand for someone with a marketing background and a firm belief in the importance of measurability, it makes me want to cry warm tears of pure unadulterated joy. The ability to work out campaign return on investment at the click of a button, for free, gives me a cult-like devotion to it. I have drunk the Google Kool Aid and it tastes extra-fruity. I haven’t been paying forensic attention to my web statistics but now I can no longer avoid it for it is a matter of the true faith.

The offshoot of this has been the discovery that people find their way to my website in ways much weirder than I can imagine. For those waylaid souls who came here looking for something that I don’t provide, here is the answer to your outlandish Google searches:

  • ‘What to do if I get diarrhoea in Cambodia’ : I’m not a doctor but I do play one on television and as is my answer to all health-related questions: self-medicate. Check the consistency and frequency of your poop then follow this handy diarrhoea flowchart. Also make a note to self never to use the words ‘diarrhoea flow’ consecutively.
  • ‘Food what daddy yankee eat’ : Aside from wanting to cast aspersions on your grip on grammar, I doubt that the food what Daddy Yankee eat is of Khmer origin. The Washington Post reports that Mr. Yankee’s reggaeton stylings and his cadre of publicists are fuelled by Japanese food.
  • ‘JetstarAsia review’ : I have developed an intense hatred for JetstarAsia because last time I flew with them, they cancelled my SIN-PNH leg and couldn’t get me on a flight for another whole week. This parlous state of affairs resulted in me flying ignominiously back to Phnom Penh via Bangkok with a one-day stopover. Flying Jetstar is completely joyless. Even flying on the shittiest Third World airline has some semblance of joy because when the plane lands the pilot generally receives rousing applause from the passengers. The one consolation is that aboard the JetstarAsia plane is the cheapest place in Singapore to purchase a cold Tiger beer.
  • ‘fish is important to Cambodian’ : Your question is in the form of an undeniable statement. You are looking for The Ministry of Fish
  • ‘epiphany apocalyptic hp cabo’ : I have no idea for what you’re searching but you truly scare me, because somebody has been looking for this more than once. Feed this into the Googlemonster’s maw and Phnomenon’s Cambodian hamburger review comes out the other end. Coincidence: I think not.

In addition, my humble Kambodzsai gasztroblog has also received a bucketload of visitors from Hungary since Hungarian foodblogger Chilies and Vanilia either arrived in Indochina or has just shown a sudden interest in the region. My Hungarian is not so good.

Carl Parkes’ new contrarian pants

This post is probably gonna piss off a few people, and make other people doubt my sanity or street cred, but street food in Asia is almost uniformly bad. I’ve eaten from food stalls all across Asia, and most of the fare was pure crap. Boiled fishballs in water with seacress is not food – it’s fish food for goats.

But that’s what is usually served from food stalls in Bangkok, Pattaya, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Surabaya, Denpasar, Delhi, Varanasi, and Trivandrum. I’ve eaten street food in all those places, and mostly it has been less than garbage. Unless you have absolutely no taste or distinguishation in food, skip the street foodstalls and spend a little extra money and dine in a cafe where the chef actually knows how to cook.

Carl Parkes, Moon Guide author and acerbic critic of dire travel writing, has returned from his brief holiday wearing a new pair of contrarian pants. It’s an easy target to put the boot into every Asian street food vendor because they can’t fight back when you are out of reach of their razor-sharp cleavers, boiling oil and botulism toxin. The only expectation I have from a full meal that cost me less than 50 cents is that it will not permanently incapacitate me. You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, but you can make a non-lethal and tasty soup and possibly a selection from the Taco Bell menu. With this exceedingly low expectation as a starting point, I’ll occasionally discover something that befits any man or woman of distinguishation. At this stage, I’m not going to censure Carl for losing his marbles, street cred or dictionary because my personal theory is that he’s pitching for a job at an upmarket travel magazine and needs to offer them a low-budget food sacrifice as penance to the Gods of Luxury.

Seeing how the other half lives – Malis and Pacharan

I’ve had an excellent weekend of eating because I’ve had a friend in town who was up for an Ibero-Khmer food mashup and acting as an excuse to eat out for every meal.

Previously I’ve avoided Mali’s because of the large number of Black Landcruisers out the front. I’m convinced that if the ratio of Black to White Landcruisers is wrong, either the food is bad, expensive and over-Westernised (too many White) or the venue is actually a karaoke brothel (too many Black). Mali’s is in fact, neither. Khmer purists will inevitably point out that the food is both Westernised (i.e. the delicious Pumpkin Brulee; the general presentation; the lack of bones or napkins dropped on the floor) and under the fickle influence of Thailand (‘Ack! Lime leaves!’), but I’m a strong believer that absolute authenticity is for chumps. Eating in air-conditioned comfort during the hot season is a godsend.

You know that you are really settling into Phnom Penh when faux-Angkorean statues have the inability to look anything but cheesy and you have hot season fever dreams wherein you are chased by people with stone Jayavaraman heads or Rama’s deadly monkey army.The cheesiness at Mali’s is toned down a notch but I still can’t help but cringe at neon-lit Leper King statue at the entrance. It isn’t to my personal taste but as Edward Said sez ‘Since the time of Homer every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric’. Bring it on.

Unable to cope with the postcolonial landscaping dissonance, we ascended the cantilever stairs into air-conditioned comfort. Our attentive, besuited waiter was particularly keen to pimp a langoustine tamarind-sour soup upon us, with which we had no truck. We opted for a round of cocktails while we perused the photo-rich menu.

After much discussion of the campness of the Side Car versus the Long Island Ice Tea as metonym for suburban housewife alcoholism, we agreed upon entrées of the small ‘natural scallops’ in rich glutinous sauce ($4.90) and the extra chunky prawn cakes ($4.90). Despite our waiter’s samla fetish, for mains, we shared one gigantic King Crab ‘fresh from Kep’ ($9.20) with my current favorite local ingredient: fresh green Kampot pepper; stuffed pork fillet ($4.80); and a falling-off-the-bone duck curry with a yellow kroueng sauce ($5.10) rounded out our five meat meal. We washed it down with a bottle of the reasonably priced Marsanne ($16).

There’s no denying that this is the most expensive Cambodian food that I’ve eaten in Phnom Penh, if not the most expensive Cambodian food available. I’m well past feeling guilty about eating a meal that adds up to the same amount as a coworkers monthly salary. If you’re keen to show that upscale Khmer food can fit into the Western paradigm of good food, Mali’s is probably the place to coax your foreign visitor, before you head downmarket.

Overall, I award the experience two Leper King arms and one Landcruiser out of a possible two.

Location: Just south of the Independence Monument on Norodom Boulevard. Yellow Pages.

I can’t believe it’s not patxaran

Pacharan is still Phnom Penh’s most talked about venue, if only because of the impact of walking up the stairs into the second-floor restaurant and feeling that ‘I can’t believe I’m in Cambodia’ sensation warm you like a glass of sloe and aniseed liquor. Its immaculate timber fitout, hammered copper features, custom artwork and stained glass in orange and yellow hues lend the stairwell and room a real warmth and depth of character that most Phnom Penh eateries sadly lack. It certainly isn’t like your average Spanish tapas bar but it is the only one with a view of fisherfolk floating down the Tonle Sap.

I’m glad we booked a table because by 8:00pm the room was packed and loud, with patrons being seated at the bar in wait. It is a strange sight to see waitstaff moving efficiently and at speed in Cambodia, but both were happening as the frantic open kitchen churned out Spanish morsels.

Service was not only quick but impeccable. Our thin wafers of manchego cheese, cheese-stuffed eggplant, albondigas, both the chicken and vegetable croquettes (all around $4 each) arrived within 10 minutes of our order; and our second jug of Sangria ($11) was refilled practically without needing to ask.

The big surprise for me was being served some rocket as a garnish. Rocket self-seeded in my tiny garden patch in Australia and grew at a rate that even the most maddened pesto fiend couldn’t pulverise it into a tasty pulp, before it outstripped my entire backyard. It not only had the ability to grow between the cracks in the pavement but could also materialise from the aether fully-formed. If I hadn’t left the country I believe that it would have achieved sentience and triffid-like defences by now. I realised that I had not tasted a single sprig of the peppery green since I left Australia more than a year ago and now it has returned to overrun Cambodge.

Pacharan might be the first tapas bar in Phnom Penh, but it certainly won’t be the last judging by the response from nearby businesses. K-West is holding a Spanish Week this week and Sa, next door to the Pacharan entrance, has already added tapas to the menu. Misguided stupidity is the sincerest form of flattery. I’m hoping that we’ll also be seeing a new era of Ibero-Khmer crossover: num anksom with Iberian ham, kroeung paella, prahok-stuffed olives and palm wine sangria.

Location: Corner Sisowath Quay and St.184. Enter on St.184. Yellow Pages.

mmm…Angkorlicious

Sachiko Kojima opened a cookie factory. She was soon supplying foreign tourists from Japan and around the globe with souvenir confections from this northern Cambodia city, the gateway to the Angkor Wat Khmer ruins. Her “Madam Sachiko” cookies, shaped like the ancient ruins, are now the must-buy souvenir for tourists visiting the city.

As much as I thought that candles shaped like Angkor Wat were a slightly profane souvenir (‘See the majestic temples burn to the ground in the comfort of your own home!’), to use a Simpson-ism, these Angkor cookies are sacrilicious. Thankfully the must-buy souvenirs of the “Danger – Mines” t-shirt or a Jayavaraman head carved by small child hands have been supplanted by something edible.

See: Japanese smart cookie finds niche in Cambodia . Madam Sachiko’s own website (www.madam-sachiko.com) seems to be down.

Pho and breaks at Saigon Restaurant

Saigon Restaurant

I’ve had a sneaking suspicion that Indochina’s breakbeat scene is going to cut loose soon. There’s enough cheap midi keyboards floating around the music stores and the best software that money can pirate available. As soon as people run out of rhymes for ‘Sabai’ then producers of bad Khmer pop will snap from their karaoke haze and start syncopating some big fat beats. This suspicion has been badly compounded by my dinner of pho and Tiger lager at Saigon Restaurant last night. Shortly after being seated by the staff, I was assaulted with a few tracks from Roni Size’s New Forms and the Fatboy Slim remix of 1998 classic Renegade Master, all played at ear-bleed volume. Extremely fishy.

pho at Saigon Restaurant

As you can see from the above photo, by night Saigon Restaurant is poorly lit by a paltry array of fairy lights, possibly to replicate that feeling of eating pho from an unlit roadside. An unlit roadside with a bass bin. In my pho bo ($1, but I’m paying for atmosphere), I could roughly make out three halved beef balls floating about, a sizable portion of real cow meat slices, and a few spring onions. As you can see near my helmet, it came with most the fixings: basil (chee krohom), saw tooth leaf (chee parang), halved limes, bean shoots. Good star anise and cinnamon kick in the practically unsalted broth. To top things off, tea was complimentary and the waiter generously left an entire colander full of ice on my table: a completely disproportionate response to my order of a single Tiger lager ($1.25).

Along with the pho (bo only, no ga), Saigon has a fistful of Vietnamese standards on its short menu, and will sear you quail, cockles and beef on their barbecue at the entrance.

Location: Above Vina Store, on the corner of Monivong and St.228.