Khmer – Page 3 – Phnomenon: food in Cambodia

Amokalypse Now

Amok from Malis restaurant

If there is one item of Cambodian food that incites real passion amongst tourists to Cambodia, it is fish amok (amok trei). The mousseline fish curry steamed in a banana leaf container is one of the few Cambodian foods that consistently strikes a chord with foreigners from everywhere. As much as I try to hook my visiting compatriots on sour soups and fermented fish, nothing paves the way into Khmer cuisine as smoothly as a good amok.

I know that I’ll be pistol-whipped by a motivated official from the Ministry of Tourism for pointing this out but fish amok isn’t uniquely Cambodian. Most people in the South East Asian region caught onto cooking coconut and fish mousse in a banana leaf at some point in history. Although its origin was possibly in the Khmer empire, Thailand does a practically identical version of it named “hor mok“. Peranakan cuisine also has”otak-otak” which generally uses fish paste instead of fish chunks. I’ve heard rumour that there is a similar variety of “pepes ikan” in Indonesia (distinct from the Indonesian Peranakan edition) but have not been able to find any corroborating evidence thus far.

In the Khmer language, amok only refers to the dish, whereas in Thai ‘hor mok‘ translates as something like ‘bury wrap’ suggesting that on a linguistic basis, amok probably came from Cambodia’s immediate neighbours. A much less likely linguistic explanation for amok’s cloudy origins is to follow the trail of the word amok, whose genesis is from the 17th century Portuguese word amouco. Amouco entered into the Portuguese vernacular through their colonisation of Malaysia and is originally from the Malay amok (‘rushing in a frenzy’). Could the early Portuguese settlers or Malay traders in Cambodia carried the recipe for Peranakan otak otak with them from Malaysia resulting in the more frenzied Khmer version? It is unlikely but not outside the realm of possibility as Portugal’s culinary influence in the region resulted in starting the pan-Asian chilli addiction.

The problem with writing Cambodian food histories is that is impossible to trace recipes beyond two generations for almost all Cambodian foods. Recipes in Cambodian cuisine are orally transmitted and when a generation forgets a recipe then it disappears. Generations also modify recipes to their tastes or simply due to the dictates of the seasons or their fortunes. In this context, claiming a food is historically authentic or not is ludicrous : it might be what their grandmother cooked but beyond that lays pure conjecture. While some believe that the Khmer Rouge era destroyed much of Cambodian cuisine, I tend to take the contrary view that due to recipes being so widely distributed in society combined with the unimaginable resilience of Cambodia’s people meant that only the most marginal foods disappeared.

The resilient snakehead fish (trei ros), equally at home on dry land and in fish amok

The positive result of an orally transmitted cuisine is not only its survivability: it means that no recipe is ever canonised. There will always be subtle differences between neighbouring provinces or even neighbouring families. Fish amok is no exception with some recipes resulting in an almost-solid brick of curry or a soupier amok. Snail (chouk) is commonly used instead of fish. Some amoks are decorated Thai-style with shredded chilli and lime leaves. Some aren’t. More recently ‘tofu amok’ and ‘chicken amok’ have inveigled their way onto menus as a response to the fish-suspicious tourist.

My aim for Amokalypse Now: firstly, eat one amok each week for at least seven weeks and release a review of it on Friday, attempting to capture the widest variation of amoks. I promise to resist the use of the ‘running amok’ pun. I’ll leave that one for the professionals.

Never ending piles of prahok

The odour comes from a red washing-up bowl filled with grey sludge in which float pieces of silver fish. The smell is outdone only by an equally pungent pile of grey paste with bits of rotting fish poking out. The wet grey stuff is fish sauce, while the other is fish paste, although both seem to be called prahoc; they smell and look awful to the unaccustomed nose and eye.

Prahoc is a vital flavouring in almost everything savoury in Cambodia. So common is it that the national flag, which features the ubiquitous emblem of Angkor Wat, should be soaked in the stuff.

They’re both different grades of prahok. It describes a whole genre of fermented freshwater things. Journalist and blogger Ed Charles takes on fish in Cambodia and takes off with one of my jokes about prahok in The Australian newspaper. It’s a joy to read an article where a journalist doesn’t just eat fish amok.

There’s also a bit of a mix up between tuk trei (fish sauce, made with saltwater fish) and trei riel (“riel” fish – a few different varieties of small fish used to home-brew prahok) further down in the article, but it is understandable since there are no written resources where you could fact check such details.

See: The Australian’s A fishy pleasure

Pork and Rice: The national breakfast.

There are four types of Cambodian breakfast: pork and rice (bai sach chrouk); noodles (mee cha) or noodle soup (khtieau); rice porridge (bobor); and the improvised foods of those who are starving and eat whatever they or the World Food Programme can unearth. At a rough guess, these groups equally split the population (with an outcast minority such as me who tend to only eat breakfast on weekends and therefore try to make it as decadent and calorific as humanly possible. In the view of most Cambodians, my diet is not so much unbalanced as it is unhinged; and thus somewhere outside orthodox classification).

The standard Cambodian pork and rice set is as follows: any boneless cut of pork, thinly sliced and barbecued on a wire grill over warm coals then served with a hefty plate of broken (or just cheap) rice. The pork is sometimes marinated in garlic and oil, but more often than not, is just cooked slowly over the fire to soak up the fat-induced smoke. The side is invariably pickles, most commonly cucumber. The below pickles were a piquant mix of fresh ginger, cucumber with still a hint of crispness and paper-thin slices of daikon radish.

The set will include a bowl of thin chicken stock from the noodle soup master stock, topped with spring onions, and a dipping bowl of sweet chilli sauce (tuk mteis). The method of eating the stock is to either eat it uncut or take a small spoonful of rice and then top up your spoon with a little stock. The above chilli was blindingly hot which is a real rarity, because the sweetness tends to outweigh the capsaicin.

If cutlery is not already present on the table, then it will arrive in cup full of steaming and sterilising water (orange and plastic, above) and the correct etiquette is to wipe down your knife and fork with a provided napkin or toilet paper, disposing of the paper on the floor or into a provided tableside bin. Do not under any circumstance drink the water in the sterilising cup.

The eateries are at their busiest from 6:00am until 8:00am, as most locals have seemingly been up since sunrise and need a huge carb-and-lard boost to get them through to the interminable hours until the midday meal. When busy, all tables are considered communal. It is perfectly acceptable to intrude on anybody’s table and engage them in your wittiest repartee. My Khmer wit is extraordinarily limited, although everyone gets a laugh out of how I can’t properly pronounce the word for ‘glass’. Unlike Vietnam or Thailand where small breakfast vendors often lack tables, a Cambodian pork and rice vendor without seating and a rudimentary bench is an exception. Where the tables are not built from the thin metal, they are covered with a garish vinyl tablecloth which is either geometrically patterned or provided as an advertisement from a large soup or monosodium glutamate manufacturer.

By 9:00am, breakfast will be over. Small pork and rice joints will disappear entirely to be replaced by lunchtime soup, fish and rice vendors. Brunch is not an option.

Location: Pictured pork is from my coffee roasting friends at the corner of Street 432 and 155, but there is a pork-charring crew on practically every Phnom Penh side street in the mornings. The best guide to picking a great bai sach chrouk vendor is finding one where the barbecue is still smoking and pork is served directly from the grill to your plate. Most vendors buy their pork daily (as a cashflow issue rather than not having proper storage) and so freshness is guaranteed.
Continue reading Pork and Rice: The national breakfast.

Pig’s Blood Tofu

In keeping with this week’s theme of ‘Surprise, it has PORK in it!’ these innocuous tofu-like chunks are congealed pig’s blood. Cambodia is one of many nations to embrace eating every part of an animal that is humanly possible, and with pigs, this means every part from snout to asshole.

Unlike snout or asshole, the blood tofu tastes more neutral and spongy, and is used as an addition to soups or noodles with broth. As the blood tofu ages, it tends to turn from congealed red to slightly grey. If you were unfamiliar with it, you would probably push a small cube of it to the side of your bowl after a nibble, along with the other chunks that fall into the ‘mystery innard (not pipe-shaped)’ category, still unsure if it comes from an animal or not. When in doubt, it’s always a pig part.

Blowing my own (French) horn

Il fait saliver ses lecteurs en vantant le mÃ©rites des cantines le plus discrÃ¨tes pour dÃ©guster de travers de porc frits ou du num pan chen, la “foccacia” khmÃ¨re. Il brocarde avec humour journalistes et guides etrangers pour qui la gastronomie cambodgienne se rÃ©sume au poisson amok ou Ã exotisme convenu, tels les insects grillÃ©s. Phil Lees anime avec talent un blog sur internet entierement consacre a la cuisine khmere.

Bienvenue, lecteurs de Cambodge Soir. Je suis dÃ©solÃ© que je n’ai aucun contenu dans votre langue maternelle. Cependant, je dis des plaisanteries au sujet du colonialisme et postmodernisme franÃ§ais.

Cheers to Samuel Bartholin for the interview in today’s Cambodge Soir newspaper and mentioning deep-fried pork ribs in the very first sentence of the article.
Continue reading Blowing my own (French) horn

Yes, I always laugh at my sour soup that way

Continuing with the Phnomenon/RealThai love-in, Austin over at RealThai reviews one of my favourite Khmer restaurants in Phnom Penh: Sweet CafÃ© on St.294. For potential stalkers, it opens with a photo of me looking mighty pleased at my bowl of samlor machou yuon and follows with some beautifully shot images of amok trei (fish amok), porng tea trei prama (semi-dried fish omelette, with a hearty dose of fatty pork and a much less hearty dose of trei prama), bok svay (pounded green mango salad with deep-fried dried fish) and the aforementioned sour “Vietnamese” soup. Also featured is a photo essay on various food vendors around Phnom Penh.

Real Khmer? Cambodian fine dining in Phnom Penh

“I hope I’m not going to wake up to that tomorrow morning”, Austin mentioned as I took the above photo.

Good morning, Austin.

I spent last weekend with Austin from RealThai while he crafts a piece for a Thai newspaper about Phnom Penh as a weekend destination, and takes photos in a manner much more professional than mine. He was keen on me showing him some of the less fluffy edges of Cambodian food (see pig parts, above, from Psar Orussei) that we could use for our own purposes. It is always a pleasure to travel about Phnom Penh with a fresh set of eyes and compare notes on respective adopted nations’ cuisines. Austin has an encyclopedic knowledge of Thai food, whereas my knowledge of Khmer cuisine is much more like an 1880’s Children’s Primer: One part shipping tables; one part unverifiable observation; three parts Tales of Interest in Foreign Lands. When Austin invited me along to provide local insights into Phnom Penh’s top end at the restaurants’ expense, how could I refuse? I consulted my shipping tables to check my availability with the tides.

Chef Luu Meng from Malis was a genuine surprise. Since I had last eaten at Malis about six months ago, Luu Meng had tweaked the menu to add some homier Khmer food (a few basic, herb-rich soups) and altered the street-level layout to look a little classier with a paintjob, fewer tables and some deep couches.

Meng spoke at length on the primacy of freshness, the importance of the Mekong’s rise and fall to affect the seasonal growth of local herbs and the migration of Cambodian freshwater fish. He devoted twenty minutes to speaking on the flavour profile of th’noeng leaf which he describes broadly as somewhere between “green mango and tamarind”, and the huge difference between maom leaf (“Vietnamese!”) and ma-aum leaf (basil’s lovechild with spearmint). He spoke about being excited about Indian food and about weaning his staff from their previous MSG habits (none is used in his kitchen).

In between chatting we ate a handful of journo-friendly plates : fish amok, kroueng-coated chicken wings, local scallops with pepper (pictured above), and beef in bamboo. Most hit the more Chinese end of Khmer cuisine – Luu Meng is a man who wholeheartedly embraces the capsicum.

Night was reserved for the Khmer degustation menu at Raffles Hotel Le Royal’s fine dining effort, Restaurant Le Royal. After chatting with Luu Meng, I was openly optimistic about the direction that this New Khmer Cuisine was taking in Phnom Penh. I had also previously eaten a seriously good bowl of pho at a conference buffet at Le Royal but never set foot in their fine dining area.

Jan, our maÃ®tre d’hotel/sommelier, described the menu, suggested wines, and was an altogether ideal host. European wines are not my strong point: I’ve got a decent grip on varietals but come from a background of drinking too many tannin-heavy Aussie reds, some of which from a box rather than a bottle. He made one of the best wine/food pairings that I’ve had in Cambodia. After describing Southern German terroir with glee, he picked a 2005 Wittmann Estate Riesling which was acidic but with sweetness on the back palate that fits perfectly with both the richer and subtly spicy elements of Khmer food. The nose of peaches was clear enough to bring back my grim memories of working in a central Victorian orchard, memories that in hindsight I should have appreciated as a small omen.

The trio of starters was locally inspired, only in the loosest sense. The pared-down mango salad contained chopped capsicum instead of chilli, dried shrimps mashed to a fine paste rather than whole with no real seafood punch. This was accompanied by two slices of West Coast scallops on triangle of banana leaf and a pair of wonton parcels with hoi sin sauce. I’m a fan of when chef’s pay attention to texture, which was evident, but the salad was pared back to being barely recognizable as Khmer, and the other two components could have come from literally anywhere.

I questioned our waiter in Khmer as to whether the forthcoming Pumpkin Soup was Samlor Karko, a Hindu-influenced Khmer soup which amongst other ingredients, contains pumpkin.

“No”, he answered, “It’s samlor lapov” : quite literally “Soup Pumpkin” followed by a grin.

There is a grin of nervousness in Cambodia. Ask a local about the current regime, the Khmer Rouge, or their dead parents and you’ll get the same grin. For a Westerner, there is nothing more unnerving than having a local describe their tales of torture and terror under the Khmer Rouge whilst they give you an unflinching and toothy smile. I hoped that the nervousness was more about the service staff suddenly realising that I could understand them a little when they were musing in Khmer about the sexuality of two young white men eating together by candlelight, rather than about the soup. I was tempted to confirm with them that Austin actually was my alluring Thai songsaa*.

The pureed pumpkin soup arrived topped with a square of gold leaf. It bore no resemblance to Khmer food, just as my bleak peach harvest memories bore no relationship to my continued enjoyment of the riesling. As a curious coincidence, I’d left my inamorata (who now wishes to be referred to as such in print and in person) at home defrosting herself a bowl of pumpkin soup from the freezer which she’d previously packed full of fresh Khmer ginger, lemongrass and coconut. It was the last aroma that I could smell when I left my house and now I longed for that soup rather than the one in front of me.

Between soup and mains, the Rosicrucian-ly named Executive Chef Christian Rose devoted us a half hour of his time. He spoke guardedly about Khmer food choices and regarded us with slight suspicion when we asked about sourcing local ingredients, about local Cambodian restaurants (his recommendations: Khmer Surin, Malis, beachside seafood in Sihanoukville), and about the interest of his guests in Khmer cuisine. There appeared to be very little interest despite his assurances to the contrary.

Scattered amongst the conversation, he name-dropped his upmarket ingredients and recipes: West Coast scallops; beluga caviar; Wagyu beef (“Grade 9, not Japanese but with excellent marbling”); a multiple course duck degustation; an entire constellation of foods alien to the Cambodian culinary cosmos. This was the food of international excess, high diplomacy and hardcore local corruption. Does serving this food in a starving nation make you complicit? Does eating it? The mains arrived to break our conversation before I got the chance to head it in a lachrymose direction.

The following beef loc lac hit the right note: beef (not a cut of Wagyu, which would be a foolish excess), fresh pepper from Kurata Pepper, stock reduction – completely unlike your regular loc lac which is generally made with bottled soy and tomato sauce : and so a positive top-end innovation. This was paired with a miscellaneous coconut curry with a hearty chunk of fresh bawngkang (river lobster) tail meat, a few batons of vegetable matter and a minute mound of rice. Desserts were a wide selection of Khmer sweets and I caused a small commotion when I asked the waiter to name a more obscure one (I thought num lhong, but it was revealed to be the similarly shaped num bhor por).

We rolled out of Le Royal after four hours of well-paced food conversation, great wine and barely Cambodian food.

Meals and wine at Restaurant Le Royal and Malis were provided free of charge. Malis is located on Norodom Blvd, just south of the Independence Monument. Restaurant Le Royal is located in Raffles Hotel Le Royal on the corner of St.92 and Monivong Blvd. Enter via the main foyer and turn left.

Angkor: Built with the blood of slaves for your tourism pleasure

I was teaching classes at a local research institution. I arrogantly would always trot out the notion of the Angkor Empire in my examples. Angkor was, in my opinion then as now, a horrendous deformation of humanity, where slave labor and mass dehumanization resulted in the piling of rocks into beautiful monuments. The vast majority of modern Cambodians, however, for a host of reasons which are increasingly well understood(2) think of the Angkorean regime as the golden age of Cambodia. Historically, this cannot have been true, at least not for the masses of people who lived under Angkor’s rule. Instead, modern Cambodians appeal to Angkor primarily as an offense against the constriction of the Cambodian nation (in terms of territory, glory, and regional power), a notion explored very well by Thongchai Winichakul for Thailand.(3) In my classes, I would ask people if they would want to have lived during the Angkor era. All my students smiled beatifically and replied that yes, they would.

I then asked them if they were under the impression that they would have been kings, queens, or if they would have been the slaves who built the palaces. Their smiles dropped, and their responses were a combination of shame and sullen silence. I was frustrated too. I supposed I had expected some sort of â€˜a-ha’ moment where their eyes would suddenly open onto a vista of oppression and slavery of which they were unaware. This is what I mean by referring to my previous arrogance.

It is an extreme rarity to read nuanced and academic accounts of Cambodia as they happen, which is what makes Deathpower in Cambodia a great read. Probably less of a great read for anybody who yells “wanker” whenever I mention an obscure theorist or add footnotes (Erik listed Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus amongst his heavy holiday reading).

Oddly enough, as an outsider I tend to display the same arrogance about Cambodian food. Not many Cambodians enjoy discussing that banh xeo, loc lac and samlor machou yuon in all likelihood had Vietnamese (or even Khmer Krom) origins nor do they find it as interesting to discuss how these dishes became so intimately entwined in a monolithic idea of Cambodian cuisine and modern-day Cambodian nationalism. They’re all Cambodian foods now because Cambodians have so thoroughly claimed ownership over them and modified them to their own tastes, but it’s rare to find a local who does not believe that Khmer culture (and as an extension, food) magically appeared sui generis in the hazy Angkorean past.

See: Remembered Villages, Imagined Communities

Knee deep in the dead fish

Cambodia’s national fermented fish condiment, prahok, has just come into season with the annual explosion of riel fish numbers. To honour the occasion, AFP have published their insight (and a few top photos). The Ministry of Fish’s head honcho, Nao Thouk, sums up the situation with typically Khmer verve:

“Prahok is the taste of Cambodia. If there is no prahok, we are not Cambodians. Prahok is the Khmer identity,” says Nao Thouk, director of the agriculture ministry’s fisheries department.

“It is like butter or cheese for Westerners,” he adds, explaining that some 70,000 to 80,000 tonnes of prahok are produced each year between December and March, when thousands swarm to the rivers.

See: Got Fish?

Nouveau Pho de Paris

Should I expect a cheese plate? Pho Bo(cuse)? French onion soup with noodles? These are questions that have weighed heavily on my mind in the two odd years that I have been passing by Nouveau Pho de Paris on Monivong boulevard, Phnom Penh. Both Cambodian and Vietnamese foods have successfully integrated their former colonial ruler’s nosh in a way that makes it seem natural, but you should not fool with pho. It is one of the world’s perfect street foods like pizza, burritos, souvlaki or laksa. Like all of these dishes, there are defined limits within which there is plenty of room for play. There is no room in pho for nouveau Parisians.

Judging from the photos displayed under the glass-topped tables, the Nouveau’s menu seemed to contain a random array of Chinese, Vietnamese and Khmer foods with no obvious reference to anything French. The lunchtime crowd may have had a Parisian fresh from the Sorbonne amongst them though: my waiter was confused as to my lingua franca and opened in French to which I parried with Khmer. He returned with a fine and unexpected play in English. Unable to answer with anything witty or Vietnamese, I ordered the pho bo without checking out their menu. The atmosphere was certainly more rarefied than your average pho stall: air con; real wooden chairs; and Cambodia’s velvet Elvis equivalent, lurid paintings of Angkor Wat.

NP de P’s pho rated fairly well on the meat index with a hearty selection of cow parts : some corned beef, sliced stomach and tendon, and a pair of suspiciously buoyant beef balls. On the opposing herb front: basil, saw mint, bean shoots were provided in abundance on the side. A pile of weedy local coriander and both spring and white onions were already added to the soup. Noodles were wide and commercial and the stock was muscular and sweet but not hugely complex.

One mid-size bowl of nouveau pho de boeuf: US$1.50, tea gratis.

Location: #26Eo, Monivong Blvd, Phnom Penh