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Zepp on Battambang Food

Ray Zepp, author of Cambodia’s best (if occasionally wat-obsessed) niche travel guide, “Battambang and Around”, is back in the country, and has written a nice wrap up of the changes that Battambang has undergone in the preceding few years at Khmer440. On food and drink in Battambang:

Evenings in Battambang, granted, are not as exciting as in Phnom Penh. Relaxation is the operative word. And where better to relax than the Riverside Balcony Bar. Phnom Penh has nothing to compare with it. And although I am usually not given to hyperbole, I would say that the Riverside should be listed in one of the ‘Great Bars of the World’, and is not to be missed under any circumstances. And if you really want to chow down on good Khmer food, you can go right next door to the Riverside to the ‘Cow’s Stomach’ (romantic name, eh?). You can often tell the best Khmer restaurants when you see lots of people eating, but no live music or sexy beer girls. People are there for the food.

I’m with him on both the Riverside and Cow’s Stomach. Apart from the booze and the somnolence, Riverside’s meatballs are the kind of Westerner stodge that I need to keep me sane after a few days of Battambang fieldwork and concomitant roadside Khmer food. Cow’s Stomach is what I need to remember that roadside Cambodian food is not of the same genus as kitchen-cooked Cambodian food. With the opening of the new La Villa Hotel, and more importantly as a few friends have told me, the arrival of chocolate mousse in Battambang, I’ve really got to get back up north there to see what is happening.

Zepp has a new guide out in Summer 2006 with Peter Hogan and photography by Simon Toffanello.

See:Ray Zepp Returns to Cambodia

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.

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.

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.

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.

Khmer New Year

Happy Khmer New Year!

Yes, the third and final New Year that Cambodia celebrates in this calendar year is upon us. But there’s more to Khmer New Year than cranking your karaoke machine to “eleven” and the recent adoption of the Thai Songkran practice of attempting to knock foreigners off their motorcycles with a well-aimed waterbomb.

For starters, there’s Khmer New Year games. I especially like:

5. “Leak Kanseng”
A game played by a group of children sitting in circle. Someone holding a “kanseng” (Cambodian towel) twisted into a round shape walks around the circle while singing a song. The person walking secretly tries to place the “kanseng” behind one of the children. If that chosen child realizes what is happening, he or she must pick up the “kanseng” and beat the person sitting next to him or her.

I’m assuming that you ineffectually beat them with the towel. Secondly, the Ministry of Tourism’s page on Khmer New Year is improbably informative this year. It even includes a typical Khmer traditional story; typical insofar as the protagonist has to deal with the imminent threat of being beheaded by a religious leader and then his corpse feasted upon by a pair of talking eagles.

Speaking of which, on the food front, New Year is another chance to fatten up your local monks and appease the spirits of the dead at your local wat with some num anksom. The only trustworthy Khmer recipe resource on the web, Khmer Krom Recipes, serves up Num anksom sach chrouk (rice cakes wrapped in banana leaf with pork):

Like many Khmer Krom families, each year, a few days before the New Year, my family will dedicate a day just for making rice cakes. Some of my relatives, neighbors and friends will get together usually at our house, some brings sweet rice, some bring mung beans, some bring meat for the cooking event. We’ll makes and shares hundreds of num anksom chrouk , num anksom chet, num kom. Most the cakes will be giving away to neighbors, friends and the poor. We’ll take some sweet rice cakes to Wats for food offerings to our ancestors.

Sadly, my neighbours haven’t been so industrious this year, but they generously gave me a big plate of steamed corn which they told me that they “cooked with no chemicals”, so no more grey onion sauce for me.

Sihanoukville is the Next Goa III: Beyond Thunderdome

Glowstick-wielding candy ravers rejoice:

THE “largest and wildest” full-moon party, promised the yellow flier taped to a phone booth on Khaosan Road in Bangkok. Another installment of Thailand’s girls-gone-wild bacchanal on the island of Ko Phangan? Or its bigger brother, Ko Samui? Or maybe it was the newcomer Ko Phi Phi, a remote island that is luring younger partygoers in the post-tsunami boom.

Not quite. This particular moonlight spectacle, in fact, wouldn’t even be in Thailand, but across the border, in Cambodia’s budding seaside town, Sihanoukville. It is “just nine-and-a-half hours from Bangkok,” according to the flier, the work of Cambodian entrepreneurs hoping to turn Sihanoukville into the latest party hot spot.

Those Google Ads that the New York Times has been running about “The Cambodia Craze” must be paying off, because Sihanoukville is back again with the words “In Cambodia, the ‘Next Phuket’?”. Jeff Koyen actually mentions that ” it won’t be long before the stretches of sandy seclusion are overrun with package tourists” which is an excellent assessment if the cruise ships start rolling in. Mark my words, Sihanoukville is the next Ensenada.

Tony Wheeler needs new Friends

On my Singapore-Shanghai jaunt I spent a couple of nights in Phnom Penh and if the restaurants I tried hadn’t been up to scratch I would have been severely disappointed, since I was dining with Nick Ray. He’s the author of our Cambodia guide and also advised on locations for the movie Tomb Raiders’ Cambodian sites, Nick knows his way around the country. Friends was set up to employ street kids, many of whom go on to work in other hotels and restaurants. The food is superb.

When asked to name his top ten restaurants worldwide, Lonely Planet co-founder Tony Wheeler lists Friends of Phnom Penh, which left me with one question: what the fuck? I admire Friends’ work and know a couple of successful graduates from their hospitality training but their pseudo-tapas eatery hardly rates alongside the world’s or even Cambodia’s best restaurants. Although the Lonely Planet is almost my last resort for a restaurant recommendation (fitting somewhere between “moto-taxi driver” and “the khmer guy who eats the leftovers from my bin”), I’m going to take my future food advice from them with a mound of salt.

Riches in the ruins

“When I was in the jungle,” Kat Manh tells me, “I ate this.” He is pointing at a drawing of a pig-tailed macaque in a park leaflet on protected species. “Also this,” – a crab-eating macaque – “this,” – a Sunda pangolin – “and this,” – a common palm civet. “Very tasty,” he concludes

This is the confirmation I needed: pangolin is tasty. Now I just have to work out how to crack them open. I believe you need a lobster fork, something that Andrew Marshall from the Telegraph omits to mention when he hits Cambodia’s best ghost town at Bokor.

See: Riches in the Ruins with an inexcusable companion piece just to prove that you can’t publish a travel article about Cambodia without mentioning Angkor.