Khmer sour fish soup, Boeng Keng Kang Restaurant, Phnom Penh
In Cambodia, sour fish soup with water grass is everyday food. It’s basic, it’s cheap, it’s easy to make and everyone eats it. A day without samlor machou trou kuon trey is almost like a day without rice–almost. But not quite. Our story on this simple tamarind-rich dish is now out in TheWall Street Journal.
This is but one of many sour soups found across Cambodia. When we return to New Mexico this summer, I have every intention of experimenting with a whole stash of recipes from this trip. So stay tuned. I can taste a batch of samlor machou kreung in the future — and I’ll tell you all about that lovely green tint extracted from lemongrass leaves.
Meanwhile, imagine a bowl of this (restaurant details in the story):
En route to Boualapha recently, we stopped for a light roadside lunch of sour pickled fish (som paa) and sour pickled pork (som muu), both of which had been grilled in banana leaves. Each little packet opened to the most potent pate-like wedges (white fish, pink pork) with a firm consistency and an incredibly sour kick in the tongue. Just a little bit of som mixed with a ball of sticky rice, alternated with an accompanying jaeow: delicious! The jaeow maengda came in little plastic cups from Thailand–so the label actually had the Thai name, nam prik maengda, though this same variety is made and eaten on this side of the river, too. It was a particularly dry and crumbly style, slightly sweet, with the consistency of pork flossy. Its ingredient of note was a water cockroach that lives in the countryside.
The shop owner told us she makes som every day with nothing more than fermented fish (or fermented pork), garlic (and lots of it), cooked sticky rice, salt and MSG.
Meet Nuon Nary and Keo “Toot” Touch. They’re your hosts for an enlightening cooking class in Battambang. You can read about this lovely couple and their modest little venture in my latest post for The Faster Times. Then take a spin through the photos here and consider booking a class on your next trip through the country. Toot will take you through the local market. Ask questions. Ask him anything you want to know about Khmer food and culture. Tell him you want to know the truth. Tell him you’re not afraid of prahok. And he’ll share his world with you—not a sanitized, tourist version. But the gritty down-to-earth realities of everyday life for Khmers, past and present. Then head to the kitchen with Nary at your side, and make yourself the most fragrant batch of amok you’ve ever had.
It just might be the best 6 bucks you spend in Cambodia.
Nary Kitchen Cooking Class
Battambang (two blocks off Psa Nath)
855-12-763-950
navuthk@yahoo.com
$6, half-day class
Produce in the Battambang market
A Battambang vendor with water grass (trou kuon) used in sour soup
We did something the other day that we hadn’t done in ages: we became tourists for a day. Just as the morning sun cast its butter-colored rays across Siem Reap, we caught a tuk-tuk to the temples. With one-day passes in our pockets, we joined the throngs at Angkor (my, how things have changed!). I’ve heard others say they tire of the temples; a couple of days, and they’ve had enough. Not I. I could spend weeks analyzing the carvings and searching for little corners I hadn’t noticed before. Every time I visit, I find the temples mean something new to me. I see through different eyes, depending on my experiences between trips (for example, I hadn’t actually seen Angkor Wat since we did a story on the birds at Tmatboey; this time, I spotted numerous giant birds in the bas reliefs running along the temple walls).
One of the things I love best about the ruins is their ancient record of modern life. The outer wall of the Bayon, a late 12th-century temple built during the reign of King Jayavarman VII, is covered in some 1,200 meters of bas reliefs depicting thousands of battle scenes interspersed with everyday occurrences. You find historical references to gruesome war between the Khmers and Chams. But you also see the same scenes found today on the streets of Siem Reap or the waters of the Tonle Sap: cooking, fishing, hunting, cockfighting, the slaying of wild animals, even dancing around a massive jar of wine. People sit around fires, grilling fish between strips of bamboo. I particularly like a scene win which a man bends at the knees, blowing on a cooking fire beneath a clay pot.
It is, in some ways, as homes and markets across Cambodia appear today. Through centuries of change, some things stay the same.
This is not the fish we had for breakfast. This happens to be a fish we had for lunch last year in a village along the Mekong. It was a big meaty snakehead, straight from the river, and our host, Monin, paid a pretty price for it. The fish above was not farmed. It had swum freely through the river.
What we had the other morning for breakfast was a big steaming tureen of sour fish soup, fragrant with all the lemon-balmy goodness of paddy herbs, and a slightly green tint to the broth with copious amounts of morning glory. Whole garlic cloves and chunks of galangal simmered in the soup, over a candle flame. But the fish? Tiny, bony, sad. We slurped the broth, devoured the herbs and left the bones on the side.
Ten years ago, that fish would not have been served in that soup in that way. Ten years ago, Khmer sour fish soup routinely came with thick, fleshy slices of fish that had been caught from the river or lake that morning. Times have changed.
You might recall last spring my post on the demise of Cambodia’s great staple, its freshwater fish, upon which this culture thrives. What we’re seeing today on restaurant tables is the picture of decline. I’ve said it before (and I know some people disagree), but I stand by my interviews and observations: Cambodians are losing their lake and river fish. Talk to Tonle Sap fishermen and their wives. Read the reports. Visit with market vendors and household cooks and the owners of aquatic farms, where the fish are raised in pens and fed diets of meal mixed with large portions of rice waste. It’s no simple task for the average shopper to find big, healthy freshwater fish for sale in the morning market. With combined pollution, population increases, changes in seasonal flooding, and reports of illegal overfishing—there simply aren’t as many fish to feed the Cambodian family anymore. Gone are the days of ubiquitous fish-dominant dinners. In fact, they may be gone entirely if and when China’s many plans for upstream dams go through.
The other night, we ate a streetside meal of ginger fried chicken and sour soup (another type, with tomatoes and pineapple). Fish wasn’t even an option. The smiling old Khmer woman had none to sell at her stall—only chicken, beef and pork.
And just now, as I type in a pleasant Siem Reap restaurant with WiFi, the Khmer couple beside me tried to order a plate of fish. The answer? “Mien moan, ch’hrouk,” the waiter said. We have chicken, pork. “Awt mien trei.”
I’ve lost count of the cookbooks I brought back from Asia this time. I’m fairly certain my weight in books surpassed everything else in my luggage. Among that traveling library was a copy of From Spiders to Water Lilies: Creative Cambodian Cooking with Friends. It’s a beautiful book, which finally presents Khmer cuisine in a sophisticated way. I love it. Published by the Friends NGO, the book won due recognition this summer with honors at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.
When I spotted the recipe for num banh chok (or nom pan chok samloh prahal), I had to make it—and so I did, as Rosi Recipe #5. HUGE success. As with so many of my favorite Asian recipes, the abundance of herbs makes all the difference in this dish. Jerry said it was closer to the real thing than any other Asian recipe I have made in the States. The entire kitchen smelled of Cambodia as I cooked. And Rosi’s mom? “This is better than khao soi,” she said.
That’s saying something.
Here’s what you do (my comments in italics, in parentheses):
Green fish curry and coconut with rice noodles From From Spiders to Water Lilies by Friends-International
Ingredients:
300 g fish fillets, poached (I used tilapia)
3 T lemongrass paste
2 T roasted chopped peanuts
500 ml fish stock
250 ml coconut milk
250 ml coconut cream
1 tsp prahok (I used shrimp paste)
2 T fish sauce
salt to taste
1 T palm sugar
Lemongrass Paste Ingredients:
200 g young lemongrass stalks, about 15 pieces, sliced
1 T peeled and chopped galangal
2 T peeled and chopped fresh turmeric (I buy this in bulk and freeze it until I need it—so much more aromatic and lively than dried)
4 kaffir lime leaves, thinly sliced (my Asian market had sad looking leaves that day so I used lime juice)
4 garlic cloves, halved
Peel of half a kaffir lime, chopped (I used lime zest)
1 T peeled and chopped Cambodian rhizome (I didn’t have)
(I also added a little ginger)
To serve with curry:
800 g thin rice noodles, cooked al dente
2 small cucumbers, cut into matchsticks (I sliced them)
1/2 banana flower, thinly sliced and soaked in cold water with lime juice (I didn’t have)
200 g bean sprouts (didn’t have)
2 m water lily root, thinly sliced (didn’t have)
red chiles and Thai basil for garnish
(I also used shaved cabbage, radish sprouts and mint. Really, any cool, raw vegetables and herbs will do.)
Method:
First, prepare the lemongrass paste. With mortar and pestle, pound lemongrass into a paste then add remaining ingredients and pound until well combined. This paste will keep refrigerated for one day only (I froze the leftovers).
Next, cook the fish. (I boiled the tilapia with a little salt and pepper, then used the water as fish stock). Use a mortar and pestle to pound fish with lemongrass paste and peanuts into a lumpy paste (this turned fluffy, with the most unusual texture, like pork floss). Set aside. Put stock, coconut milk, coconut cream and prahok into a pot and bring to a boil. Add the paste, fish sauce, salt and palm sugar, and simmer for 5 to 7 more minutes. Put a large handful of vegetables into each person’s bowl. Add noodles then ladle curry over the top. Garnish with chiles and basil.
This should be eaten squatting, using chopsticks and with as much slurping as possible (we ate at a picnic table, but the rest stands true).
Every morning begins with coffee, of course, and usually fruit. But the centerpiece of any Costa Rican breakfast is the spotted rooster, better known as gallo pinto. Rice and beans. “Gallo” means rooster, “pinto” means spotted, and the name refers to the dappled appearance of the dish when the white rice mixes with red or black beans. It’s the so-called national dish of both Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and people in both countries can get more than a little uppity when it comes to the history of this food and the proper way in which to prepare it. According to an article that ran this summer in The SJO Post, Universidad de Costa Rica researcher Patricia Vega has found that the dish originated in the Costa Rican Caribbean region, where Tico and Nicaraguan banana plantation workers ate gallo pinto together.
Of course, my niece’s host mother makes the best gallo pinto. But it’s apparently difficult to get a recipe out of her.
I dreamed of ceviche before landing in Costa Rica. And when I finally dig into a bowl of it for lunch one day, I dream of what I would do to this dish, were I in charge. It comes with big fleshy chunks of fish (not sure the variety, but certainly fresh and tasty) in a boat of lime, cilantro and mild onion. A little too mild, a little too blah. I imagine a stronger onion, chile, a pinch of garlic, a sliced homegrown tomato….
Now, something of note: see that packet of ketchup? It’s part of the ubiquitous duo, ketchup and mayo, perhaps the Costa Rican salsa. As my niece says, locals slather it on everything. I’m mildly appalled until it accompanies a Tico taco I order one night: deep fried shrimp-filled tortilla, smothered in cabbage slices and that red-white salsa. And it’s good! So prevalent is mayo, I buy some as a souvenir for people I know will appreciate it. It’s flavored with lime, and it comes in a squeeze pouch!
Mostly, though, I’m fascinated by the colors, and the way they dazzle in the light. From juice dispensers…
…to the little market in Miramar, where my niece spent her time. I love the radiance; and I love the way food centers in this rainbow, painting the Costa Rican backdrop.
We’re home! And we have a new member of the extended family. Meet Rosi, our darling niece. She loves to eat and burp and lots of other things—she’ll fit right into this crowd. Now, anyone out there with a 2-month-old knows the difficulty of the dinner hour. So I’ve decided to cook dinner once a week for Rosi and her parents (Rosi gets it indirectly, through the breast). Not only does this lighten the load a little for Mom and Dad, it gives me the perfect excuse to peruse a mountain of recipes I picked up in Asia this time around—and all of those cookbooks I never cracked last summer.
Well, then. Welcome to The Rosi Recipes, a new feature on Rambling Spoon (and a new category). For the foreseeable future, you can check here weekly for new dinner ideas. I’ll be experimenting with many of these meals for the first time, so you’ll get the recipes plus my notes on what went right, what went wrong and how the dishes could be different next time.
Let’s get on with it:
I chose a few recipes from my new Burmese cookbooks for the first Rosi meal. For starters, chicken and potatoes from Cooking with Love Myanmar Style by Nan San San Aye. This lovely little paperback was a gift from one of my students—someone who truly knows my heart. The book is filled with as many stories from women in the kitchen as recipes to match them. The author, of Shan heritage, started the Adipati (Adapati) restaurants in Yangon and along the highway to Mandalay. She writes in the introduction about the time she fell ill and had to rest in bed for a month. “My husband, a poet, brought a notebook and pen to my bed and said to me, ‘Cook in this.’ So I started to jot down all the dishes I longed to prepare and my husband took my scribbles, cleaned them up a bit and sent them off to various magazines.” Thus, the beginnings of her cookbook.
I also made tomato and shrimp paste dip and water greens with dried shrimp powder from Cook and Entertain the Burmese Way by Mi Mi Khaing. Here, we have everything one needs to know about Burmese kitchen customs and eating etiquette.
Below follow the recipes as written. My notes and discoveries are in italics:
Chicken and potatoes Adapted from Cooking with Love Myanmar Style
Ingredients:
1 small chicken (I substituted 5 drumsticks)
5 dry red chiles (I used chile de arbol)
3 onions (I suspect she’s using smaller Burmese onions. I used 2 1/2 large yellows but I think the recipe came out a little too heavy on the onion)
2 cloves garlic (I used 3)
10 potatoes (12 small reds)
1/3 cup oil
a little salt
a little turmeric
a little fish sauce
Method:
Chop the chicken and wash it well, drain, then knead with salt, turmeric, fish sauce and let it marinate for a while (I ended up taking the meat off the bone and saving the bones for chicken stock. This made for a curry heavier on potatoes than meat, but the story in the cookbook reflects on the author’s attempts at “stretching” one small chicken by adding lots of potatoes in order to make enough curry for four).
Pound red chiles, onions and garlic using a mortar and pestle. Heat the oil and fry the pounded mixture and stir. When fragrant, add chicken and stir. When oil sizzles (I didn’t really see a clear sizzle) add the potatoes and enough water to cover. Close the lid and simmer. After about 10 minutes, when boiling, test to see if chicken and potatoes are tender enough. Then taste. Add more fish sauce if necessary. Remove from heat and serve.
Tomato and shrimp paste dip
Adapted from Cook and Entertain the Burmese Way
Ingredients:
1/2 chopped onion
2 tsp minced garlic
2 tsp or less shrimp paste
1/3 cup oil
1-2 tsp chile powder (I used a tiny pinch of Assam chile)
large pinch turmeric
4 green chiles (I omitted these because Mom doesn’t eat too much spicy food while breast-feeding)
salt to taste
1 small bunch cilantro leaves
Method:
Chop onion and garlic finely. Skin and chop tomatoes (I parboiled the tomatoes to remove the skins). Soak shrimp paste in 1/2 cup water.
Heat oil then add onion, garlic and chile with turmeric. Fry until fragrant. Add chopped tomato, stir, cover and simmer until well cooked.
Add shrimp paste liquid and whole green chiles (if using). Continue cooking until water is absorbed. Add salt if necessary. Chop cilantro leaves and sprinkle on top. Serve.
This reminded me very much of a tomato dish we’ve had repeatedly in the Shan regions of northern Thailand, where it is served with fresh raw vegetables and herbs for dipping.
Water greens with dried shrimp powder
Adapted from Cook and Entertain the Burmese Way
Ingredients:
5 cups sprigged water greens—Kazun, Ipomoea aquatica(I substituted green kale)
1 small onion
2 T oil
2 T shrimp powder (I ground my own using packaged Malaysian dried shrimp, found in the refrigerated section of my local Asian market)
2 T soy sauce (I used wheat-free tamari for a gluten-free recipe, as all three of these are)
1 tsp finely pounded garlic
salt to taste
Method:
Tear the greens and remove any woody stems or veins. Wash and keep greens in water. If stems are edible, keep them separate from leaves. Slice onion.
Heat oil and fry onion until clear. Add shrimp powder and before it burns, add green stems with the water that dribbles from them as you place them in the pan. Add leaves and soy sauce. Toss lightly and cook covered for two minutes.
Add pounded garlic, toss lightly again, remove from heat and serve.
This dish tastes very shrimpy. Cut the amount if you aren’t fond of such flavors.
Just a few days after we met the owners of Ancient House, we learned they would be leaving. Their small Siem Reap business couldn’t outlast the economic crisis, so they’ve decided to sell. If they get a decent price, perhaps they’ll go home. If not? Too many people are asking themselves that question now. We are of course saddened by this news, but they are far from alone. I expect to see a lot of closed doors in Siem Reap this year.
After my post on the Ancient House mohinga night, some of you asked for a recipe. Now, mohinga comes in many forms and every chef has his or her own secrets to the process. Some mohingas are distinct to region, even town or village. Some varieties contain banana stem (a really interesting part of the plant also found in some Thai and Cambodian curries and soups), some with black pepper rather than red. This is a subject I’ll write more about in the future. But the last night we visited Ancient House, the owners shared with me their version of the soup. Nothing written, no formal instructions, just a list of ingredients and a gentle nudge as to how they should be prepared. You need:
catfish
lemongrass
onion
garlic
ginger
dried rice powder
fish sauce
salt
black pepper
red chile
egg
It’s simple, I’m told. Boil the fish and remove the bones. Pound the lemongrass, onion and garlic (she didn’t mention turmeric, but I suspect it might belong on the list). Mix everything together, add water, cook and serve over rice noodles. Top with fritters, fresh lime, chile, cilantro. Now, I realize this isn’t very specific and many people prefer detailed directions and measurements. So I give you a link to another mohinga recipe on the informative hsa*ba site. While you’re there, browse a bit. It’s a good little corner of the food blogosphere.
We recently visited a small fish-sauce operation near Battambang, and our tuk-tuk driver said he used to work for a similar factory.
“I know it’s not good. Sometimes the workers piss into the vats. The men, sometimes they’re lazy. They don’t go to the toilets.”
I really didn’t want to know that.
He also told us that factories such as this one send the bulk of their shipments to Thailand, where the bottles are slapped with Thai labels. Tonle Sap fish, Cambodian factories, Thai fish sauce. Go figure.
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Welcome to my ramblings on food, drink, travel, politics, history and all the other avenues that converge in life. I’m a journalist, author and media trainer; and for five years I was Gourmet's Asia correspondent until the magazine's recent closure. I’m a bit obsessive in the kitchen. Much like my mother, I start thinking about dinner well before breakfast….
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