Khmer cuisine

Bok l’hong (a photo recipe of papaya salad)

11 December 2020 by Nathalie Abejero 1 Comment

Khmer spicy green papaya salad. I miss so many things from Southeast Asia, and this is one of them. In Khmer it’s pronounced ɓok lhoŋ: បុកល្ហុង. You can order sôm tām, or ส้มตำ, in a Thai restaurant. In Laos it is tam maak hoong, or ຕໍາ ຫມາກ ຫຸ່ງ. And I didn’t realize they also have it in Vietnam, gỏi đu đủ (pronounced guy dodo). The premise is the same but each has its own distinct flavor.

Thankfully the ingredients are locally available. Here we visit a Khmer friend who just whips everything out of her pantry like it’s the simplest thing, and in 5 minutes she has some on a plate for me.

Besides the ingredients we used, you can add others: yardlong beans (cut in small pieces), grated carrots, crab meat, finely chopped lemongrass, palm sugar. If you add bean sprouts don’t smash it too much – add it at the end.

Garlic cloves, Thai chillies, sliced cherry tomatoes, baby eggplant, grated green papaya , sugar, prahok, fish sauce

You can get a bottle of prahok in any Thai grocery store (Chinese stores likely won’t have it)

Khmer cuisine: Koh saek chrook k’nao (Pork stew with jackfruit)

10 May 2015 by Nathalie Abejero Leave a Comment

Koh saek chrook is usually a plain beef stew (of garlic, onions, soy sauce, fish sauce and small amounts of tubers) when our nanny Sopheap makes it for us. This variation below is with jackfruit, which lends a sweetness so that there’s no need to add sugar. (With growing affluence and its associated sweet tooth, sugar is increasingly added to Khmer dishes like this one.)

Tender shreds of meat are what’s left after the yellow fruit is taken out and the tougher rind and tendrils discarded. The seeds of jackfruit are edible when boiled. It has a hard shell that’s easily cracked and removed. They can be tossed into the dish as well. Sopheap leaves this shell on, but if I were to cook it myself I’d take them off.

First, garlic is stir fried in oil (Sopheap didn’t add onion this time). When it starts to brown, she added the pork. After about five minutes of medium heat, she tossed in the jackfruit. After about five minutes more she added some water, and let it stew. (Unfortunately there’s no recipe as she cooks by memory not units).

This dish needs serious food photography effort because of its drab color – the first image is the one I took in the kitchen with my camera phone, and the other is taken under natural light with a Canon 7D. It’s almost not that much better! :-( But the dish is really good (the kids love it), so don’t let the lack of professional photos put you off it!

Insect cuisine: Ongkrong saek koo (Beef stir fry with red tree ant larvae)

22 April 2015 by Nathalie Abejero Leave a Comment

The first time I had this dish was in Kampot, at a small stall by the side of a building away from the busy center of town. I loved it! Then one night I sat underneath a particularly bright light source and saw all the ants in my meal. After my initial shock, I managed to have a civil conversation with my Khmer colleagues about the food they had me eating. These ants lend a tangy taste to dishes, especially when paired with meats in a stir fry. I did end up finishing my meal that night, getting over it very quickly. All manner of insects make it onto the menu in Cambodia, so psychologically-speaking it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever eaten, and besides it was rather good.

There are several names for this ant — Fire ants, Red tree ants, Weaver ants. They’re large, red, have huge pincers and are unbelievably aggressive. They weave their nests into leaves up in the trees which become monstrous in size. If you find a line of them, carry out an experiment. Take a stick and wave it at a part of their regiment. The ones closest to the stick being waved at the group will rear up and attack. Reinforcements will be called via chemical alarm, and soon you’ll have a swarm of angry little buggers trying to get at you.

It and its larvae are a prized culinary ingredient for the delicate sour flavor it lends to the meat, but it isn’t easy to find in Phnom Penh restaurants. So we normally ask Khmer friends to make it for us. Unfortunately, it seems like the ants in Phnom Penh are also quite large. I have no problem eating this dish, but the bigger ants (up to 3cm!) aren’t pleasant visually to someone who hasn’t grown up with these dishes. Here it is stir-fried with ginger, lemongrass, garlic, shallots, cuts of morning glory and thinly sliced beef. As with other stir fried dishes, it isn’t complete without lots of chilies.

Khmer foods I love: Sa-om pong tia (acacia leaf duck egg omelet)

8 April 2015 by Nathalie Abejero Leave a Comment

I should’ve put a dollar bill behind the bunch to show scale; it is small and only about the length of a large adult hand (this photo is zoomed in to show the fronds of this fern-like herb). It’s common hereabouts, has a mildly bitter taste and a pungent sulfury aroma. I’ve seen it most commonly chopped off the stems and mixed into duck egg omelets. It’s one of my kids’ favorite fast foods. In English it’s called acacia leaf, and in Khmer it’s sa-om. It’s eaten with rice and some sweet chili sauce, or as part of an array of dishes that usually includes soups.

I wonder what else people use this herb in.

Stir fry pumpkin flower (Chaa lapeau)

4 April 2015 by Nathalie Abejero Leave a Comment

Pumpkin flowers – it’s available in the markets, early in the mornings. In a stir fry dish it has a taste and crunch similar to morning glory. Love this dish!

In many articles I’ve seen online, people pop off various parts of the flower to trash as they process it for cooking. But the Khmers I’ve seen cook it just cut them up and toss it all into a pot.

Taste of Nepal has some great photos and a recipe. And here’s a short explainer on pumpkin flowers from Tyrant Farms:

No matter how you eat them, you’ll enjoy knowing that a single cup of pumpkin flowers contains:
643 IU Vitamin A
9 mg Vitamin C
57 mg Potassium
a host of other essential micronutrients to keep you healthy
Remember: only eat the male pumpkin flowers! Pumpkins are “monoecious,” meaning a single plant will produce both male and female flowers, allowing it to self-reproduce without another pumpkin plant. You only want to eat the male flowers—not the female flowers—to make sure your plant will grow pumpkins. Also, bees and other pollinators use the pollen from the male flowers to pollinate the female flowers, so you can either leave plenty of male flowers on the plant for them to do their work, or you can become a “pollinator” yourself by taking the harvested male flowers and rubbing their stamens against the female flower’s pistils (sorry if that sounds a bit X-rated) once you’ve harvested the flowers.
It’s easy to tell the male and female flowers apart once you’ve seen them both—the females have a bulbous base that will eventually become the pumpkin, whereas the male flowers have a small base. Like other squash, pumpkin plants always produce a good number of male flowers before they produce their first female flowers.
Once we harvest our male pumpkin flowers, we remove any of the green stem and either: 1) eat them right there in the garden, 2) add them to a salad, or 3) roll them in pancake batter and cook them in a skillet like a pancake (finished with maple syrup or berries). Pumpkin flowers have a sweet yet earthy flavor that we love.

at the end of the work week – blue crabs for lunch in Kep’s Psar Kdam

23 November 2013 by Nathalie Leave a Comment

It’s always nice when work takes you down to the coast. This is our team’s last trip to assess public health facilities. That we were in Kep was much appreciated! Kep is a small seaside province which has been designated a resort area so it is rapidly developing – see some photos of Kep on our Flickr. The crab market (Psar Kdam) is an especially big attraction. There are all manner of seafood on the grill for sale here. Ten squid on a stick cost 20000Riel (US$5). Whole chicken on the grill is around 30000Riel too. Big fish are around 8000-12000Riel each.

Blue crabs are the signature catch for Kep, so we splurged on these for lunch on our last day. For small crabs we were able to haggle 18000Riel/kg (~US$2/lb). For 35000Riel/kg the crabs are bigger and meatier. We got 6kg (13.2lbs) and had them steamed (1000Riel/kg). While waiting, our team made a yummy dipping sauce by pounding together a mix of garlic, chili, lime and some palm sugar. It was really hard to go back to work that afternoon!