Like mother used to make.

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Geo: 13.4691, 104.041

Having had very little exposure to it I was looking forward to experiencing the culinary delights of Cambodia.
I decided before arriving that I would relax my stance on being vegetarian so as not to miss out on the cultural experience that food offered.
Never did I imagine what that would entail.
Cambodians will and do eat anything.
Its hard to know if this is the way it has always been, if it's a result of the French influence or because of the horrific living conditions imposed by the Khmer Rouge.

Before the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in the early 1970's it was one of the few countries in the region that was capable of producing enough food to be self reliant. It was an extraordinary feat by the Khmer Rouge to take the country from a position of prosperity to killing hundreds of thousands of people through starvation.
They achieved this by removing everybody from the cities and forcing them to work in rural rice fields for 12-15 hours a day and limiting them to only ½ a cup of rice per day. Thousands of other people died from poisoning after attempting to eat anything they could find to try and keep themselves alive.
During the time of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia was producing a staggering amount of rice, meat and vegetables, more than enough to feed the population, but what wasn't used to feed the Khmer Rouge forces was sold and the money used to pay the debt to China for the supply of arms and ammunition.

Desperate people do desperate things and as a consequence of this lack of available sustenance some of the food and eating practices encountered can be a little confronting to a sanitised barang (white foreigner).
People resorted to eating what was available from large spiders and water beetles to green mango's with chili salt and rat.

Although Cambodia considers itself to be a Buddhist country the one aspect of Buddhism they haven't embrace is the idea of not killing and eating animals.
It is impossible to stick to a strict vegetarian diet here unless you cook all your meals yourself ; the concept is lost to the Cambodians, even if you order vegetables and rice they will often add chicken or fish stock.
They find it hard to understand why you would choose not to eat something that is perfectly edible.
For most Cambodians the majority of their diet is made up of fish and rice. Most of the fish comes from the massive Tonel Sap Lake that sits in the middle of the country and is the Mekong Rivers overflow basin. People have been fishing those waters for thousands of years and not only do they get an abundance of fish but also shrimp which is sold dried and also crabs.
People can be seen fishing in the rivers and any other body of water big or small. The main fish they get is a type of cat fish and they eat them small, medium or large and quite often the size of the fish dictates the way it will be cooked, and in true Cambodian style nothing is wasted.
You can buy fresh fish, very fresh, actually, they are so fresh they are still alive, salted fish, small smoked fish on a stick, numerous varieties of fermented fish paste which can be smelt well before it can be seen, fried, boiled and baked fish or there is my personal favourite fish and ant dipping paste.
This paste cant be bought in restaurants or at the market it has to be made fresh.
You take your live large cat fish and you kill it by hitting it hard on the head with something blunt and heavy until it stops responding. Then you take the innards out, everything except the swim bladder is used including the contents of it stomach. Once washed you mince all the innards until they make a paste then you add garlic chili, lemon grass, a handful of live red ants (very similar to our green ants but a different colour) and finally and quite perplexing fish sauce. This creates a paste that can only be described as hot, bitter (ants) and pungently fishy. It must be an acquired taste because I've yet to see a westerner willing to go back for seconds, but the locals love it and serve it with every meal.
The national dish of Cambodia is a dish called Amok, this is traditionally made using fish but I have seen versions of it using Chicken, Eel and Tofu. It's a mild curry with the sauce consisting of Lemon Grass, Garlic, Galan Gal, fresh Turmeric and Kafir Lime leaves which are all pounded in a mortar and pestle to make a paste.
Actually those ingredients are used in varying degrees in nearly every Khmer dish.

On the way to the housing project everyday we stop off at a small village to by fresh supplies, generally I will get some vegetable such as Cauliflower, Carrots and Morning Glory, some fruit maybe banana's and Ah Luc which is a small round watermelon.
The Khmer guys we work with tend to buy fish (see above) and occasionally organise one of the villagers to supply something a little more exotic like snake, eel or Toad.
The family at the project will be given this food when we arrive and they prepare a meal out of it, usually eaten around 10.30am
So far we have been served Eel 2 (whole and Amok) and Toad 3 different ways.
Large Toads are cooked slowly in a wok with a bit of stock or put on a stick and roasted over coals, served whole and you just break of the limb you desire and chew the meat off, if your game you can put some fresh fish paste on it (see above).
Small toads are fried whole so they become crispy and you just put the small amphibian straight in your mouth whole, chewing the head, bones everything.
The most disturbing part of doing that I that I found was when the small claws of the toad where scratching the inside of my mouth while I chewed on it. I'm pretty sure that the animals I ate before I went Vegetarian usually had their feet removed.
Fried toad is actually quite tasty and shouldn't't be dismissed from appearing in a fast food out let near you soon.
For a special occasion a rooster was procured from a neighbor who fittingly supplied the bird live. It was handed to Soun (one of the Khmer men we work with on the building project) who has a reputation as a good cook. He took the bird tore a strip off a banana plant and tied its feet together, he then turned the bird upside down and stroked it from feet to head which some how makes the chicken go limp. He then plucked feathers from a small area on its neck, got a knife ready to cut its throat, somebody else got a bowl and placed it under the chickens neck ready to catch the blood. Once the chicken's throat was cut and the blood collected the chicken was placed off to the side to spends its final minutes trussed up and alone, contemplating what went wrong.
The blood was placed into boiling water causing it to congeal it is then sliced and served warm and fresh.
To pluck the chicken first place it in boiling water making it easier to remove the feathers, then cut off the head, take out the yucky bits from its stomach and then what is left is cut up roughly bones and all. This dismembered bird was then used to make 2 dishes one using jack fruit and another in the Amok style.
Its best to be cautious when eating a dish like this because you have to be prepared to eat whatever it is that you put on your plate and what you think is a tasty bit of flesh may turn out to be something entirely different.
There are many other food oriented things that leave me thinking "why" such as, when you display a pigs head for sale do you place its tail in its mouth, duck fetus eggs (self explanatory) , dry a fish in the shape of a butterfly, dried squid on a stick come in packs of 5 and boiled duck feet to name a few.
Thankfully the time of starvation is over, there is a staggering array and variety of fruit, vegetables and meat available and even the chronically poor eat well and as I have pointed out nothing goes to waste.
Perhaps one day Cambodian food will be accepted like Thai or Chinese food has been, it has a lot to offer and plenty of confrontation.

But there are times when all I want is a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich.

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Comments

[jl_skp]

Food Just curious.. Is there any food other than like rice that is like western foods?