Cooking Khmer
on Phnom Penh Pal (Cambodia), 20/Apr/2013 10:45, 34 days ago
Christmas 2011, my wonderful sister, smart cookie that she is, gave me a crisp $50 note with the instruction to spend it on aKhmer cooking courseshe'd found for us to do in Phnom Penh. 16 months later, almost to the day, Gordon and I finally did the course today.me in Phnom Penh with the same $50 note,just slightly less crisp as it has been folded up for over a year!We had a great day, going to the market to buy all the food with our teacher, Sawn, and then making:- vegetable spring rolls- fish amok- banana flower salad- mango and sticky ricecooking stations at the readyIt was a great day and I would highly recommend it for anyone visiting, but I'm actually glad that we waited to do it after being in Cambodia for a while (13 months now). It was lovely to chat to our teacher about the food and learn more Khmer names for things knowing what we know now about Cambodia and its food. It's also fun to make Khmer people laugh with some of the Khmer sayings we have learned.ingredients ready for making the amok 'kroeung' or paste:lemongrass, kaffir lime, galangal, turmeric, chilli, shallot and garlic in the small basketdried then chopped into a paste chilli in the small bowlchilli and kaffir lime leave finely chopped for decorationthe kroeung after being pounded up learning to make the banana leaf bowl to hold the amokfinished bowl the finished fish amok after being steamed, with extra coconut cream on topbanana flowerPeeling the dark leaves off the flower toget to the tender yellow leaves insideI had to add both of these so you can see how muchtaller he is than nearly every Khmer personbanana leaf saladThere are two menus to choose from for the cookery course and our final dish of the day was the reason we ended up choosing 'menu 1' - mango and sticky rice.In the picture above you can see all the parts that go into this dish. Top left is the sticky rice, top middle is palm sugar caramel (palm sugar, salt, lime and coconut milk) and top right is the palm sugar caramel mixed with freshly grated coconut. On the plates is the mango - Sawn said to make it into whatever design we wanted. I can't remember who started the animal idea but Gordon went with an elephant and I ended up with a crocodile, as my suggested tiger just wasn't looking anything like a tiger!finished designs - crocodile with clouds and elephant with ???