Posts from — November 2008

Before (April)

After (November)

People here in Cambodia tell it like they see it. And the way they see it, I’m fat. Depending on the audience, this fact is positive (healthy), negative (not enough exercise), or neutral (just stating the facts, hon), but there’s a resounding consensus that I’m huge and I might not know, so I better be told.

Thankfully, most Cambodians also like my face and whenever I first meet someone, they generally say, wow, she’s fat and pretty (toat nung s’art)!

In the past four days, I’ve had no fewer than 5 comments from 5 individuals:

• The lady downstairs: “Your arms are fat again, you ate a lot in Thailand!”
• The landlord’s wife: “Oh good, you gained some weight back” (she thought I was eating poorly for a few weeks)
• My friend Rumdourl, while patting my belly: “Yes, you like to eat on your trips!”
• Mr. Sambath, the district coordinator: “Wow Jess, you look very fat today”
• My friend Rith’s neighbor: “She’s so fat, but she still has a waist which is why she’s pretty, not like me!”

And my all-time favorite from my best friend in Cambodia, Rumdourl: “Wow Jess, I think you’re the fattest foreigner I’ve ever seen!”

I’ve gained about 8 kilos or almost 20 lbs since arriving in Cambodia, so comments on my weight are justified, but I’m consistently thrown off by the daily reminders. You’d think all those comments would convince me to start cutting down my rice portion at lunch or start ordering ice coffees without milk, but no… I guess I’ve resigned myself to it until I get back to the US where people will politely lie while I try to work it off.

Sitting down to enjoy our lovely amok dinner

Last night, the girls and I got together to make fish amok. This is Sinang’s special recipe, though I added some personal notes based on variations that I’ve seen elsewhere. Amok is your quintessential Cambodian food — some call it the national dish. It varies across all sorts of dimensions — from a thin and soupy to solid congealed sauce, from spicy to no heat, from big fish hunks to tiny processed chunks. Some recipes bring out the lemongrass, while others emphasize the kaffir lime taste. But some elements run similar: the dish is always steamed, often wrapped in a banana leaf; kaffir limes always make an appearance; and the sauce always has a curry base with your typical coconut milk and Khmer curry ingredients.

This recipe is for a nicely balanced amok, tending toward a lemongrass-y flavor. The final product is firm, not runny, but beautifully moist so that it separates nicely with your fork over hot white rice. The peanuts play a major role and change the texture from some other recipes. I’m personally ambivalent — I’m not sure I like the texture mixed in, so I think I would try them as topping or garnish. On the other hand, though this recipe calls for kaffir lime at the end as topping, I personally like it mixed in.

Sinang’s Fish Amok (Threi Amok)

Ingredients:
1 kilo river fish
5 cups tender star gooseberry leaves (phyllanthus acidus or sluk gontooik)
Banana leaves made into lidless boats, banana leaves for packets, or small ceramic bowls
5 stalks lemongrass
5 grams large dried chilis, or to taste
about 1 inch fresh galangal
about 1 inch fresh young turmeric
2 cloves garlic
2-3 shallots
zest of 1 kaffir lime
7-8 kaffir lime leaves
4 roots wild ginger (kaemplena galanga or k’chlee-ay)
1.5 tbs. salt
3 tbs. sugar, or to taste
1 tbs. dark shrimp paste (kapi)
3 eggs
2 cups coconut cream (thick coconut milk)
1.5 tsp curry powder
2 cups roasted, crushed peanuts (optional)
1 bunch cilantro (optional)

Special equipment:
mortar & pestle or food processor
pot for steaming

Feeds 6-8 people
Preparation time: 2 hours total, 15 min steaming

Process:
1) Soak dried chilis in a bowl of water to reconstitute.
2) Chop the bottom third of the lemongrass stems, stopping where the stems dry up into leaves. Also chop galangal, turmeric, garlic, shallots, skin of your lime, and about 1 inch wild ginger root very finely.
3) Process ingredients with a mortar and pestle or with your food processor until they make a smooth paste.
4) Chop your chilis finely and process the chilis in a paste. Mix chili paste with amok paste until the desired spiciness. Depending on your audience, you may want to make two batches — one with chili, one without.
5) Chop your fish into small pieces. The exact size depends on your preference, but pieces should be no thicker than 0.5 cm and no bigger than 3 cm x 3 cm wide. This keeps the steaming time down and ensures that the sauce sets and the fish finishes at the same time.
6) In a large bowl, gently mix pieces of fish with amok paste and coconut cream until evenly coated
7) Continue to combine mixture, adding sugar and salt, shrimp paste, 3 eggs, curry powder, and finally the crushed peanuts. Peanuts can be omitted if desired, or added later for garnish.
Take banana leaf boats, bowls, or packets and line the bottom with 2-3 layers of star gooseberry leaves. Add amok mixture to fill the container. Repeat with all the amok mixture.
9) Thinly slice kaffir lime leaves and remaining wild ginger. Top each boat with a few slices of each for flavor. If desired, the leaves and ginger can be mixed in with the original mixture — this is up to individual preference.
10) Steam packets in a large steamer for 10-15 minutes, or until done.

Garnish with sprigs of cilantro and serve with white rice

Somart and Rumdourl assembling the amok boats

The little amok boats, ready to be steamed

And in the steamer…

Rumdourl opening up the finished product while Elaine looks on…

Quite rightly, the introduction to Jeffrey Steingarten’s The Man Who Ate Everything begins with an account of Steingarten’s attempt to train himself into the perfect omnivore. He begins oh-so-methodically by listing in order the foods that make him gag, that he simply detests, that he doesn’t particularly like, and so on, and then proceeds through a narrative of how he conquers (or mostly conquers) his distaste for each offending food.

Steingarten’s personal journey inspired me (though I found his hatred of falafel simply baffling!) and reminded me of my own hard-fought victory over my hatred of mustard, and the certain slow-battles to find my peace with select crustaceans and with fungi. In general, I’m proud at most of my attempts at food egalitarianism and Steingarten’s essay pumped me up for new explorations BUT then, Steiny (to my knowledge) didn’t have to deal with this particular Cambodian delicacy.

Porng Tier Goan — Duck egg with baby!

Yum. I felt I took a big step in even putting my face so close to this delightful morsel. My companion half-apologized for choosing this for his snack instead of a delicious & fresh papaya salad, or nicely processed, beakless, featherless chicken skewer, explaining that he needed the “power” from the three baby ducks because he had been feeling a bit tired lately.

I’m in Mondulkiri this week for work, and I asked my coworkers what the specialty is in this region. Their favorite local dish is (yum!) cow’s stomach, so tonight, we headed over to an outdoor restaurant that’s known for grilled meats and this delicacy.

The seven of us walked to the back of the restaurant near the kitchen. The place had 10 or so tables — a tin roof over a dirt floor littered with balled up paper napkins and various debris, a typical Khmer establishment. sat down in our plastic chairs around a low table. One person had brought along two plastic bags of precooked rice from a roadside stand. On one end of the table, there was a small wooden stool, and on this stool was perched a sturdy wooden cooking pail with glowing hot charcoal inside. The owner of the establishment came over, poked the fire a bit, and handed us a metal rack with a handle and a small pair of tongs.

Next, the servers brought out three heaping plates of fresh veggies (yum!) — sliced carrots, cucumber, cabbage, green peppers and eggplant — and two more plates of thinly sliced banana flower and oval slices of bananas with the peel still on. Since this was a grilling establishment, I thought the bananas were for grilling, but my compatriots immediately fell upon the platter, so despite my misgivings about the deliciousness of banana peel (even the monkeys peel it off!) I joined in and delicately picked up a slice with my chopsticks and tried it. Immediately my entire mouth went dry and I decided one was enough and I’d stick to the pretty pink and white mound of flower shavings.

Soon after, our server came back with a tray of sauces — a soup bowl of gray, thick concoction, highly pungent and topped with a bunch of peanuts — and tiny trays of salt & pepper mix, limes, garlic slices, and extra peanuts. I was instructed that the grey sauce was Prahok, a general term for a myriad of pastes, sauces, gums, and spreads of all consistencies and colors, made of fermented fish. I dipped a chopstick in gingerly and decided it was delicious, so I poured myself a small tray and started dipping my veg.

Seconds later, two noodle bowls full of raw, red meat and a large platter of a gray and black, bumpy, almost hairy-looking meat arrived at our table. The beef smell was unmistakable. I promised them I’d try almost anything at least once, so I immediately took the smallest piece of stomach I thought I could (mua-ha-ha) stomach, and popped it in my mouth. The consistency was as it looked — tough and chewy — and the taste was as it smelled — beefy beyond beefy. I’m quite sure it had no flavoring — it looked boiled. It definitely would have benefited from a dip in the Prahok, but I wanted the unadulterated experience. I can’t tell you exactly what my revulsion was, but if I’m honest, I think it had more to do with the presentation and the texture than with the taste.

Mr. Yu, grilling meats.

Eventually, we got round to the grilled meats — some more delightful offal, and eventually some pieces of steak, which my colleagues (dear, dear folks that they are) pressed upon me with admonitions that I would need the “power” from the beef to push the car through the knee-deep mud of Mondulkiri roads the next day.