Siem Reap - Khmer Cooking

Heading into the Countryside for Class
My afternoon cooking class started with a long tuk tuk ride south of Siem Reap.

After five bumpy miles we'd left all signs of city life behind.  The dirt roads became redder and everyone was either walking or riding bicycles.  We were close to the paddies, farmers were sun-drying their rice on large tarps spread on the ground.

We stopped exactly here, in the middle of nothing.  The driver gestured me out and pointed towards the bamboo beyond the unfinished brick gateway.  I heard voices but didn't see anything.

Eventually I reached a thatched roof outdoor kitchen.  It was simple, yet elegant - a marble topped rectangular counter with a sink.

From the kitchen, a wooden walkway led out over a small pond stuffed with fish to a thatched roof pier.

We would be eating our results there, good or bad

There were three other students, a young couple from New Zealand who were on a four month overland trip from Thailand to Moscow and a guy from Chicago who taught English in Thailand.  Our two teachers were Cambodian women.

Each student had his own place and equipment: an apron, knife, chopping board, large wooden mortar and pestle and a portable single burner stove fueled by a can of gas.

We were to learn three dishes: Khmer chicken curry, spring rolls and a dessert.  The chicken curry ingredients were as familiar as their Thai counterpart - lemongrass, cauliflower, sweet potato, onion, galangal, lime and turmeric.

First up were the spring rolls.  They're similar to the Vietnamese variety in that they're not steamed or fried.  A sheet of rice paper, shown here, is dipped in water to make it pliable.

The ingredients are piled on one end.  Cooked chicken, lettuce, pickled carrots, rice noodles, bean sprouts and cilantro.  You then roll it like a burrito - a few turns, tuck the edges and a final turn.

A light vegetable oil is brushed on to keep them from sticking. This turns the skins translucent.  We also made a peanut based dipping sauce for these.

We spent a half hour pounding the ingredients for our curry in the mortar.  Turmeric is the key to the beautiful color.  The recipe is almost identical to the Thai version except that the Cambodian version has peanuts and no chillies.  I was surprised by the lack of chillies and queried our teachers who confirmed that Cambodians do not cook with chillies.  Rather, they are added by the eater as a condiment if desired.

What I liked about the class was the precision of the instructions and the explanations of why we were doing things in a certain order.  We slow cooked the chicken and vegetables in coconut milk and our curry paste.  It was served over rice.  Mild, smooth flavor.

Our dessert was a dish called Nom Tong Noun.  It required a special piece of equipment - a heavy solid iron pancake press which weighed almost 25 pounds.

We created a batter of rice flour, cane sugar and sesame and poured it onto the bottom of the press and closed it.  We then turned the press over and cooked the batter for a few minutes.  The tricky last step was the most important.  With a fork, you snagged the edge of the pancake and rolled it into a cone shape.

After they cool off they become crunchy.  They're like a sesame ice cream cone.  Too bad we didn't have any coffee to go with them.

We ate and chatted, drank beer and leafed through the included recipe book, which contained 10 additional recipes.  On the tuk tuk ride home I almost napped a bit.