Phnomenon: food in Cambodia

I’ve been teaching a friend’s grandmother, Channa, to make pizza. I literally have no idea how she got the desire to learn to cook Italian but she’s a relentlessly inquisitive student and masterful Cambodian cook. The exchange is a little one-sided – I tend to pick up about ten recipes for every one that I […]

It is a rare day in Cambodia where everything goes to plan, more so when that plan involves cooked food. Austin and my plan was relatively simple: drive to Kampot then Kep on Cambodia’s south coast and eat pepper crab until we received a plate worthy of a food magazine money shot. Getting to Kampot […]

I’ve been having an argument with a few other Khmer cuisine aficionados that “Royal Khmer Cuisine” never existed before the 1950s and was an elaborate confection of the post-colonisation royalty both as a response to Royal Thai cuisine and France’s desire for Cambodia’s cultural history to mirror its own.
I’ll happily admit that I’m wrong […]

Two loc lac recipes and a mercifully short digression on authenticity.
Loc Lac (occasionally, lok lak) is a superb expression of Cambodia’s recent colonial history and the imagined authenticity that is generally transferred by foreigners onto Asian food; an authenticity that is mirrored by the way that Khmer national culture itself is constructed. Loc Lac […]

It is sometimes amusing to uphold the myth that I’m leading a fantastically unattainable food lifestyle: up at the crack of dawn to scour Cambodia’s markets for the rarest ingredients, plotting my meals in advance. But it is a myth. I hate the morning and when I’m feeling lazy, Cambodia’s improving supermarkets fill the gap. […]

Tourist season seems to be hotting up in Phnom Penh, or at least, more people seem to be wearing daypacks and standing on street corners, ineffectively using their Lonely Planet to swat at the emergent swarm of informal motorcycle-taxi drivers. The Cambodian Ministry of Tourism, realising that Cambodian food may attract tourists rather than repel […]

When you first step foot into a Cambodian market, the first thing you’ll notice is the smell. Within that complex and fertile aroma, there is always the warm earthy scent of dried salted fish. In the markets, the dried fish is completely inescapable, and in Cambodian food, even more so. While most dishes use it […]

For the five people in Japan reading this, Shin at Eline Saglik has been translating a few of the Cambodian recipes from Khmer Krom Recipes into Japanese. Judging from the photos, samlor machu sach moan can be easily replicated in your average Japanese kitchen. The recipe does however make the slightly bizarre suggestion that vinegar […]

It’s amazing what a few hundred years of invasion and counter-invasion will do to a relationship with your immediate regional neighbours. At best, Cambodia’s relationship with Vietnam is rocky. Indeed, there is a huge amount of debate as to whether the Khmer language word for the Vietnamese – yuon – actually constitutes a racial slur. […]

At the second and penultimate New Year, I made a bold resolution to do a spot of interviewing about Cambodian food as an adjunct to simply rocking up to somebody’s stall and asking the vendor what they’re deep-frying today. I’ve also been enthused by Andy Brouwer’s new blog that profiles Cambodians from all walks of […]