Khmer food

Bok l’hong (a photo recipe of papaya salad)

11 December 2020 by Nathalie Abejero 1 Comment

Khmer spicy green papaya salad. I miss so many things from Southeast Asia, and this is one of them. In Khmer it’s pronounced ɓok lhoŋ: បុកល្ហុង. You can order sôm tām, or ส้มตำ, in a Thai restaurant. In Laos it is tam maak hoong, or ຕໍາ ຫມາກ ຫຸ່ງ. And I didn’t realize they also have it in Vietnam, gỏi đu đủ (pronounced guy dodo). The premise is the same but each has its own distinct flavor.

Thankfully the ingredients are locally available. Here we visit a Khmer friend who just whips everything out of her pantry like it’s the simplest thing, and in 5 minutes she has some on a plate for me.

Besides the ingredients we used, you can add others: yardlong beans (cut in small pieces), grated carrots, crab meat, finely chopped lemongrass, palm sugar. If you add bean sprouts don’t smash it too much – add it at the end.

Garlic cloves, Thai chillies, sliced cherry tomatoes, baby eggplant, grated green papaya , sugar, prahok, fish sauce

You can get a bottle of prahok in any Thai grocery store (Chinese stores likely won’t have it)

Khmer foods I love: Sa-om pong tia (acacia leaf duck egg omelet)

8 April 2015 by Nathalie Abejero Leave a Comment

I should’ve put a dollar bill behind the bunch to show scale; it is small and only about the length of a large adult hand (this photo is zoomed in to show the fronds of this fern-like herb). It’s common hereabouts, has a mildly bitter taste and a pungent sulfury aroma. I’ve seen it most commonly chopped off the stems and mixed into duck egg omelets. It’s one of my kids’ favorite fast foods. In English it’s called acacia leaf, and in Khmer it’s sa-om. It’s eaten with rice and some sweet chili sauce, or as part of an array of dishes that usually includes soups.

I wonder what else people use this herb in.

Stir fry pumpkin flower (Chaa lapeau)

4 April 2015 by Nathalie Abejero Leave a Comment

Pumpkin flowers – it’s available in the markets, early in the mornings. In a stir fry dish it has a taste and crunch similar to morning glory. Love this dish!

In many articles I’ve seen online, people pop off various parts of the flower to trash as they process it for cooking. But the Khmers I’ve seen cook it just cut them up and toss it all into a pot.

Taste of Nepal has some great photos and a recipe. And here’s a short explainer on pumpkin flowers from Tyrant Farms:

No matter how you eat them, you’ll enjoy knowing that a single cup of pumpkin flowers contains:
643 IU Vitamin A
9 mg Vitamin C
57 mg Potassium
a host of other essential micronutrients to keep you healthy
Remember: only eat the male pumpkin flowers! Pumpkins are “monoecious,” meaning a single plant will produce both male and female flowers, allowing it to self-reproduce without another pumpkin plant. You only want to eat the male flowers—not the female flowers—to make sure your plant will grow pumpkins. Also, bees and other pollinators use the pollen from the male flowers to pollinate the female flowers, so you can either leave plenty of male flowers on the plant for them to do their work, or you can become a “pollinator” yourself by taking the harvested male flowers and rubbing their stamens against the female flower’s pistils (sorry if that sounds a bit X-rated) once you’ve harvested the flowers.
It’s easy to tell the male and female flowers apart once you’ve seen them both—the females have a bulbous base that will eventually become the pumpkin, whereas the male flowers have a small base. Like other squash, pumpkin plants always produce a good number of male flowers before they produce their first female flowers.
Once we harvest our male pumpkin flowers, we remove any of the green stem and either: 1) eat them right there in the garden, 2) add them to a salad, or 3) roll them in pancake batter and cook them in a skillet like a pancake (finished with maple syrup or berries). Pumpkin flowers have a sweet yet earthy flavor that we love.

at the end of the work week – blue crabs for lunch in Kep’s Psar Kdam

23 November 2013 by Nathalie Leave a Comment

It’s always nice when work takes you down to the coast. This is our team’s last trip to assess public health facilities. That we were in Kep was much appreciated! Kep is a small seaside province which has been designated a resort area so it is rapidly developing – see some photos of Kep on our Flickr. The crab market (Psar Kdam) is an especially big attraction. There are all manner of seafood on the grill for sale here. Ten squid on a stick cost 20000Riel (US$5). Whole chicken on the grill is around 30000Riel too. Big fish are around 8000-12000Riel each.

Blue crabs are the signature catch for Kep, so we splurged on these for lunch on our last day. For small crabs we were able to haggle 18000Riel/kg (~US$2/lb). For 35000Riel/kg the crabs are bigger and meatier. We got 6kg (13.2lbs) and had them steamed (1000Riel/kg). While waiting, our team made a yummy dipping sauce by pounding together a mix of garlic, chili, lime and some palm sugar. It was really hard to go back to work that afternoon!

Tropical fruit: A special coconut variety

10 September 2013 by Nathalie Abejero 1 Comment

These coconuts cost 32,000riel (US$8) each at the markets in Battambang town – compared to 2000riel (US$0.50) for a regular coconut. The meat is thick, tender and incredibly sweet. They aren’t in season right now and the seller at the market wouldn’t tell us when that would be (meaning they won’t be so rare thus so expensive). They’re a variety called locally as Dong Ktii and they’re only available in Battambang and Kampot so far as my Khmer colleagues know. Anyone know what kind of coconut these are, and if they’re related or similar to the macapuno variety in the Philippines?

Khmum Ang (Bee larvae cake)

31 December 2011 by Nathalie Abejero Leave a Comment

This is a bee larvae cake, a dish from the ever-popular Sovanna restaurant (No 2C St 21, just south of Sihanouk Blvd). It’s steamed with spices in banana leaves, and picked at like a snack. We had a friend visiting Cambodia who wanted to sample Khmer cuisine, and what better way to do that than to get a big group together so you can toss something like this into the meal mix? ;-) It has a gummy sort of texture, and the larvae pop like a pocket when you bite down on them. It’s got a nutty taste, a little sweet, with a hint of honey. No one disliked it, though it won’t be something we will normally order. Photo from Keith Kelly.