More on Food

#1

For dinner the other night we had fish and here is how it is made. I didn’t really like it all that much, but it is easy and interesting.

First you grind up garlic, salt, sugar, and pepper into a paste (lots of it). Then you cut up the fish and mix the paste in with it – use your hands to cover the fish with the paste. Then, you have a little water (maybe one inch) in a big pot and pour in lots of sugar. Let it come to a boil and continue boiling until it turns red. I know that sounds weird, but I think what it is, is when we usually think it is starting to burn. This takes a while.



Then, turn off the heat and dump in the fish. Turn the heat back on and mix up the fish with the syrup. Add some more water, too. Keep mixing it for a while, but do not break up the pieces of fish so do this carefully. Then, you will cover the pot and cook for 15 minutes. After that time, you can add some more water and then cover again and keep cooking. You can cook it anywhere from 15 min to 1 hour, and it is supposed to get better the longer you cook it.

I think this is a link to a similar recipe: http://www.khmerkromrecipes.com/recipes/recipe9.html

#2

Before I talked a little about prahok, which is probably as close to a national dish as Cambodia gets. It is a fish paste (fish and water) that you keep for a very long time and eat with fresh vegetables like lettuce leaves. There is a variation on this called toek krouerng (not so sure on that spelling). While prahok is gray, this is white with some green and red. Again, it is fish ground up with water into a liquid. Then, things like garlic, chopped peanuts, and lime/tamarind juice are added for flavor. You also add some small red chiles whole and some green herbs (fresh leaves) for color. It actually is quite good and fresh tasting although I do not think I would want to eat a lot of it.



Here is a link to a recipe for this: http://www.khmerkromrecipes.com/recipes/recipe35.html - It is called toek (or tirk) kreoung. The picture on this site isn't very appetizing looking; ours was white and looked better, also more colorful!

#3

Although my mom just had durian for the first time in Texas with my sister-in-law’s family and loved it (the look, the taste, the smell, everything), I am still not so sure. First let me explain. A durian is this pretty crazy looking fruit – big and kind of round-oblong and covered with spikes. The size of a coconut, for scale. Inside the flesh is really awful smelling, like something rotting. I have not experienced this, but it is what everyone says. Some airlines in southeast Asia have banned people from bringing it onboard because of the smell. It is supposed to taste very good, and people here love it, but many of the foreigners can’t get over the smell to enjoy the flavor. I have not tried it fresh yet, but I did purchase durian wafers for the last movie night. Not very hesitant, I tried one, and I was GROSS!! I can’t really describe why, but it just tasted not good. There also was an unpleasant smell anytime that someone opened the package. Not a good snack idea for watching a movie in a small, closed room!!! I have heard that it tastes very different fresh than in some kind of processed form, so we will see. None of the girls has brought one back to the dorm yet. If I don’t try one here, it is okay. I am sure my sister-in-law can help me try one when I get home if I want to :)

#4

Tonight for dinner (Saturday) we are having something that involves cooking cubes of beef and then adding hard boiled eggs and cooking them together (koh sach chrouk – basically it means caramelized pork). The hard boiled eggs turn color because of the meat and sauce. It is interesting and looks like it would be pretty easy, but who knows. Too much meat for me, of course, but I have tried the eggs.



Apparently all of the eggs that we eat in the dorm are duck eggs, but they look pretty much the same to me. Definitely yellow yolks because they have been fertilized and are from chickens that actually ate what they are supposed to eat, as opposed to all the sad little chickens in the US. Sooooo, because dinner involved this meat dish, they made something else for me. I went down the street with Dany and Kimleang to pick out some vegetables. Let’s just say that if you saw the meat and produce and how it was kept at the stalls, you definitely would not want to eat anything! The amount of flies boggles the mind. I am just going to think that cooking takes care of everything (they also wash things off a lot – several rinses of water). And apparently we are supposed to get some de-worming pill to take when we leave, which I guess will take care of anything else that is left :)

At the shop, I picked out some red and green tomatoes (like plum tomatoes), an onion, and some little mushrooms (totally dif from any I have seen before). To make everything, Kimleang washed and cut everything and then added some oil and lots of chopped garlic to the pan. She then added the two eggs and scrambled them, adding a little fish sauce, too. Then went in the mushrooms and later the tomatoes and finally the onions. She added a little more oil at one point when the eggs were cooking, but otherwise just added water. She also put in some sugar and salt…and something I imagine is msg but I am not sure. That was it. I definitely can do something like that for a different type of Asian flavor when I get home!

Okay, I think that is it for my food updates for now!

Note: all of the images in this post are from this website: http://www.khmerkromrecipes.com/main.html