- From: The Australian
- May 22, 2010
Battambang stallholders offer all the fresh produce required for dishes at the Smokin' Pot's cooking school. Photo: Catherine Marshall
- THE GLOBAL GOURMET
IF you knew what you were looking for, you would find it at the central market in the provincial city of Battambang in northwest Cambodia.
This is the city's pulse, throbbing with the quick, precise movements of vendors and customers as they exchange a litany of produce: live, freshly killed, slow-fermented or just picked. The colours and smells of this place deliver a brisk slap to the face:
pyramids of hot-pink dragon fruit, distended globes of aubergine, ash-coated eggs, glistening orange entrails. Vannak Robie, proprietor of The Smokin' Pot, guides us through this food maze as we seek out the ingredients on today's menu.
We pick up sweet basil, shredded coconut and a fistful of snake beans as long as Vannak's forearm, then wait while a stallholder hacks the heads off a couple of live snakehead fish. Complementary ingredients are to be found just around the corner, past the whole plucked duck with its head flopped mournfully over a table's edge.
On our way out we select chunks of yellow-skinned chicken and squeeze into a narrow aisle to find a stall piled high with slabs of beef and other bovine parts.
We stroll back to the cookery school where Vannak puts us to work beneath a candy-striped French awning on the pavement. We're making tom yam goong - hot and sour soup - as a starter, minus the prawns. I imagine this dish to be heavily influenced by the flavours of neighbouring Thailand, but the opposite is true: many southeast Asian dishes have their roots in the Khmer kingdom of Angkor, Vannak tells me.
On thick, circular chopping boards we slice stalks of lemongrass, ginza (a type of galangal) and red chillies. Whole shallots, roughly torn kaffir lime leaves and the chicken, which is now skinned and cubed, complete the offering.
Water forms the basis of our soup, which we cook in pots lined up on kerosene stoves. I have to move quickly to keep up with Vannak's lightning-fast instructions: flinging in this and that, my pot rapidly transforms into a zingy cauldron to which I am soon enjoined to add the final dash of fish sauce and squeeze of fresh lime.
This soup reminds me of the water-to-wine parable, for we have quite effortlessly turned a bowl of water into something far more tasty and substantial.
The second course - the signature Khmer dish, amok trey - requires more effort. The curry paste, which comprises most of the ingredients used in the soup, is ground relentlessly into a chunky pulp; fresh turmeric turns it bright orange. I am better suited to the more docile activity of making coconut milk, which we do by submerging muslin bags filled with shredded coconut in bowls of water, releasing the milk through gentle massage.
A slick of oil rises to the surface as I pour the liquid into the piping hot wok. This Khmer take on coconut milk is a world away from its processed cousin, and I wonder distractedly how I can reproduce the ingredient in my kitchen in Australia. I add curry paste and fish paste, chunks of snakehead fish, onion, aubergine, snakebeans and spongy straw mushrooms, then enjoy a beverage on the pavement while the curry reduces.
I fall in love when I taste my amok: it is sublime, creamy and subtle-textured. It tastes like the essence of Cambodia. Sated though I am, there is still one course to go, the strangely named sgnor chhrouk, or "beef out of pot".
For this we use the leftover curry paste, leaves of basil, mint and morning glory, and a little sugar. "Not too much!" warns Vannak. Tossed in a hot wok, the stir-fry is ready in minutes. It is tasty, but the amok has spoiled me.
We linger long after our plates have been cleared, while around us diners at The Smokin' Pot - it is a restaurant, too - order other Khmer dishes such as lok lac sach moan (chicken lok lak) and laap (fish salad).
I will take home my souvenir cookbook and replicate its contents in my kitchen, but it will be up to my memory to re-create the bliss of dining on a Cambodian pavement as a small boy pedals past on an oversized bicycle and tuktuk drivers call out for passengers as they rumble on by.
Checklist
Courses at The Smokin' Pot Cookery School and Restaurant cost $US8 ($8.70) a person, inclusive. More: 229, Group 8, 20 Ousephea Village, Svaypor Commune, Battambang District (near Angkor Hotel); phone + 855 1282 1400; vannaksmokinpot@yahoo.com.
This is the city's pulse, throbbing with the quick, precise movements of vendors and customers as they exchange a litany of produce: live, freshly killed, slow-fermented or just picked. The colours and smells of this place deliver a brisk slap to the face:
pyramids of hot-pink dragon fruit, distended globes of aubergine, ash-coated eggs, glistening orange entrails. Vannak Robie, proprietor of The Smokin' Pot, guides us through this food maze as we seek out the ingredients on today's menu.
We pick up sweet basil, shredded coconut and a fistful of snake beans as long as Vannak's forearm, then wait while a stallholder hacks the heads off a couple of live snakehead fish. Complementary ingredients are to be found just around the corner, past the whole plucked duck with its head flopped mournfully over a table's edge.
On our way out we select chunks of yellow-skinned chicken and squeeze into a narrow aisle to find a stall piled high with slabs of beef and other bovine parts.
We stroll back to the cookery school where Vannak puts us to work beneath a candy-striped French awning on the pavement. We're making tom yam goong - hot and sour soup - as a starter, minus the prawns. I imagine this dish to be heavily influenced by the flavours of neighbouring Thailand, but the opposite is true: many southeast Asian dishes have their roots in the Khmer kingdom of Angkor, Vannak tells me.
On thick, circular chopping boards we slice stalks of lemongrass, ginza (a type of galangal) and red chillies. Whole shallots, roughly torn kaffir lime leaves and the chicken, which is now skinned and cubed, complete the offering.
Water forms the basis of our soup, which we cook in pots lined up on kerosene stoves. I have to move quickly to keep up with Vannak's lightning-fast instructions: flinging in this and that, my pot rapidly transforms into a zingy cauldron to which I am soon enjoined to add the final dash of fish sauce and squeeze of fresh lime.
This soup reminds me of the water-to-wine parable, for we have quite effortlessly turned a bowl of water into something far more tasty and substantial.
The second course - the signature Khmer dish, amok trey - requires more effort. The curry paste, which comprises most of the ingredients used in the soup, is ground relentlessly into a chunky pulp; fresh turmeric turns it bright orange. I am better suited to the more docile activity of making coconut milk, which we do by submerging muslin bags filled with shredded coconut in bowls of water, releasing the milk through gentle massage.
A slick of oil rises to the surface as I pour the liquid into the piping hot wok. This Khmer take on coconut milk is a world away from its processed cousin, and I wonder distractedly how I can reproduce the ingredient in my kitchen in Australia. I add curry paste and fish paste, chunks of snakehead fish, onion, aubergine, snakebeans and spongy straw mushrooms, then enjoy a beverage on the pavement while the curry reduces.
I fall in love when I taste my amok: it is sublime, creamy and subtle-textured. It tastes like the essence of Cambodia. Sated though I am, there is still one course to go, the strangely named sgnor chhrouk, or "beef out of pot".
For this we use the leftover curry paste, leaves of basil, mint and morning glory, and a little sugar. "Not too much!" warns Vannak. Tossed in a hot wok, the stir-fry is ready in minutes. It is tasty, but the amok has spoiled me.
We linger long after our plates have been cleared, while around us diners at The Smokin' Pot - it is a restaurant, too - order other Khmer dishes such as lok lac sach moan (chicken lok lak) and laap (fish salad).
I will take home my souvenir cookbook and replicate its contents in my kitchen, but it will be up to my memory to re-create the bliss of dining on a Cambodian pavement as a small boy pedals past on an oversized bicycle and tuktuk drivers call out for passengers as they rumble on by.
Checklist
Courses at The Smokin' Pot Cookery School and Restaurant cost $US8 ($8.70) a person, inclusive. More: 229, Group 8, 20 Ousephea Village, Svaypor Commune, Battambang District (near Angkor Hotel); phone + 855 1282 1400; vannaksmokinpot@yahoo.com.
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