Cooking Khmer

Christmas 2011, my wonderful sister, smart cookie that she is, gave me a crisp $50 note with the instruction to spend it on a Khmer cooking course she'd found for us to do in Phnom Penh. 16 months later, almost to the day, Gordon and I finally did the course today.

me in Phnom Penh with the same $50 note,
just slightly less crisp as it has been folded up for over a year!

We had a great day, going to the market to buy all the food with our teacher, Sawn, and then making:
- vegetable spring rolls
- fish amok
- banana flower salad
- mango and sticky rice

cooking stations at the ready

It was a great day and I would highly recommend it for anyone visiting, but I'm actually glad that we waited to do it after being in Cambodia for a while (13 months now). It was lovely to chat to our teacher about the food and learn more Khmer names for things knowing what we know now about Cambodia and its food. It's also fun to make Khmer people laugh with some of the Khmer sayings we have learned.

ingredients ready for making the amok 'kroeung' or paste:
lemongrass, kaffir lime, galangal, turmeric, chilli, shallot and garlic in the small basket
dried then chopped into a paste chilli in the small bowl
chilli and kaffir lime leave finely chopped for decoration

the kroeung after being pounded up 

learning to make the banana leaf bowl to hold the amok

finished bowl 

the finished fish amok after being steamed, with extra coconut cream on top

banana flower

Peeling the dark leaves off the flower to
get to the tender yellow leaves inside

I had to add both of these so you can see how much
taller he is than nearly every Khmer person

banana leaf salad

There are two menus to choose from for the cookery course and our final dish of the day was the reason we ended up choosing 'menu 1' - mango and sticky rice.

In the picture above you can see all the parts that go into this dish. Top left is the sticky rice, top middle  is palm sugar caramel (palm sugar, salt, lime and coconut milk) and top right is the palm sugar caramel mixed with freshly grated coconut. On the plates is the mango - Sawn said to make it into whatever design we wanted. I can't remember who started the animal idea but Gordon went with an elephant and I ended up with a crocodile, as my suggested tiger just wasn't looking anything like a tiger!

finished designs - crocodile with clouds and elephant with ???