Day 47 - Cookery and the FCC

Today I was to attend the Cambodian Cookery school, run since 2005 out of the Frizz restaurant on St. 240 (a well known street of high class shops near the Royal Palace). 

There were other tourists on this course and I met Adam, a newly qualified doctor, previously an engineer, and his wife Mary who had a great sense of humour. They are staying with the third in command at the British Embassy. Apparently that's about it at the embassy as Britain does not keep a big presence here.

In Khmer a carrot is a karr-ot and a passion fruit is a passion fruit.

You can get a take away.

Buying fresh noodles.

This has an obvious name but I can't recall it now..?

See the taro roots in the background at the top. I had a particular interest in these as we've also seen them growing here (at the Apsara Arts Association specifically, but its everywhere). There are two types and the one you don't eat grows next to lotus flowers in the water and has a leaf that looks like deadly nightshade, only about 50 times bigger! Parts of it, the flowers, are eaten too(of course) but again it has to be handled with care. This type grows on land as a root.

Ginger. Or another thing that looks similar and I can't remember. Taro root again on the right.

We saw lotus stems too. These are not them, this is lemongrass I think. Lotus stems are whiter and taste of water.

A banana flower.

Mushrooms at the front.

We started in the morning with a trip to the food market, Psar Kandal, to buy the foods we would cook. This was utterly fascinating and I learnt the names of some of the foods I'd been blithely consuming over the last few weeks. We also saw some meaty horrors. The ground was filthy after the rain.

Catfish and..something that ,looks like catfish but has a simpler local name.

Pigs lungs

We were going to do four courses over the course of the day, stopping after each course to eat! The menu was: crispy fried spring rolls (of course), these are stuffed rice pastry packages filled with taro root and carrot. I was so impressed by the peelers used here that I later bought them. One of them is a mango slicer! To use taro root you have to be sure to squeeze its white juice our completely as it is ver astringent and itches madly if it gets on your skin. Tastes delicious though. 

Note the taro root and carrot packages.

Second course was the main course, the speciality of Cambodia: Fish Amok.  This is a type of fish curry almost, made with turmeric and carrot in a mortar, so that it all the liquid in the recipe is pressed together and absorbed and the dish is moist but solid enough to stand on its own. It can be fried but is usually steamed inside a banana leaf bowl, which we made. It's delicious, though very yellow. My fingers were yellow from the turmeric for days after. Chef was very keen on presentation too so our dishes were very delicious looking, which does not always happen with Khmer food!

After the main everyone else left and it was just me and chef and the Cambodian starling, come to hop about. His song is "weir oo aa ee", and very loud.

Third course was banana flower salad, that I had so enjoyed at Mai Chau lodge in Vietnam. Again presentation was key and it was served in a red banana leaf. The actual contents of the salad did include some white banana flower strips from right inside the flower but the wastage is great on this one! You think you're going to eat the stamens that look rather like bean shoots, but no, it really is just the very central small white leaves, shredded.

Dessert was sticky rice with mango (and caramel). I'm not a big fan of sticky rice (in fact a few weeks here and rice generally could be happily forgotten for some time!) however it was of course beautifully prepared and utterly delicious. The caramel sauce was a big plus though; it was just caramelised suger, nothing chocolate. Sticky rice is indeed a different type of rice, grown specifically for the dessert market!

Oh no don't add the rice...oh ok then!

While we ate, (he had some too) I chatted with the chef, Kandar (or similar). He was taken out of poverty, having lost his mother young, and trained to be a chef on one of the NGO type programs. He earns $50 a month of which $35 goes on rent for a very small room in Phnom Penh, however he is making a good living compared to some! I did find him a little hard to follow at times which was a bit tricky as he was quite keen to get me to say words I knew in Khmer and correct my pronounciation. Which was fun but not sure it helped much! He was quite philosophical about this life, which I found unusual, as most Cambodians are quite hung up about family and home. Perhaps because he only has an elderly father ( who is apparently happy at something else, I got the impression they were not close), he is quite keen to do something other with his savings than have a family: he wanted to travel!

It was a good, refreshing day. Nice balcony, view and surroundings with a cool breeze as we were on the fourth floor. Nice to meet people not volunteers and actually very nice to go home at the end of the day.

That evening we went out for a drink and ended up at the FCC, the Foreign Correspondants Club, which had fascinating photos lining the walls, including one of the same club location on the day of the Khmer Rouge entry into Phnom Penh. Photos by Al Rockoff were for sale. Most journalists and expats visit here at some point, it has three floors and a sky bar and is pleasantly run down with wooden banisters and old tiles. And gekkos. It's not the most exciting place but it was nice for an hour or two. I really do notice the absence of Mediterranea when I'm in such places though. Particularly if its a smelly evening.