ម្ហូបខែ្មរ

Let me start first that by saying that I’m no food critic  nor a gourmet expert and my cooking skills rank  below 5 out 10. But one thing I know is that I do  appreciate good food and binge into what I really  enjoy. And in any adventure, I always try to be as  adventurous with the local dish as well. Cambodia is  no exception of course, a taste of Khmer Cuisine is a  welcome experience. But apologies if I forgot the  names of some of the dishes. Any help on identifying  them would be welcome (help Toe! hehe). Like the  dish above is a Khmer chicken dish we ate for lunch at a restaurant near Srah Srang worth USD$ 3. It  has that semi mint lemon grass taste and the sauce is a bit on a sweet and sour side.

Sachkor (Beef with oyster sauce)
Now the food above is from the restaurant in our hotel at Golden Temple Villa. This Beef with oyster sauce is part of a 3 dish meal combo they serve with rice on this leafy bowls. Presentation is actually very nice. When I try to move the leaf bowls it somehow breaks and the soup leaks out. Wondering how they prepared this. And the taste is very good as well.

One very common dish I did not photograph (I become forgetful when a beautiful plate of food is set in front of me — I just start eating and only later realize I should have taken a picture) is beef lok lak, which was really tasty every time I ate it. It’s a marinated, thin-sliced, lean beef, stir fried and served with a black pepper dipping sauce on the side. “English style” comes with a fried egg and French fries. The Khmer version comes with steamed white rice and maybe some salad.
Another ubiquitous dish is morning glory, a very nice sauteed green vegetable (no flowers on the plate), served with or without meat. It reminded me a bit of mustard greens.
The curries I ate were tasty but not at all hot-spicy. (Maybe the cooks toned them down for the Western people?) Our trip leader took us to places that had menus in English and options for Western food, so I’m not entirely sure that I had a lot of authentic Khmer food. I was served two completely bland renditions of fried rice — always a reliable taste treat in Malaysia — so I quit ordering it. Fried noodles were usually instant noodles — ugh! — so I avoided those as well. I did have one awesome bowl of pork noodle soup for breakfast one morning, when Kalina and I struck out on our own — and somewhere or another I ate some very good spicy soup with glass noodles.


Amok fish: Sweet and hot, a fantastic medley of flavors, with mild white fish, served with rice on the side. This dish seems to be prepared differently in each place that serves it.
Of course, it does not help public relations for Cambodian food when people discover that crispy fried bugs and spiders are favorite local snacks. (No, I did not even think about sampling these.)