Eating My Way Through Cambodia

Recapping my adventure in Cambodia for my last blog post was not easy to do. I had so much to share and I didn’t even get to share with you all the food I ate! I had watermelon juice almost everyday, binged on noodle soup and rice porridge for breakfast, ate the freshest fruit in Cambodia (dragon fruit, coconuts, mango), devoured chicken skewers with lime pepper sauce, ordered green mango salad every chance I got, drank fruity martinis, and had the best crabs of my life.

The best thing I ate on my trip would have to be the crabs I had at Kimly Restaurant in Kep on the coast. It was made with fresh green peppercorn grown in the Kampot region of Cambodia. It’s a little messy to eat but it’s so delicious! You can’t get this anywhere else unless you are growing your own peppercorn. The crabs are fried with the peppercorn straight on the sprig, unlike the peppercorn we are used to seeing which has been boiled and dried. I visited La Plantation to get a personal tour of a pepper plantation. It was really interesting learning about how peppercorn is grown.

I stayed in Kep for only 1 night but went to Kimly for crabs twice during my stay. I’ve had these crabs before, 7 years ago when I was last in Cambodia and it’s still just as good as I remembered. There is also a little shack on Rabbit Island (an island off the coast of Kep that I visited last time) that serves delicious crabs as well.

At the beginning of my Cambodia trip, I took a cooking class where I learned how to make fish amok. This is one of the most popular dishes among tourists. But it’s not something that I’ve grown up eating. My mother has never made this for me. I didn’t even know what it was until I visited Cambodia for the first or second time 13 years ago. I’ve tried making this dish myself a couple times in Los Angeles, but I never thought it tasted quite right and wondered if maybe I was doing it wrong. However, after taking the cooking class and trying the dish at several restaurants around Cambodia, I think that it is simply not a dish that I like all that much. I originally wanted to include this dish in my cookbook but I think I need to leave it out because my heart just isn’t in it…yet.

Noodle soup and rice porridge are 2 of my favorite Cambodian comfort foods. I ate them almost everyday at restaurants and also at my cousin’s house in Phnom Penh. After having eaten that much of it at so many different locations around Cambodia, I have to say that I think my version of it is pretty good, if not better. This trip has definitely boosted my confidence in my own cooking, which makes me feel that all the work I put into the last year has been worth it :)

During my trip, I found myself really enjoying chicken skewers with lime-pepper sauce. It’s a sauce I don’t make very often because I grew up having my mom’s preferred sauce—sweet fish sauce. But in Cambodia, lime-pepper sauce was often served with grilled meats and was so delicious. I’m going to try making this sauce more.

As I ate my way through Cambodia, I was inspired by all the food I ate, the wet markets, the street food vendors, and the dishes I saw on restaurant menus. I will definitely be adding some more recipes to my cookbook and can’t wait to start cooking again!