Siem Reap – Cambodia

Wow what a different place to Vietnam. It’s hard to describe how. One of our guides in Vietnam told us that Vietnam had culture that was strongly influenced by the Chinese and the Cambodians one that has been influence by India. Although i’ve never been to India, it was still this influence that I indeed felt. Especially in the food.

We arrived late in Cambodia and were tired. We decided to eat at the hotel we were staying at – the Bopha Angkor Hotel. This is always a risk because often in Asia the hotels try to westernise the menu or dull the flavours. But this place was excellent. We had a rich coconut beef curry and Fish Amok. They were incredible. We discovered that Fish Amok is the national (at least regional) dish of Cambodia. It is a simple curry like coconut sauce with a strong lemongrass flavour. Here’s a picture:

We actually loved Amok so much we ate it for five days in a row.

The food in Cambodia is far more like Thai food than Vietnamese food is. Yet it seems to use less dry spices and less chilli. A good change if you’re sick of Thai. We actually went to a cooking school and learned how to cook a few dishes, included Amok. Although I can’t give you the cooking school’s Amok recipe, i can give you my version of the dish for the ingredients commonly available in Sydney. Here it is:

Fish Amok
300g steaky fish, e.g. ling, cut into 1cm slices
I onion thinly sliced
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 chilli sliced
1 small nob of ginger, grated
1 small nob of fresh tumeric, sliced (if unavaiable, 1 teaspoon tumeric powder
1 lemongrass stalk, diced very thinly, white part only
1 handful of english spinach leaves
1 can of coconut milk.

Combine chilli, garlic, ginger and lemongrass, tumeric together by pounding in a mortar and pestle or a small blender. Heat a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil in a pan. Fry onion until translucent. Add lemongrass mixture and cook for a few minutes. Do not shake the can of coconut milk but open it and pour the top layer into the pan until the water is left at the bottom. Add the spinach. Simmer until fish is cooked through, add more of the coconut water if necessary. Serves 2-3. The banana leaf parcel is the common presentation in Cambodia and you can do it if you like fiddling with stuff. Held together by either staples of toothpicks.