"Sdav Salad"

Sdao is a kind of big growing tree in the wild of Cambodia, but it’s now brought to grow in the village also, because of its edible and contain health property. The edible parts are its young leaves and flowers with delicious bitter taste. Sdav is a seasonal plant, the new leaves and flowers only grow out during the month of November to February in Cambodia. It’s when Sdav begins to grow new branches and its flowers also grow out with new young leaves.

Sdav is served as vegetable for dipping with Teuk Kroeung and other Khmer dips. But Sdav Salad or Nhorm Sdav is a popular food for Cambodian.

Sdav (ស្តៅ), Khmer edible bitter leaf. The young leaves is a bit red in color. Tiny round flowers grow out in clusters.

Ingredients for 2 servings:

- 1 small bunch of Sdav of its young leaves and flowers
- 100 g pork

Nhorm Sdav ingredients

- 100 g fish flesh or smoked fish (optional)
- 1 tomato
- 1 cucumber
- Coriander

Ingredients for dressing:

- Ripe tamarind
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 shallot
- 4 tbsp sugar
- 3 tbsp fish sauce
- 1 or 2 red chilly

Preparation of the dressing

Tamarind sauce as dressing for Nhorm Sdav

Put ripen tamarind in a bow, boiled water and start to crush it so that its flesh slips away from its seeds. Then take out the seed. Garlic and red chilly finely chopped, shallot slice thinly. Then add all into the bow of tamarind included sugar and fish sauce. Then taste it to the right flavor of sweet sour sauce.Looks! it is so great.I am so hungry.Ok everybody please come and join Nhorm Sdao Slalas wih me.

Preparation for Sdav Salad

Put the bunch of Sdav into a bow to dip it with boiling water. Do not dip it into the boiling water on fire. But after the water is boiled, pour it onto the bow of Sdav. Then Sdav will turn into a very beautiful green leaves. Just for 5 minutes, Sdav must take out from boiled water and wash out with cold clean water. After drained, Sdav leaves and flowers must be picking up from its branches. And this is ready for Sdav.

Nhorm Sdav. This is not included grill fish flesh, just pork, because it will be easier to prepare and takes less time.

Pork after boiled, thinly slice into small slices. If you choose to add fish or smoked fish, then it’s must be grilled, then remove bones. Tomato and cucumber also thinly slice. Coriander also finely picked, and cut into small pieces. Now mix all the ingredients together and add the tamarind sauce slowly.

Nhorm Sdav or Sdav Salad is a great food for people who like bitter vegetables. Everyone in my family like it, we will have a big meal with Nhorm Sdav that consists of the bitter flavor of Sdav, the sweet of cucumber, the sour of tomato, the aroma of coriander, and the hot of chilly.

If you haven’t tried Nhorm Sdav before, give it a try!

"Chopped Prohok with Krasaing fruit"

Prohok is Khmer fish paste that has become the best Khmer preserved food since ancient time. Thus most of Khmer traditional foods are having prohok as ingrediant. It is very often used in Khmer soups such as Samlor Korko (Khmer fish soup with vegetables), Samlor Tumpang (bamboo shoot soup), and also Khmer sour soup with water spinach. Prohok Khtis is another favorite Khmer food, which prokok is cooked with ground pork and coconut milk.

Today I would like to present another dish of prohok which is more special for prohok lovers, it is prohok ching chram plae krasaing, the chopped prohok with krasaing fruit. The preparation is simple without involving fire.

Chopped Prohok with Krasaing fruit

Ingredients

- 100g prohok
- 3-4 krasaing fruit (a kind of fruit having a thick hard and dark green cover, look like a green orange. The flesh inside, together with its edible tiny seeds, taste sour. Khmer people use it for this special prohok dish. Krasaing is also used instead of turmarine for sour soup.)
- 3 stalks lemongrass
- 5-6 kaffir lime leaves
- 6 cloves garlic
- 4 red chilly
- 4-5 tbps sugar
- 3/4 tbps salt

Ingredients for chopped prohok with krasaing fruit

Preparation

- Prohok must be cleaned with warm water, then finely chop
- lemongrass, thinly sliced, then also chop well
- Krasaing fruit, split into two parts, and take only the flesh inside, also finely chop.
- After all, prohok, lemongrass, krasaing, kaffir lime leaves, garlic, and chilly are chopped well together. Then add sugar and salt and taste it to your favorite.

Chopped prohok with krasaing fruit taste great with the mixture of prohok, lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves, especially, the sour taste of krasaing. It’s served with steamed rice together with many kinds of fresh vegetables such as cucumber, water spinach, long bean, eggplant, green banana, and more.

"Krolan – Khmer Sticky Rice Cooked in" Bamboo Tube

Krolan is a kind of food in which sticky rice is cooked in bamboo tubes. Visitors from Phnom Penh to other provinces will often see Krolan being selling on the bus stops on national roads, especially the trip from Siem Reap, Pusat, Battambang, Kratie, and Kampong Chhnang. Some visitors might be wondering about what’s inside those tubes that they are selling?

The sticky rice or glutinous rice cooked in bamboo tubes is also the food of some South East Asia such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma, Laos, Thailand, and of course Cambodia. It has different calling names in each country. And the taste of it is also differ from each area by adding various ingredients and have different ways of serving.

In Cambodia, this kind of sticky rice cooked in bamboo tubes is called Krolan (ក្រឡាន). The Khmer Krolan is somehow more simple than the Krolan from its neighbour countries.

Krolan is very popular for railway passengers in the 1930s to 1960s. In that time, there were two lines of railway, one from Phnom Penh to Battambang and another one from Phnom Penh to Sihanouk Ville. Travelling by rail took very long time, almost full day to reach the destination. And along the way there were several stop points, at each stop points, passengers could buy many kinds of foods and snacks and Krolan is among the best selling foods. Because it’s easy to serve, just it alone or serve with grilled pork. Moreover, Krolan could full the stomach quickly with less spending then other foods.

The Krolan is opened up

Nowadays, travelling to provinces by bus and Krolan still is still on sale at each bus stop along the national roads. And it’s purchased for the people in the city as a gift from the provinces, since Krolan is hardly find in Phnom Penh. Though there are some sellers from the provinces come to Phnom Penh to sell Krolan, but it will be more expensive. A tube of Krolan is cost from 2000-4000 Riels (USD0.50-1.00), depend on big or small tube.

Below I would like to reveal how Krolan have been made. It’s a pretty hard work to get one tube of Krolan.

1. First of all, the bamboo tubes have to be prepared. A bamboo tree is cut into pieces at its joints, so that the tube has only one way out for stuff in the sticky rice. Then the bamboo tubes are cleaned with water.

2. Preparing the ingredients:

• Sticky rice is soaked in water for 3 hours, then drain off.
• Soybean soaked in water for 1 hour, then drain off.
• Grated coconut meat
• Mixed the sticky rice, soybean and coconut meat together with a little salt and sugar.

3. Stuff the sticky rice mixture into the bamboo tubes, use the banana leaf to plug up (sometimes the dried hay is used instead of banana leaf).

Cooking Krolan - this is a homemade Krolan, the fire place is set instantly. For Krolan sellers, they would have a proper fire place.

4. The fire place is prepared at a open space where the coals are spread in long line. There is a shelf at the middle, normally a banana tree trunk is used, so that it’s not getting burn before the Krolan is cooked. Then the stuffed bamboo tubes are placed at both sides of the fire place by leaning to the shelf. All the sides of the bamboo tubes must be turned to face the fire, so that the filling is well cooked.

5. It’s take about 30 to 40 minutes for Krolan to be cooked well, because we can not use too strong fire. After the Krolan is get cooked, it kept to be cold. Then the outer layer of the bamboo tube which was getting burned, must be removed, so that the Krolan is covered with clean inner layer of the bamboo tube.

Have you ever tried out Krolan? It tastes the sweet of the sticky rice, the fragrant of the coconut meat and the soybean plus the natural aroma of the bamboo tube, have made Krolan a unique sticky rice cake.

 If you would like to try Krolan food.please come over to Cambodia and Book directly to email:samoeun24@hotmail.com 

"Num banh chok"

Khmer noodle is a Khmer traditional food which made of rice paddy flour. Num banh chok is served with some kinds of soup such as Khmer Curry Soup, Samlor Praher Khmer or Teuk Samlor Khmer (the most traditional Khmer soup for serving with num banh chok), Teuk Samlor Namya, and it’s can be served with the typical sour soup as well.

For the Khmer Curry Soup and Samlor Praher Khmer, we already posted. Today we would like to introduce about Teuk Samlor Namya.

Teuk Samlor Namya has another name calls Samlor Krohom (means Red Soup). It’s called so, because it almost the same to the Samlor Praher Khmer, but the color is red. In fact, Namya is a Thai word means ‘soup’. However, in Cambodia, Namya has been cooked in Khmer style. So let’s say this is the Khmer Teuk Samlor Namya.

Teuk Samlor Namya or Samlor Krohom is a merge between the two kinds of Khmer Curry and Samlor Praher KHmer in which it used the same Khmer Kroeung as curry and use the fish flesh the same as Samlor Praher Khmer. So it’s easy if you would like to cook Samlor Namya at home.Everybody could follow Sam's technique

Ingredients

The Kroeung's ingredients for Samlor Namya Khmer: galangal root, turmeric, garlic, shallot, lemongrass stalk, kaffir lime leaves.

For the Khmer Kroeung:

- 2 inches galangal root, trimmed and sliced

- 4 inches tumeric, sliced

- 6 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced

- 3 shallots, peeled and sliced

- 4 lemongrass stalks, trimmed and finely sliced

- 10 Kaffir lime leaves, finely shredded

- 1/2 teaspoon salt

Finely pound all the ingredients for the Kroeung in a mortar.

Other ingredients for Teuk Samlor Namya

Samlor Namya Khmer: The Kroeung and fish flesh after pounded

- 1kg of fish: washed and cook in boiling water in a cooking pan, add a little salt. Then remove the bone, need only flesh. Then pound it together with the Kroeung until they are mixed well together.

- 250 ml of thick coconut milk

- 1 litter of think coconut milk

- 200 g red dried chilly: soak in water for about 15 minutes, then finely chop.

- 50 g shrimp paste (Kapis)

- 4 tbsp sugar

- 3 tbsp fish sauce

Preparation

Num banh chok Samlor Namya Khmer

- Put a frying pan onto the fire, pour in the thick coconut milk. When it’s boiled, add the red chilly and the shrimp paste. Stir it to make a red mixture, add the pounded Kroeung and fish flesh, add sugar and fish sauce, stir it well until it’s fragrant, take it off from fire.

- Boil 1 litter of think coconut milk in a cooking pan, when it’s boiled, transfer the mixture from the frying pan into it, then bring it into boiling and adjust it flavor.

Similar to Khmer Curry Soup and Samlor Praher Khmer, Num Banh Chok Samlor Namya also need to serve with many kinds of fresh vegetables such as cucumber, banana flower, long bean, water lily stem, bean sprout, coriander, etc.

"Egg is very common for cooking different dishes of Cambodian"

Whenever people couldn’t think of what food to cook, they simply think of egg. Egg can be steamed, fried with vegetables such as onion, bitter gourd, tomatoes, or just it alone, or boil egg and serve with soy sauce. Egg is also used as substitution of other meat for most stir fried dishes. In the other hand, egg is low price, but always has a great taste with almost every dishes it comes with.

Fried egg with tomato and pork filling is probably a new dish, but provide a good flavor of sweet sour of tomato in the fried egg. You might want to try it once, as dishes with egg are easy to prepare and consume less time.

Ingredients: for 2 servings

Fried egg with tomato and pork filling: ingredients

- 100g of ground pork: to seasoning it, add 1 tbsp sugar, 3/4 tbsp salt, 3/4 tbsp ground black pepper, mix it well.

- 2 medium ripe tomatoes: sliced and cut it into tiny cube shape.

- 2 eggs: break them off in a separate bowl, add 1/2 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp soy sauce, ground black pepper, mix it well.

- 5 tbsp cooking oil

- 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

Fried egg with tomato and pork filling: the filling is revealed

Preparation

1. On the fire, add 3 tbsp cooking oil, when it’s heat, add prepared egg, fry it with low heat, so that the egg will be finely cooked without getting burn. When the egg is cooked, do not fold it into fan-shape (as we normally do so), but keep it in that single layer in a big plate.

2. Put the same frying pan back to fire, add 2 tbsp cooking oil, after the oil is heat, add garlic, then ground pork. Stir fried for 3mn, add tomato, till the tomato is well cooked, the filling is done.

3. We can either just top the filling on the fried egg and keep it opening or we can hide the filling within the fried egg by top it on half of the fried egg, and cover it up by another half. Then we will have a fan-shape fried egg with tomato and pork filling.

It might need soy sauce to serve with, add some chili sauce or just fresh chili if you like hot taste.

"Stuffed Bitter Melon Soup"

Bitter melon or bitter gourd is very popular in almost Asian cuisines. With the innovation of skillful housewives, bitter melon can be cooked into different favorite dishes. Bitter melon is a kind of common vegetable growing in Cambodia. It’s growing for fruits, but the young leaf is also edible. Cambodian eat raw bitter melon as other vegetables like cucumber, green tomato, eggplant, long bean with their special food Prohok. Besides, there are also dishes of stir fried and soup made of bitter melon. The young bitter melon leaf is very popular for Samlor Korko, a Khmer soup made of many kinds of vegetables.

Stuffed bitter melon soup is a common soup dish for Cambodian families. For countryside Cambodian, it’s considered special and has been chosen to be the ‘offering food’ for monks at the pagodas during Pchum Ben Day (Ancestor Day).

Ingredients

Pork and Bitter Melon before stuffing

- 2 bitter melon: there are two various kinds of bitter melon. Chinese bitter melon with big and long fruit, the color is light green and less wrinkles, usually it’s less bitter. Khmer bitter melon is shorter fruit, the color is darker and more wrinkles, this represents the bitter taste is stronger. Depend on how much bitter you like, to choose which type for your soup. After you have got your bitter melon, cut both ends off and slice it into sections, each about 6-7cm in length. Then scoop out the seeds and the white fluff part, leaving a big hole inside. Wash and drain.

Bitter Melon is stuffed with pork

- 250g of pork and 50g of dried shrimp: after cleaned and drained, the pork and dried shrimp must be minced together, then add 1 tbsp sugar, 3/4 tbsp salt, 3/4 tbsp ground black pepper, 1 glove minced garlic, then mix them well together.

- 1 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp fish sauce for tasting the soup.

- Spring onion leaves for top up.

Preparation

- Stuff each section of the bitter melon with the pork, just fill the hole tight enough.

Stuffed Bitter Melon Soup

- Now start your fire with a pot containing about 1 litter of water. When the water is about to boil, add the stuffed bitter melon and 1 tbsp of fish sauce. Continue to boil for about 30 minutes, when the bitter melon turn soft and has a yellowy color, add 1 tbsp of fish sauce and sugar, then taste.

Stuffed bitter melon soup tastes good today and even better tomorrow. It’s great either serving hot or cool. My mom cooks this soup for lunch, but it’s usually taste better for dinner. My sister like the soup very much, she even drink the soup water. So it should be cooked with more water, if you like the soup water too.this food serves with rice after a hard working.Wow! it is very nice and so much Delicious,

                           "Green Mango Salad (Nhoam Svay)"

Mango is a kind of tropical fruit which growing abundantly throughout tropical countries. Many big mango farms are growing in Cambodia with various kinds of different species. Mango is a kind of seasonal fruit, however, in Cambodia we still have mango selling in the market all the time of the years, especially green mango. Different species has different appearance as well as flavor. Some are good eating ripe and some are best eating green. Ripe mango is served as fruit or dessert and green mango are eaten as snack for teenagers, which fruits are sliced and kneaded with salt, sugar, and chili.

Green Mango Salad (Nhoam Svay) is a typical side dish popular in Khmer cuisine, where green mango is treated as vegetable. Green Mango Salad require less time to prepare and has a credit of encouraging appetite during the meal. Green Mango Salad is normally served during get-together time of family members and friends in special occasions, also it’s a dish people like to order at the restaurant.

Ingredients

green mango

- One green mango (about 300g): peel of the skin and scratch it into long slices. If the mango is too sour, we can reduce its sour taste by add a little salt and squeeze with fingers and drain its water out.

- One small carrot: scratch into long slices too.

- Some kinds of coriander (ជីរ): wash and pick it into separate leaves.

- 3 tablespoons peanut: break it into small pieces.

- 200g of pork: wash and cook it in boil water, after cooked, slice it into small pieces.

- 100g of dried shrimp: after washed and drained, pound it in the mortar.

- 200ml of sweet sauce: 4 cloves of garlic and 2 red chili finely chop, 2 tablespoons of boiled water, 2 tablespoons of fish sauce, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1/2 tablespoon of lemon juice.

Green Mango Salad before mixing

Preparation

After all the ingredients are prepared, having a big container, first put in mango, carrot, pork, dried shrimp, and slowly add the sweet sauce during mixing all the ingredients together. Then taste and adjust the flavor with the sweet sauce. The correct taste is a bit sour and sweet. Then add coriander and top with peanut after prepared in a dish.

Green Mango Salad - Nhoam Svay

 

The Khmer Kroeung (spicy) and Prohok (fish paste) are rarely absent in Cambodian cuisine, especially in soup. Samlor Korko (សម្លកកូរ) is among most favorite Khmer soup for daily family dishes. It’s a spicy fish soup composed of many kinds of vegetables. And it’s the Khmer soup that used both Khmer Kroeung and Prohok. Samlor Korko has a long history in which it was a royal dish and later on the receipt was revealed to outside the palace and become popular by all Cambodian.

‘Samlor’ in Khmer means ‘soup’, ‘korko’ means ‘to stir or to mix’. For Samlor Korko, it’s meant ‘mix-soup’, in which it is cooked with as much as of vegetables of various kinds, depend on favorite. However, to have a nice served of Samlor Korko, it need time to prepare. As today, many kinds of ingredient for various dishes are prepared into sets and are available at the super market, included a set of Samlor Korko ingredients. If you have no time to prepare, you can get one from there in a short time.

Khmer Kroeung: lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, garlic, turmeric, galangal

Ingredients:

- The Khmer Kroeung, about half cup

- 1 tablespoon of prohok sach (fish paste which already taken out the fish bone)

- 3 tablespoons of pa-ulr (rice grains fried and pounded)

- Fish flesh, cleaned and sliced. The best fish for Samlor Korko is Trei Chlang, other fishes like trei andeng, trei bra, trei kae, also can use for Samlor Korko.

- 200g of pork. The pork should taken the kind of where composed of flesh, oil, and skin, which in Khmer we call ‘sach bey jorn’. The pork can be minced or sliced thinly.

- Vegetables: Add any vegetables as you like. The typical vegetables for Samlor Korko are pumpkin, green papaya, green banana, green jack fruit, long bean, eggplant, Khmer eggplant (ត្រប់ពុតលំញង). And some others green leafy vegetables like slerk bas, slerk ngob, slerk ma-rum, pti, chili leaf, bitter gourd leaf.

- 1 tablespoons of palm sugar

- 3 tablespoons of fish sauce

Vegetables for Samlor Korko

Ingredients for Samlor Korko

Preparing

- First of all, put a pan on a moderate heat, add pork when the pan is hot enough and stir fry the pork, so that to get the oil from the pork.

- Add the Khmer Kroeung and prohok, mix it well together. Then add the fish flesh, palm sugar and fish sauce. Stir fry it for about 3 minutes, add all the vegetables except green leafy, and pa-ulr also add in during this. Mix well everything in the pan, for about 3mn later, add boiling water into the pan to sink the vegetables. Now cook it with moderate heat until the vegetables are cooked.

- Add the green leafy vegetables and adjust the taste. Bring the soup to a very boiled and Samlor Korko is ready to serve.

Samlor Korko must be eaten during hot. It goes well with whom like vegetables.

Samlor Korko - Khmer Soup

"Khmer Chicken Curry"

Curry or ‘Kari’ in Khmer is considered a special food mostly cooked during specific occasions in the family when family members are together, for example, the house warming party, the birthday party of family member. It’s also cooked in the big festivals of the year like Khmer New Year, especially Pchum Ben Day, in which curry is the special food offering to the monks.

Khmer curry is unique because of the composition of the Khmer Kroeung or Khmer curry paste that is also used in national dish, Amok, which will give pungent flavor and aroma.

Ingredients for Khmer curry paste

Khmer Curry Paste

2 inches galangal root, trimmed and sliced

4 inches tumeric, sliced

6 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced

3 shallots (ខ្ទឹមក្រហម) peeled and sliced

4 lemongrass stalks, trimmed and finely sliced

10 kaffir lime leaves, finely shredded

200g red dried chili

2 tablespoons Kapis (shrimp paste)

1/2 teaspoon salt

Cut and soaked red dried chili in water for about 30 minutes, then drain and chop it well. Put all the ingredients (except shrimp paste) into a mortar and started to pound it. When it’s finely pounded, add the chopped red chili and shrimp paste, continue to pound until it forms a smooth paste.

Other ingredients for Khmer chicken curry

1kg of chicken meat

1/2kg of potato, peeled and cubed (sweet potato also can be used, but it’s must be fried)

1 onion, cut it half then cut each half into 3 parts

250ml of thick coconut milk

1 litter of thin coconut milk

3 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons of fish sauce

Preparation

1. Heat the 250ml thick coconut milk in a big pot until it boil, then add the Khmer curry paste, stir fry it with moderate heat until it boil and the color become red and aroma.

2. Add chicken meat, sugar and fish sauce, heat until the meat get cooked.

3. Add the thin coconut milk into the pan, increase the heat to make it boil faster.

4. Add potatoes and cook with moderate heat for about 15mn, then both chicken meat and potatoes are cooked.

5. Add onion and adjust the taste, bring it to immediate boil. Then take it off from fire.

Khmer chicken curry are typically serving with Num Banh Chok (Khmer noodle) with many other fresh vegetables like banana flower, cucumber, long bean, bean sprout, cabbage, and coriander (ជីរ). We call it Num Banh Chok Samlor Kary. It’s also served with bread which is most popular for children then Num Banh Chok.

 "Pa Ork – Khmer Favorite Food"

Pa Ork (ប្អក់) is another kind of Khmer special food beside Prohok that can be kept for year. Pa Ork is also made of fish and fermented until the flesh become cooked. The kinds of fish that can be chosen to make Pa Ork included Trei Sanday, Trei Pra, Trei Po, Trei Kae, ect. mostly are big fishes with more fish oil. Below is the brief description of how Pa Ork have been made.

After cleaned the fish, the flesh is cut length-wise along the fish body into several pieces, but not separate from each other, still in a cluster of one fish. Then the fish must be kept to dry off the water before salted. 10kg of fish need 0.5kg of salt. After salted from 3-5 days, the salted fish must be mixed with roasted rice and pounded rum deng (a kind of Khmer herb, similar to ginger). Then continue to ferment it in a closed pot or jar for one month. After this the fish flesh become cooked and can be either eaten raw or cook with pork or cook in soup. The popular dishes with Pa Ork are Pa Ork Chean, Pa Ork Chom Huy, or just eaten fresh after taken out from the jar. Many kinds of fresh vegetables are needed to eat with Pa Ork included tomato, cucumber, eggplant, water spinach, long bean, cabbage, ect.

Pa Ork Chean (Fried Pa Ork)

Pa Ork Chean

Take the fish out from the jar, then cut it into pieces, put aside. Heat one tablespoon of cooking oil in a frying pan, add 3 cloves finely chopped garlic, then add 2 tablespoons of palm sugar or just white sugar, let it dissolve well with the cooking oil. When the color of the mixture become red, we can put Pa Ork in. Let the fish flesh get hot, then take it off from fire. That’s Pa Ork Chean, even the name is fried Pa Ork, but we don’t need to fry the Pa Ork until dried.

"Steamed Salted Egg with Pork - prepared with" fresh vegetables

Egg and salted egg have become parts of daily family dishes of Cambodia people. We have used egg and salted egg as main ingredient in many delicious foods. It’s simple but always be popular and we always find it easy to finish our meals with foods made of egg. Steamed salted egg with pork (ចំហុយពងទាប្រៃនិងសាច់ជ្រូក) is among regular dishes cooked for lunch.

Ingredients for 6 servings

- 1/2 kg of pork, we should choose the pork where it has included some oil and also skin, or you can choose bacon with more flesh.

- 5 salted eggs and 2 normal eggs

- 10 cloves of garlic, chop well

Preparing

Chop well the pork and keep it in a bowl which you will use it for steaming.

Break both kinds of egg. It’s better do not break the eggs directly into the pork bowl, because it can spoil the whole thing if one egg is spoiled. We should break the egg one by one in another bowl, then transfer it to the pork bowl before breaking another one. For the salted eggs, the red part are hard, so we need to take it out and chop or slice it into very small pieces.

Steamed Salted Egg with Pork, before steaming around 10-15 minutes and serve with rice

Add into the pork bowl garlic, pepper and other seasoning. Mix all the ingredients well together. First do not add too much salt, because the salted eggs may already make the food taste salty. Taste the food in raw with your tongue, and adjust it to your taste.

Then put the whole bowl on fire to steam it. For about 20 minutes later, we have got a bowl of delicious steamed salted egg with pork.

Steamed Salted Egg with Pork - prepared with fresh vegetables

Steamed salted egg with pork is served with fresh vegetables like cucumber, tomato, cabbage, eggplant, and any as you like.

Dear everybody.if you would like to try this taste.come over to Cambodia and booking directly to Samoeun24@hotmail.com.you will a really taste of Khmer foods that preparing by Sam for you,

"Teuk Kroeung -ទឹកគ្រឿង"

‘Teuk’ means ‘water’ or more specific here is ‘dip’. ‘Kroeung’ is the mixture of some Khmer herbs, used in most Khmer foods. Even though the name is Teuk Kreung, but the dip doesn’t contain any Kroeung. It’s a kind of dip made of cooked fish flesh and prohok sauce only. It’s doesn’t require much time to prepare and nothing to do much with fire.

Ingredients

- 0.5 kg of fish. There are many kinds of fish in Cambodia, you can choose any kind which are less bones and more flesh. Trei Rors is most selected for Teuk Kroeung. Because the flesh is still very tough (ស្វិត) after pounded, which we can feel the flesh when eating.

- 50g of prohok

- 5 cloves of garlic, 2 red chili

- 2 lemon, extract for juice

- 3 tablespoons sugar

- 1/2 teaspoon salt

- 2 tablespoons peanut (optional)

- A branch of kemangi (ជីរនាងវង), slice into small pieces and top on the dip for adding flavor

Preparation

- Fish can be boiled (ស្ងោរ) or grilled. If you boil the fish you would have the fish soup for making prohok sauce instead of boiled water, which made Teuk Kroeung has more fish flavor. If you grill the fish, it would have a good smell (ឈ្ងុយ) of grilled fish. It’s optional. After the fish is cooked, remove its bones and take only flesh. Then put the fish flesh in the mortar, add garlic, sugar, and salt, so the fish flesh will be mixed well with seasoning. Now start to pound, it’s depend on you of how much you want to fish flesh to be fine.

- Crush prohok in a bowl with 250ml boiled water or the fish soup to get the prohok sauce.

- Now take the pounded fish flesh out from the mortar into a bowl, then mix it well with prohok sauce. You can add more boiled water or fish soup if you think it’s too thick with fish flesh and need more water.

- Then add lemon juice and start to adjust for your flavor. The Teuk Kroeung original flavor is a bit sour and salty, less sweet. The food is ready to serve when top with peanut, chili, and kemangi.

Teuk Kroeung is served with many kinds of fresh vegetables included cucumber, green tomato, water spinach, long bean, eggplant, water lily, pka snorw, kanh chhaet, pka kom plok, popea, sdov, and more. In short, Teuk Kroeung can be dipped with any kind of vegetables of your favorite.

‘Teuk’ means ‘water’ or more specific here is ‘dip’. ‘Kroeung’ is the mixture of some Khmer herbs, used in most Khmer foods. Even though the name is Teuk Kreung, but the dip doesn’t contain any Kroeung. It’s a kind of dip made of cooked fish flesh and prohok sauce only. It’s doesn’t require much time to prepare and nothing to do much with fire.

Ingredients

- 0.5 kg of fish. There are many kinds of fish in Cambodia, you can choose any kind which are less bones and more flesh. Trei Rors is most selected for Teuk Kroeung. Because the flesh is still very tough (ស្វិត) after pounded, which we can feel the flesh when eating.

- 50g of prohok

- 5 cloves of garlic, 2 red chili

- 2 lemon, extract for juice

- 3 tablespoons sugar

- 1/2 teaspoon salt

- 2 tablespoons peanut (optional)

- A branch of kemangi (ជីរនាងវង), slice into small pieces and top on the dip for adding flavor

Preparation

- Fish can be boiled (ស្ងោរ) or grilled. If you boil the fish you would have the fish soup for making prohok sauce instead of boiled water, which made Teuk Kroeung has more fish flavor. If you grill the fish, it would have a good smell (ឈ្ងុយ) of grilled fish. It’s optional. After the fish is cooked, remove its bones and take only flesh. Then put the fish flesh in the mortar, add garlic, sugar, and salt, so the fish flesh will be mixed well with seasoning. Now start to pound, it’s depend on you of how much you want to fish flesh to be fine.

- Crush prohok in a bowl with 250ml boiled water or the fish soup to get the prohok sauce.

- Now take the pounded fish flesh out from the mortar into a bowl, then mix it well with prohok sauce. You can add more boiled water or fish soup if you think it’s too thick with fish flesh and need more water.

- Then add lemon juice and start to adjust for your flavor. The Teuk Kroeung original flavor is a bit sour and salty, less sweet. The food is ready to serve when top with peanut, chili, and kemangi.

Teuk Kroeung is served with many kinds of fresh vegetables included cucumber, green tomato, water spinach, long bean, eggplant, water lily, pka snorw, kanh chhaet, pka kom plok, popea, sdov, and more. In short, Teuk Kroeung can be dipped with any kind of vegetables of your favorite.

"Samlor Tumpang - Khmer Fish Soup with Bamboo" Shoot

Since ancient time Cambodia is a country that has a lot of fishes, especially in Tonle Sap lake, the biggest lake in Southeast Asia. So most of Cambodia foods are mainly consist of fish, and mostly the soup are fish soups.  Samlor Tumpang (fish soup with bamboo shoot) is a simple daily fish soup for Cambodian families, which always be popular. Within a month, they cook the fish soup with bamboo shoot at least 3 times. You might try it next time at any local restaurants in Cambodia. It’s truly Khmer flavor. Or you can try with the receipt below at your own hands.

Ingredients

- 500g of fish. The fish can be Trei po, Trei Andeng, Trei Chhlang, Tree kae, or those has more fat fished, are best for Samlor Tumpang.

- 300g of sliced bamboo shoot.

Samlor Tumpang Ingredients

- Vegetables can be chosen one or several kinds combine together among sweet vegetable (ស្លឹកងុប), Bas leaves (ស្លឹកបាស), Edible amaranth (ផ្ទី), Chili leaves (ស្លឹកម្ទេស), and ridge gourd (ននោង).

- 1 tablespoon of Prohok flesh

- 2 tablespoons of paddy rice

- 2 tablespoons of fish sauce

Vegetables for Samlor Tumpang. From left to right: bamboo shoot, ridge gourd, sweet vegetable, bas leaves

Start Cooking

- First squeeze paddy rice with bamboo shoot in the pot. This process is needed to decrease the bitterness of the bamboo shoot. Then add some water in and wash it, after that drain it up by lowing the pot to aside to let water run out. The paddy rice cause the water become muddy. So wash it several times, until the water become clear, so that the soup water would be clear too.

- Next add water and put on fire, cook it until the paddy rice become well cooked. Now we can crush the prohok and get its water for the soup.

- Add fish and fish sauce.

- When the fish is cooked, add green vegetables then bring the soup to an immediately boil while add other seasoning to adjust your taste.

"Samlor Khtis Sach Trei Mnors"

Most of favorite Khmer foods are associated with the Kreung (a mixture of Khmer herbs), Prohok (fish pasted), Kapik (fermented shrimp) and also coconut milk. My last post was about Pineapple in Cambodia, in which pineapple is among popular vegetables of Khmer dishes. So today I would like to present a favorite Khmer foods related to pineapple called Samlor Khtis (សម្លខ្ទិះ), Fish Soup with Coconut Milk and Pineapple. It need more times to prepare, yet it’s easy to cook. It’s a typical delicious Khmer dish for lunch.

Ingredients

- The Kreung: thinly sliced lemon grass (ស្លឹកគ្រៃ), kaffir lime leaves or skin​​(ស្លឹកក្រូចសើច), rumdeng​ (រំដេង), turmeric (រមៀត). The Kreung set is prepared for sell in the market. Pound the Kreung together in a mortar (the pounded Kreung also on sell).

- 1 table spoon of Kapik (fermented shrimp), when the Kreung is almost finely pounded, add Kapik into the mortar and pound together with the Kreung to make a well mixing.

- 0,5 g of dried red chili for getting good color soup. finely chop.

- 500g of fish flesh, cut into 1.5cm round slices. (can also replace with fork and beef)

- 500g of eggplant, cut into round slices with 4cm length, then split the round slices into 6 pieces.

- 1 moderate peeled pineapple, quarter and remove the core, cut into 0,5cm slices.

- 250ml of coconut milk

- 3 tablespoons of fish sauce

- 2 tablespoons of cooking oil

- green leaves herb (ជីរនាងវង)

Main Ingredients for Samlor Khtis Fish Flesh

Start Cooking

Heat cooking oil in a pot with moderate heat, put the mixed Kreung and minced red chili in, then add fish flesh. Stir fry it till the fish is almost gets cooked, add pineapple and fish sauce. Then add eggplant. Next add 500ml of water, cook until it’s get boiled.

Till the eggplant is getting cooked, add the coconut milk and increase the heat to bring the soup to a boil instantly. Then start to adjust seasoning to your favorite.

The green leaves herb is top on the soup bow for additional smell and favor.The soup is very deciduous with the great taste of the coconut milk, the Kreung, and especially the sour of pineapple.

Note: The vegetables for Samlor Khtis can be replaced by green bell pepper and green tomatoes. But with these kind of vegetables, we must add tamarind to create the sour taste of the soup. Because the pineapple is absent.

"Prohok Khtis is popular in Cambodia"

Prohok is a kind of fish paste which may be known to foreigners as fish cheese or Cambodian cheese. It’s Cambodian special food. Prohok can be eaten raw or cooked, and can eat as main dish or used as supplement ingredient in other Khmer foods, especially soups. Prohok has a strong and distinct smell. Some people do not like to eat prohok because of its smell. Just like some people feel uncomfortable with the smell of Durian.

Prohok was made from crushed fresh fish, fermented for at least one month with a lot of salt. Just because it’s too salty that prohok can be stored for years as preserved food. Prohok can be made from many kinds of fish, but the best one selected was Riel fish (ត្រីរៀល). The fish is about 10-12cm long only.

Below is a receipt of favorite and easy-to-cook Khmer food made of prohok called Prohok Khtis (ប្រហុកខ្ទិះ)

Ingredients needed: fork or bacon, coconut milk, fried chili, and prohok flesh (prohok that already taken out the fish bone), and a kind of Khmer eggplant called “trop put lum nhong” (ត្រប់ពុតលំញង).

Prohok Khtis Ingredients

Preparation: Fried chili must be minced. Fork and prohok flesh must be minced together too.

Start cooking:

1. Turn cooker on with moderate heat, first put in coconut milk into your pan, and boil it a few minutes, till it has oily on the surface. Do not pour in too much coconut milk at first, you can add more later. It depends on how much pork you have.

2. Put in minced fried chili, stir fry with coconut milk to make a good color of yellow-red.

3. Put in the minced fork and prohok, stir fry it for a few minutes, then putting in seasoning, sugar, soup power, or other ingredient of your favorite taste. But remember that do not add salt, since prohok is already salty. Just when the fork is well cooked, your Prohok Khtis is ready with the great smell of coconut milk and prohok. It’s enough to make you feel hungry.

Prohok Khtis - All Time Favorite Khmer Food

We need fresh vegetables to eat with prohok khtis. We might have cucumber, tomato, eggplant, cabbage, long bean, or any other as you like. For Cambodian, we have many Khmer vegetables for eating with prohok such as, popeay, green banana, pka komplork, kanh chhaek, pka snorw, etc.

Every time my mom cook food with prohok, she must cook more rice than usual, because I would eat a big meal with prohok