Cambodian table manners

Travellers often worry about what to eat when they arrive in a new location, but considering how you eat can be just as important. Habits you take for granted could be offensive to those around you. Here’s our introduction to appropriate behaviour in a typical Cambodian eatery, whether it be a Phnom Penh restaurant or a Siem Reap streetside joint.

The first challenge is cutlery. There will be an array of implements in a glass of water on your table, which can be cleaned by a simple wipe with a paper towel. What you won’t find, however, is a knife. Cambodians generally eat with a spoon and fork, unless there’s a bowl of soup in front of them, in which case it’s a spoon and chopsticks. It’s impolite to put the fork into your mouth – instead use it to push food onto the spoon held in your right hand. For soup, use chopsticks to pick out the meat and noodles and the spoon for liquid elements. Cutlery that has been in your mouth should definitely not be put into communal dishes, if you’re eating family style — which means sharing plates placed in the centre of the table.
Help yourself to the shared condiments, likely to include chilli jam or pickled green chillies, sugar, garlic flakes, fish sauce and soy sauce. Apply the sniff test if you’re not sure. Sauces, such as pepper and salt with lime or prahok and peanuts, are often served in larger bowls to be decanted into individual dipping saucers. It’s not unusual for a range of items which you haven’t ordered to be placed on your table. This can include soggy ‘sandwiches’ in plastic bags, deep fried bread and a fine selection of lychee, soursop and wintermelon drinks plus the odd can of Coke. Don’t worry about your bill — if you don’t consume them, you won’t be charged for them. The tea is free.
While dining, feel free to indulge in slurping, lip smacking and any other noises you can find to convey enjoyment of the meal. You won’t get your hand slapped for eating with your mouth open, or for putting your elbows on the table. In fact, forget almost everything you learned in that finishing school for fine ladies! Bones and used paper tissues go straight onto the floor or into a dustbin provided under the table. After all, why would you want to litter your eating table with rubbish?
 

One thing that is frowned upon is blowing your nose at the table. When you stop and think, it is rather disgusting to inflict your snotty eruptions on your dinner companions. Picking your teeth after eating is, however, perfectly acceptable and wooden toothpicks are provided. It’s polite to cover your mouth with one hand, so your tonsils and fillings remain hidden to those seated around. The used toothpick, of course, makes it way onto the floor.

Dishes will often not be cleared from your table until you pay the bill — after all, you might want second or third pickings once you’ve had another jug of beer. When you are ready to ket loi, the waiter will count empty drinks cans and the plastic plates under your jugs of beer for an accurate total. Once you’ve vacated your table, the big sweep will begin, clearing the floor ready for the next diners. Bon appetit!

Cambodia’s fish amok

Khmer food can be a bit of a mystery for travellers — Thai and Vietnamese cuisine has penetrated around the world, while Cambodian menus still have limited exposure. Which means that a visit to Cambodia allows for plenty of food adventures, but it can be difficult to know what to choose. If there’s one dish that you shouldn’t leave without trying, it’s the creamily wonderful fish amok (amok trei).
 

Amok is made with filleted freshwater fish, usually catfish or snakehead fish. It’s covered in a thick coconut sauce with eggs, fish sauce and palm sugar and seasoned with kroeung, a curry paste concoction of freshly pounded spices, including lemongrass, tumeric, galangal, kaffir lime zest, garlic, shallots and chillies. Traditionally, the amok is steamed in a banana leaf basket to get a souffle-like texture, but it’s also often prepared in a wok, making it a little more saucy.
 

One of my tests when I find a new Khmer restaurant is to order the amok. There’s been some horrors, including the amok that mostly consisted of carrots and beans, definitely not classic ingredients. Sadly, many of these have been served in guesthouses, where many travellers get their introduction to Cambodian cuisine.

To ensure you get the best, here’s a short summary of yumminess. For a real tropical feel, Samaky Restaurant on Street 51 serves up a subtly spicy version in a coconut shell, and Frizz restaurant on Street 240 also has a consistently good reputation for their traditionally steamed signature dish. The Laughing Fatman (previously Oh My Buddha) has been cooking up a storm for years, introducing travellers to local food and lingo, and their fish amok is a regular dinner choice.

If you have the time while you’re in Phnom Penh, you can take a cookery course and learn how to make amok yourself, including getting to grips with a mortar and pestle to prepare the spices. You’ll be in good company — Gordon Ramsey and Rick Stein both learned the art of amok on visits to Cambodia.
 

Samaky Restaurant and Lounge
Corner of Street 51 and 278, Phnom Penh
T: (070) 600 017

Frizz
67 Street 240, Phnom Penh
T: (023) 220 953
www.frizz-restaurant.com

Laughing Fatman
43 Street 172, Phnom Penh
T: (012) 765 591

Fruits in Cambodia

When it comes to fruit, it seems that someone forgot to tell nature that no-one likes a show-off. Such a huge, kaleidoscopic, wild variety of redolent, multi-textural glories is clearly the work of an over-achieving braggart. More than 3,000 fruits have apparently been identified, though we consume only a handful (or three) of them. The fact that nature then uses these spoils of her labour for chucking at our heads on occasion tells me that, no matter how pretty they are, her intentions might not be entirely benign. But they are delicious.
 

Cambodia’s markets are bursting with tropical fruits, piled high in vibrant shades of red, orange, yellow, green, brown, pink and purple, where sweet scents waft up from the florid skins of the lychees and apples, all part of a bewitching sensorial smorgasbord (had to use that word one day). The best place to go in Siem Reap is the Old Market (Psas Chas) where you’ll find the fruits at the back in the lively food section.
 

In most markets you’ll find a technicolour array of oranges, apples, watermelons, tamarind, pineapples, limes, grapes, mangoes, bananas, mangosteen, star fruits, lychees, rambutans, pears, durian, jackfruit and the hugely exotic sounding dragonfruit, and those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Oddly enough, you’ll rarely find lemons, and I still haven’t found out why. Most of these fruits are now common at home and need no further explanation, except to say that many Cambodian oranges are not orange but green even when fully ripe; a deliberate ploy to appeal to the Irish no doubt. But for some of the others, here’s what that funny looking thing is all about.

Mango: While almost everyone will have enjoyed a sweet, slippery mango at home, not so many will have tried this fruit in its green, white-fleshed, unripened and sour form. The easiest way to do that is to tuck into a sweet and piquant and highly addictive spicy green mango salad, which is a core dish in Cambodian cooking, and a stand-alone rebuttal to the charge that Cambodian food is dull. Alternatively, try slices of raw green mango dipped in chilli salt for a unique lip-pursing experience.
Jackfruit: The vivid green, knobbledy skin of the jackfruit make this one of my favourite fruits in Cambodia, from a distance. Once opened up, the pale yellow flesh is fibrous, squidgy and slightly soapy, and tastes a little like a blend of apple and banana. Eating them is actually very nice. I find the subsequent belches, which carry strong tones of dodgy goat meat, to be a little unsettling though. Not one for consumption on dates.
Tamarind: Another one for consumption raw or ripened. In the ripened form, you crack open the brittle brown carapace and scrape out the sticky, sweet almost resinous pulp inside and make a delicious mess while you’re at it. Tamarind is a nice option for those who don’t have a sugar tooth as it’s not as cloyingly sweet as other fruits. You can do the same with the raw fruit too, though you will make funnier faces while doing it. It’s awfully sour.
 

Dragonfruit: The Wonder Bra fruit: if ever a fruit promised so much yet delivered so little, it is the dragonfruit. Dressed in a firm outer layer of exuberant pink or purple offset with flirty green fringes, the dragonfruit is peeled back to reveal grainy white flesh run through with crunchy black seeds. It’s very elegant, but you might as well just stop there. There’s no point in eating a dragonfruit unless your jaw needs exercise. On the upside, it’s very low in calories, like lots of things with absolutely no flavour. [Ed: In the name of balance, I like dragonfruit!]
 

Cashew apple: Here’s something you probably didn’t know: cashew nuts are not nuts but the seeds of a small kidney shaped fruit that grows attached to another secondary fruit that looks a little like an apple, and tastes a lot like an apple crossed with a pear crossed with a waterfall. The skin of the secondary fruit, the cashew apple, is incredibly soft and squishy, making them difficult to transport, so you may not often see them, but if you do see one try it, especially if you’re thirsty. Stand away from the fruit as you bite.

Mangosteen: This one is the polar opposite of the dragonfruit, but I don’t have a picture unfortunately as they don’t come into season until April. However, if mangosteen were a man, he’d be the dumpy fellow with the terrible haircut that you passed over for a dance a million times and then, oops, one cider too many one night and you’re suddenly discovering that he’s the most amazing lover on the planet. These are squat, dull skinned, child’s fist-sized fruits that look a little like giant purple rabbit turds, with a ridiculous mop of green foliage on their heads. Split one open though and you’ll find inside between five and seven segments of heaven. Soft, sweet and tart, super-juicy and insanely delicious. Buy lots, you won’t be able to stop once you start.