Sokheng is 16. She grew up in Prey Veng province but left home to work in a bread factory, cooking meals for 20 or 30 sweaty, hungry young men who make the little baguettes sold everywhere on Phnom Penh’s streets. She tends the charcoal fires in a dark nook beside the blazing ovens that inspire magic: several times a day, steaming, crackling, hot loaves of bread tumble from those ovens in a gush of heat. Though everyone here makes bread, no one really eats it. They eat the food that brought them through childhood on the farm: rice, fish, soup, curry. “That’s bread, this is rice. I don’t eat bread. I eat rice. Everyone here does,” Sokheng tells me. Read more.
Author Archive
Honoring the Women Who Feed Us
Sunday, March 7th, 2010A Snack for Cheeseheads
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Speaking of Wisconsin, and beer food, I’m really surprised my fellow Cheeseheads have not picked up on this: wafer-thin fried cheese, Yunnan style. See—it’s all crispy and bubbly, dipped in salt (and a teensy bit of sugar). Read more.
Czech Out These Nuts on The Faster Times
Monday, March 1st, 2010
Today, a new partnership begins. From now on, you will find more of my ramblings on the Food Page of The Faster Times. I’ll be writing twice a month about Food Culture and linking back here with additional information and photos. Remember all those tasty Asian ways with peanuts I mentioned a few weeks ago? As promised, I’m offering the story of Ota Veverka, a native of the Czech Republic, and his Thai wife, Nadchalee Chantakarana, who brought five varieties of jazzed-up nuts to shops and bars across Siem Reap. More.
Hmong Cooking on a Cold Winter Night
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
It feels worlds away and ages ago, those crisp wintry days (and nights) we spent in Wisconsin shortly after Christmas. Jerry and I traveled north from my parents’ place to Wausau, to meet Jim, and to explore the world of Hmong cooking in America. Then south again, to Milwaukee, to taste the Hmong flavors found in local restaurants and markets. The story is now out in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel—and I’m thrilled to see this cuisine getting its due attention these days.
The Measure of All Things Khmer
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010This is the last week to catch an extraordinary Reyum exhibit, Measurements in Khmer Society. It takes you through history, through the market and rice field, through sunrise and sunset, and everything between, to explain every little way in which Khmer people have measured the important stuff of life. The French introduced the meter in the 19th century; before that Khmers relied on their own system for measuring quantity, length, depth, height, size, volume and time. Many of these tools and terms are still used today. More.
When the Lights Go Out in Battambang
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
One night, the lights go out in Battambang, and we are presented with the prospect of candlelight dining. This is a throwback to years past, when generators rumbled through the dark and electricity flickered on and off. We planned a patio dinner anyway; a few flames in the breeze would add ambiance to the meal. More.
Beer Snacks: So Many Ways with Peanuts
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
Cambodia drives me to drink. Picture: riverfront sunsets with amber rays, light grazing across cocktail-hour boats and the saffron folds of a monk’s robe. Warm breeze, jasmine air. Pedicabs and pushcarts, buzzing mopeds, rumbling trucks. Kids selling postcards and photocopied books, and a seat at the sidewalk where I can watch it all (this can be said of just about any Khmer riverside town). I sit and sip a $1 draft. Read more.
Khmer BBQ on the Bayon Walls
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
We did something the other day that we hadn’t done in ages: we became tourists for a day. Just as the morning sun cast its butter-colored rays across Siem Reap, we caught a tuk-tuk to the temples. With one-day passes in our pockets, we joined the throngs at Angkor (my, how things have changed!). More.
Dinner for 1, w/Phone & Grin
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
So you’re a young Khmer guy in the big town of Siem Reap, and you’re out for dinner—alone. But your honey is on the phone, and your grin gives that fact away. You chat and chat with that grin real wide until the fried rice comes to the table. More.
Small Fish in a Big Soup
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
This is not the fish we had for breakfast. This happens to be a fish we had for lunch last year in a village along the Mekong. It was a big meaty snakehead, straight from the river, and our host, Monin, paid a pretty price for it. The fish pictured was not farmed. It had swum freely through the river.
What we had the other morning for breakfast was a big steaming tureen of sour fish soup, fragrant with all the lemon-balmy goodness of paddy herbs, and a slightly green tint to the broth with copious amounts of morning glory. Whole garlic cloves and chunks of galangal simmered in the soup, over a candle flame. But the fish? Tiny, bony, sad.