Phnom Penh, Cooking School and AEON Mall (Monday, November 7th, 2016)

Today is the day that all of the other people in our tour group will be arriving.  They will be exhausted from the 19 or so hours of flying, and will probably get here and sleep.  

This is our third full day in this beautiful city, and we are excited to see what else it has to offer.

Yesterday we signed up for a Khmer cooking class at a little place called Feel Good Cafe and Cooking School.  It is another vocational training school for local kids, but in addition to the cafe they offer cooking classes in a private kitchen with a professional chef.



Steve and I had breakfast down stairs, and then walked the four blocks to the Feel Good Cafe.  We arrived right at 8:45 and found out that one other person would be joining us.  She arrived a few minutes later.  Her name was Natasha, and she is from Perth, Australia.  

We were all handed menus for morning drinks.  Steve and Natasha each had a cappuccino and I had a mochaccino.  They were beautiful and very tasty, and gave us a little time to get to know each other before we set out on our cooking endeavor. 

Once we finished our coffees, we headed out to the nearby Kandal market with our Chef Nara.  Part of the cooking school is learning about the ingredients used in Khmer cooking and how to buy them. Our earlier trips to the Kandal Market made us wide-eyed as we wound through the narrow isles with motor bikes and other pedestrians looking at all of the foods and goods available, so it will be interesting to see if Chef Nara can make some sense of this for us.  

Our first stop was banana leaves.  Nara said to pick the soft, young leaves.  They are available for about 75 cents during the rainy season, but are over $2 in the dry season, and not as nice.

There were bags hanging on strings that looked kind of like garlic, but they were small bags of nime, or fermented fish paste.  It is made of galangal, chili paste, salt and fermented fish.  It happened to be for sale at the same stand as our banana leaves, so we got a lesson in nime.  This is what causes the strong aroma as you walk around the streets in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam in addition to other Asian countries.

The vendor picks out our banana leaves

Next we needed coconut milk and fresh grated coconut.  When buying coconut milk, you must tell them if you want coconut head or coconut tail. Coconut head is the first pressing of the coconut and is about 90% coconut milk.  Coconut tail contains much more water and is made from the later pressings of the coconuts. Coconut milk comes from the brown coconuts.  Coconut water comes from young green coconuts.

The coconut press

Notice the woman sitting in the middle of the table cutting the coconuts

We picked up our coconut head milk and fresh grated coconut and then headed on through the market following our fearless chef Nara and taking once again taking in the sights, sounds and smells.  This was Natasha first time in Kandal market, so she was really taking it all in.

We stopped at a vegetable stand where they were selling chives, dow coo and bean sprouts among other things.  Dow coo is like tofu, but much drier.  It is good for use in salads as a vegetarian protein.  I apologize for my spelling of some of these Cambodian favorites.  I am spelling them phonetically the way Nara pronounced them.

We didn't need pork in the dishes we were making, but chef Nara needed to pick some up for the cafe.  As interesting as the meat displays are to us, it's how the Cambodians buy their meat.  The recommendation from our doctor on eating meats and vegetables is just making sure that they are thoroughly cooked to kill any bacteria. 

Once we had our pork in hand, it was time for some chicken that we would need for our salads. Chef Nara explained to us that there are two types of chicken for sale in the market, grain fed or coconut fed.  

Grain fed chicken is tougher and not as sweet. We were buying chicken that was fed coconut and rice flour.  It is more expensive, but also more tender and sweeter than grain fed chicken.  It's a good thing he knows what he's looking for because we thought that chicken is chicken.

Apparently you find a vendor that you know and trust and always buy your food from them, just like we always go to the same grocery store.

Our next stop in the market was to find a banana blossom and green mango to be used in one of our salads.

A banana blossom

Chef Nara is picking out green mango for our other salad.  

Then it was time to pick out our fish.  Chef Nara prefers lake fish over river fish.  He said that you can distinguish them by their color.  Lake fish have a deeper, darker color than the river fish.  In this picture, the larger fish as the top is Tiger fish.  The smaller fish are snake fish.  Both of these are from the lake, although the same varieties can be found in the river.

Bagging it up for us to take home

Then the rest of our veggies.

These are cooking pumpkins.  They are used in so many dishes in Cambodia and Vietnam

Chef Nara told us that when picking limes, choose limes with a smoother skin.  They will have more juice.  

We see these little berries all over the market.  They are green pepper corns.  They taste similar to black pepper, but they cook them whole instead of drying and grinding them.  They add quite a punch to whatever dish they are in.

Tasting galangal, very spicy!  Most Americans think of it as Asian ginger because it's a root that looks a lot like ginger, but it's really nothing like ginger at all.

Choosing eggs.  Chef Nara prefers chicken eggs for the fish and duck eggs for the custard.

The black eggs are salted duck eggs.  They are covered in salt and ash and then fermented for a full month.  When you eat them, they are very salty so need to be eaten with a bland meal.

Once we had all of our ingredients, we headed back through town to the kitchen.

We're back at the Feel Good Cafe with our food.

We're ready to clean our vegetables and start cooking!

Chef Nara gave us a few minutes to relax while he cleaned and prepared all of the meats and vegetables for us, then in was time to cook.  

Dessert first - pumpkin custard

We made the custard and then poured it into the hollowed out pumpkin to be steamed.

The kitchen we worked in was beautiful and incredibly clean!

The pumpkin in the steamer

Look at our beautiful vegetables!

Salad Dresssing next.

Squeezing limes

Onions, shallots, sweet peppers and spicy peppers for the dressing

Chop them all up

Then pound the heck out of them

Preparing the banana blossom for the salad.  The purple outer leaves of the banana blossom are removed.  They will be used later as the bowl for the salad.  Once you get inside the blossom, there are white leaves, and underneath the white leaves are the baby bananas.  The baby bananas were removed and discarded, we used the inner white leaves for the salad.

The inner white leaves were very thinly sliced on a diagonal then soaked in water and lime juice to keep them from discoloring

Checking in on the pumpkin custard.  It's coming along well.

Preparing banana leaf bowls for our fish amook.  Again, I apologize for the spelling.

The pumpkin custard is done.  Time to cool it.

We're ready to make our fish amook.

Ingredients for the base of our fish amook.

A kiffir lime

Fresh turmeric

Making paste using our mortar and pestle

Our fish amook in our banana leaf bowl.  Time to steam it.

Back to the salads, while the fish steams.

Banana blossom cut on a diagonal

Julienne green mango

Adding the dressing to our salads

Banana blossom salad, served on a banana blossom leaf.

Green mango salad, served on a banana leaf.

Chef Nara cutting our pumpkin custard into serving sized pieces.

Our fish amook is now ready.

Our beautiful lunch, prepared by us (with a lot of help from our great chef)

This is the best meal we have had in Cambodia!  

Before we left, we talked to chef Nara about where to by the mortar and pestle.  He sold us this for $7.50.

He also sold us this great julienne peeler for $4.  I am so excited!

Cooking class at Feel Good Cafe was a great experience.  We learned how to make some great recipes with a very fun and patient chef, and were able to experience the Kandal Market in a new light. We highly recommend this cooking school to anyone who is in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

When we finished our cooking class, we decided to check out some some of the local pharmacies.  Every time we travel, we wonder how hard it would be to get help from a pharmacy if we needed it. So we went to several different pharmacies, asking for cures for specific problems.  

If we were in the high tourist areas, most of the pharmacists could speak English and were very helpful.  As we got further into town and away from the tourist areas, they weren't able to speak English, but with the help of the translator on our phone, we would show them what we needed, and they always came up with good options to treat the specific symptoms we described to them.  

It was a great experience, and very comforting to know that we would be able to find what we needed in an emergency.

Around dinner time, we met up with Chris and Helen again. They shared with us a few of the things they has seen on their own during the day that caught their attention.

Gas for sale in gas cans and coke bottles

Squid on the bar-b-que

 Then we all grabbed a tuk tuk (taxi) to go to the AEON mall for dinner.  We enjoyed eating in the mall food courts in Thailand, so we thought we would give it a try here too.

Traffic was heavy as usual, but our tuk-tuk driver did a great job.

The mall was beautiful!  It was like we had stepped into an entirely different world!

We went to the food court in the mall, and we all found exactly what we were looking for.  Steve had a Khmer chicken stew and I had a soba soup with tempura okra.

After dinner, we looked around the mall for awhile and enjoyed some time in a large store that sold everything from shoes to groceries.  We found some more of the green pepper corns, and were able to get the real name of them.  When we were in Thailand they called them turkey berries.



And we found another interesting fruit to try.



We finished our night with another fun tuk-tuk ride home.  It was a very busy day, cooking, walking through the city and walking the mall. 



Tonight is our final night at the Ohana Hotel.  We will meet up with our tour group in the morning, and a new adventure will begin as we make our way to Siem Reap, Cambodia!