The Kingdom Of Cambodia is situated in the southern part of Indochina in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and the Gulf of Thailand. Buddhism is the state religion and is practiced by 97% of the population. The capital is Phnom Penh.
Cambodia has a elected constitutional monarchy, who is chosen by the Royal Council of the Throne and a Prime Minister who is head of government. The present Prime Minister has ruled Cambodia since 1985!
There is some evidence that Cambodia had been inhabited for millions of years but most archaeological evidence comes from the Neolithic period, about 12,000 years ago. The Khmer Empire began in 802 and flourished despite being attacked by the Mongolian army of Kublai Khan! In the thirteenth century monks from Sri Lanka introduced Buddhism and this took over from previous religions.
From 1863 until 1953 Cambodia became a 'protectorate of France', although it was occupied by the Japanese from 1941 - 1945. It gained its independence in 1953.
The Khmer Rouge - the Communist Party of Cambodia - gained support during the early 1970's under the leadership of Pol Pot. They took control of the country in 1975, and thousands of people were tortured and killed as the leaders removed traces of western culture and destroyed temples and libraries.
In 2019 Cambodia's economy had started growing but there is still huge social inequality.
Rice and fish are the main foods of the Cambodian diet, other staples are kaffir lime, lemon grass, garlic, fish sauce, soy sauce, curry, tamarind, ginger, oyster sauce, coconut milk and black pepper.
We were really excited to be cooking Cambodian food - look at that list of ingredients - just about all my favourite things! We searched for a while for recipes - and noticed a lack of vegetables in the recipes we found. Finally we decided to make Loc Lac and Cambodian Chicken Amok.
We decided to do a two course meal with the Loc Lac first.
The beef has to be marinated - it was a strange marinade and didn't seem very 'exciting'! Salt, sugar. garlic, black pepper, oil. oh well!
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| Marinating meat! |
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| This is the dipping sauce. sugar, salt, lime juice, water, black pepper and garlic. It tasted delicious, due to the sugar and lime juice I expect. |
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| We made plain rice to go with both courses. |
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| When the marination period is over you saute the meat with oil, sugar, garlic, and more black pepper. When the meat looks medium rare you add 1/3 cup of soy sauce, everything bubbles up and the smell is amazing. |
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| We served the Loc lac with lettuce, rolling it all up together. It was delicious. We had been concerned that the ingredients weren't very exciting but, oh my, those Cambodians know what they are doing! Now onto the Chicken amok. We had made a paste from lemon grass, mint leaves, fresh ginger, a shallot, garlic, chilli, turmeric, salt and water. The recipe describes the resulting paste as needing to have the texture of 'slurry'! 😂 Having grown up regularly visiting a dairy farm this was most concerning! You stir fry the chicken until cooked then put that to the side while you fry the paste until it is fragrant. Then you add the coconut milk and fish sauce. |
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| Such a strange colour for a savoury dish! |
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| The sauce has to be cooked until it reaches a 'nappe' consistency. Apparently that means it coats the back of a spoon and doesn't drip off! It's French! |
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| Then you add the chicken and simmer for 10 minutes. |
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| We ate our pale yellow chicken amok with rice! Despite the unusual colour it was delicious! The Verdict THE BEST MEAL WE HAVE MADE SO FAR! it was so good, really simple to make - we had everything we needed in the pantry. We will be making all of this again, and next time we will add some peppers and other vegetables too. You must make this! |
