More than I can chew
The sun sets over Angkor Wat. The fiery sunset lights up bare-breasted Apsara dancers carved in stone, then fades above the mythical palace built for escapist king Suryavaraman II in the12th century. As the last wisp of pink turns to black, there’s a brisk popping sound and the fires from a dozen stands across from the palace flare brightly.
“Have a bug?” Soheap asks holding out a fried cricket. The cricket is crunchy but pretty bland. I’m still picking legs from my teeth as I wave goodbye and nose my Vespa into a tooting, bell-dinging squash of bikes and Tuks.
In the light of scientists recent predictions that bugs will be a quintessential part of our diet by 2020, and Netherland’s nutritionists trying to convince the Dutch that crickets, worms and caterpillars are healthier sources of protein, I thought I’d try some of Cambodia’s bizarre culinary specialities.
I planned to travel the 315 kilometres from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh in three days, stopping off en-route to sample some of the weirdest and most wonderful foods the Kingdom has to offer.
Before leaving Siem Reap, however, I head for Le Tigre de Papier cooking school to get a handle on the main elements of Khmer cuisine. Putting my foot in my mouth before even getting that first exotic bite, I mention the influence of Thai food on Cambodia’s culinary offerings. Heng, who runs the cookery course, scowls darkly. “Let’s get one thing straight: We influenced their food from 9th to 13th century when Thailand was under our rule. Khmer food came first and the Thais copied from us.”
Despite Heng’s understandable patriotism, the influence of other cultures on Khmer cuisine can’t be ignored. If Cambodian food has its own, very distinctive flavours, including the use of preserved lemons in dishes like the chicken soup Ngam Nguv and the consummation of a shudder-inducing wide range of creepy crawlies, it was Chinese traders who introduced noodles. Coconut milk and turmeric used in curries and desserts shows traces of Indian influence, whilst the French presence is clearly felt in that bizarre Khmer breakfast…baguette smothered with liver pate.
That evening Heng takes me to the food stands surrounding Siem Reap’s night market. Heavenly spicy, barbecued meat odours rise like steam ahead of us as we beat our way through a dense throng, seething around the
vast souk and bag one of the few empty seats next to a long line of food carts set up on the pavement.
“When you first come to Cambodia people tell you never to eat street food, but if you want to eat the best of Khmer cuisine you should never eat anywhere else,” Heng lectures. Elbow to elbow with neighbours at rickety plastic tables, we eat Cháo Lòng, a flavoursome rice broth dotted with cubes of congealed blood and served with tubular chunks of tripe.
Emboldened by my first encounter with Khmer offal I order Plea Sach Ko, a version of laab made with beef tripe, toasted rice and cilantro, next morning for breakfast. Sweet and salty with a hint of spice it is delicious and gives me the courage to head out on my cream-coloured Vespa on my epic food-seeking trip.
It’s June, the wet season, so I’m not surprised when rain starts lashing down. I am taken aback, however, when the tarmac road fizzles out to a muddy potholed track. By the time I reach Chong Khneas, a floating village on the Tonle Sap lake 15 kms south of town, my scooter is chocolate brown and I look like a hippo who’s indulged in a leisurely, and not so elegant, mud bath.
Luckily the rain stops and I strip to a t-shirt as hot steam rises from Southeast Asia’s largest fresh water mere. Hopping on a boat I take the two hour trip to Kompong Phluk, the lake’s largest settlement, where I visit the Prahok shed to see hung fish dripping…the stench-packed, fermented juice is used to make Cambodia’s ubiquitous fish sauce.
Next I head for a bamboo food hut on stilts, and order Frog Amok, a variation on the theme of Cambodia’s sapid signature dish, Fish Amok. Steamed in a banana leaf basket along with prahok, turmeric and coconut milk, the chopped frog is tender and tastes like creamy chicken.
A couple of hours drive from Damdek, the tiny town of Skun has the creepy reputation of being home to Cambodia’s largest concentration of tarantulas.
In Skun town the market stands are piled high with fried crickets, grilled locusts and braised A-pings, as the beleaguered arachnids are known locally. All around me school kids and grannies buy the spiders. They are black and hairy and as big as a hand, and at 50 cents each they don’t come cheap. “We fry them to destroy the poison then dip them in garlic and salt,” a vendor says.
Nerving myself up for the big one, I graze the stands sampling cricket (bland and crunchy), locust (meaty and the legs stick between the teeth) before buying a bag of tarantulas. Shutting my eyes I dip my hand in the bag, pull off a leg and nibble.
Surprisingly, once the initial revulsion wears off, the taste is not so bad. The texture of A-ping is rough and crispy like pork crackling, but inside it’s tender, and fatty and tastes a bit like cod. “The head is the best bit,” says a granny with half a spider in her hand, half in her mouth. I offer her the rest of my bag. She accepts gratefully and makes short shrift of the three hairy spiders inside.
Between bites she tells me that arachnids are considered to be a gastronomic delicacy in Cambodia. “We eat lizards, scorpions and rats; have done since we couldn’t find any food under the Khmer Rouge regime,” she tells me. I later learn that these foodstuffs have become so popular that there are even fears that these creatures, which are considered as pests elsewhere, could be hunted to extinction here in Cambodia.
A lazy putter along the N7 brings me to Kampong Cham, a bustling town stretched along the Mekong where I spend the night in a rundown guesthouse and eat termite egg soup, popping each tiny egg between my teeth like grapes to enjoy the salty, slightly sour taste.
From Kampong Cham it’s a three-hour trip along the N6 to the traffic-clogged Japanese friendship bridge, built in 1993 to replace the original bridge, which was blown up in 1973, and into Phnom Penh.
Parking my steaming Vespa outside Romdeng, I take my table at this restaurant set in a charming colonial house, that’s run by former street children and renowned for its local cuisine. After an entrée of fried spider served with a spicy lime dipping sauce, I tuck into the green mango and wild snake salad. Pungent and chewy, the dried snake complemented by the silky sweet mango is surprisingly tasty.
Could all these weird foods be part of our diet within a decade? I have no idea, but I’ve had a lot of fun trying to find out.