CAMBODIA: A very long bus ride.

Finally!

 Western-ish breakfast in an open air restaurant. A toasted, buttery baguette with a mixed veggie omelet and a side of fresh fruit (mango, pinapple, watermelon). We were decadent and ordered a thick chewy banana pankcake and 2 sickenly sweet iced coffees each.  We had been asking for no sugar in our coffee, then realized it tasted like motor oil without the sugar overload.

Then we embarked on a long bus ride to Battambang. If Cambodia had more than 2 paved roads the journey would have been 30 minutes. It took us 6 + hours. These 6 hours were spent on an old hand-me down bus that frequently stopped to load or unload passengers on the side of the road. It also blared cheesy 70s-era Chinese fight movies dubbed in Khmer. When the movie finished the ballads started. This would have been bearable but the failing sound system made it sound like a dying bird.

Sticky rice, beans and coconut shavings steamed inside some bamboo

I removed most of the "flossy pork" before eating.

Misery aside, we got to stop at an interesting roadside “food court” to pee and eat. Amongst the offerings were deep fried sparrow and fried cicadas. I chose the safe rice-in-a-stick and sweet, eggy cake with “flossy pork.”

CAMBODIA: Siem Reap

After Phnom Penh we went to Siem Reap it was super touristy due to its proximity to Angkor Wat. We were still able to eat some real Cambodian food ( I think!).  Cambodia uses US dollars as its primary currency with a splash of Cambodian Riel used in lieu of change.

Vegetable Amok

I ordered Amok a few times. Amok is similar to standard Thai curry but with a different array of spices. I imagine there is more fish paste in it than in curries from neighboring countries.

Cambodia was colonized by the French. Luckily the French left behind strong coffee and baguettes… the first real bread we’ve had in Asia! The pinnacle of Cambodian cuisine in our opinion were these sandwiches. Again, I’m unsure of their name but they are really similar to Vietnamese Bahn-Mi. It’s a toasted baguette filled with roasted pork/ pork skin, spring onions, thinly sliced, pickled cucumber, a few pats of melted butter and spicysweet chili sauce. Sometimes they throw in  a hunk of pate but the gelatinous texture threw me off a bit.

First Cambodian "Bahn-Mi" from a street vendor

in its preparatory stages

Will enjoying his 2nd dinner.

A close up of the pate

The blender juices in Cambodia are similar to the rest of SE asia but they often throw in a generous helping of sweetened condensed milk. I had a coconut “juice” that ended up tasting like a cocnut milkshake. It cost 50 cents.

 Taro Soup: Taro’s consistency is somewhere in between cooked radish and cooked potato. This soup was simple but flavorful. A plain chicken broth, tons of spring onions, fresh fish and hunks of taro.

 Here is another common sight in Cambodia (the coconut, not me):

excuse my sweaty head.

In lieu of water, which often is not potable, many people drink coconut water straight out of a young coconut. I pointed to this coconut, a lady hacked off the top with a huge knife, then stuck in a straw. Wasn’t coconut water a big thing at Whole Foods? I guess it was stolen from the Cambodians.

Green Papaya salad: The first bite was pungent. I didn’t know if I could finish. It was fishy and tart. With each additional bite I liked it more and more. I can’t be certain but I believe the shredded green papaya was topped with fish sauce, sugar and vinegar. There were also peanuts, chili peppers,  fresh basil and mint.

 

CAMBODIA: Phnom Penh's Psar Thmei (grand market)

Cambodia's street food seemed to be the way to go. It was about a 3rd of the price of food in restaurants and 3 times more interesting. I'd been warned about Cambodians strange eating habits but saw nothing too bizarre amongst the food stalls. The first night I ordered some ginger pork. The pork included a grayish cut of pork that tasted crumbly and gamey. Luckily our meal at the grand market (Psar Thmei) proved to be much more delicious.

We chose an identifiable food for our first meal: big grilled prawns served with some fresh basil and other mystery veggies. I think Cambodians eat the entirety of the prawn but we plucked off the heads.

We were still hungry so we bought a spring roll (not pictured) and I found this:

It turned out to be sweetened banana stuffed inside sticky rice, wrapped in a banana leaf. The flavor of the banana leaf rubbed off onto the rice adding a slight vegetable taste to it. I'm a sucker for sticky rice.... I love its gummy texture and I'm almost guaranteed to like anything else paired with it.

Next we stopped at a juice stall. We both got fresh mango juice. They also prepared sugar cane juice by ginding up whole sugar canes to produce a bright green beverage.

The girl is crumbling up used sugar cane and our mango juice is on the bottom left.

The girls sitting across from us has this:

so Will had to try it. It was sort of like a deep-fried, bready dumpling filled with sauteed onions. It was served warm in a tiny bit of broth topped with chili peppers. I have no idea what these foods are called since everything is written in Cambodian. 

See Will's blog for more info on our excursions throughout Phnom Pehn, Siem Reap, and Battambang!

The Boring Side of South East Asian cuisine

I have been really out of the internet "loop." There was as much internet access as there were roads in Borneo (i.e. none) so I haven't posted much. We spent quite a while trekking around the jungle living on instant noodles and trail mix. When we returned to Kuching we ate a lot more of the local specialty: chicken and rice.

The most interesting dish in Borneo is Laksa. Laksa is commonly eaten for breakfast. It's a spicy, buttery, coconut based soup with a huge helping of rice noodles, deep fried bean curd, a few green beans and bean sprouts. 

In Kuala Lumpur (peninsular Malaysia) we were able to eat some delicious Nepalese food near Little India.  The best part was gingery-pork filled momos (Nepalese dumplings).

Stay tuned for some more exciting meals/photographs!

MALAYSIAN BORNEO: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner in Kuching.

Malaysia has two parts: Penisular Malaysia and the overgrown, jungle-filled Malaysian Borneo (land of the infamous defunct headhunters). Malaysian food reflects the diversity of the county itself. There were some unfamiliar flavors and textures. Many foods, like the people,  seemed to be a combination of Indian, Chinese, and Indonesian. 

Restaurant etiquette in Borneo has been a bit confusing.  Some places seem to be one restaurant but there are a number of “stalls” inside. I have just been ordering what I want, then sitting down. I think the people who serve drinks are sole proprietors and operate a separate soda/juice business. Luckily all the menus are in Chinese, bahasa Malaysia and English so navigation isn’t much of a problem.

And now for the food!!!

Breakfast: instant coffee and Bak Pau --- a Chinese pork bun.

Lunch: chicken curry--- again. It was a buffet style place. I took a large serving of what I thought was stir fried veggies but turned out to be a slimy jungle fern of  some sort. It tasted extremely bitter so I abandoned it on my plate. The best part of lunch was the refreshing fresh cucumber juice. I’m a sucker for these southeast asian blender “juices.” I feel like I could subsist on those alone.

cucumber juice

the green stuff tasted like gasoline

Dinner: Roasted Chicken with Rice. It sounds so simple but was the best meal I’ve had in Malaysia so far.

The chicken was rubbed with some spices then roasted. Some sort of sweet and sour sauce that looked like oil and vinegar was spooned on top. The chicken was served next to a bed of short grain rice that tasted as if it had been simmered for hours in chicken broth. Oh, the flavors! The chicken was served with possibly the best dipping sauce I’ve had. It was made of ground up chilis and orange rind/juice. The savory chicken paired with citrus and chili blew my mind.

To top it all off, a weak gingery soup came with our meal.

sweet soy sauce on the left, chili-citrus sauce on the right

I aslo had Liang Teh, a sickeningly sweet iced herbal tea

We picked this restaurant because it was so crowded with locals. Turned out they only served one thing:  chicken with rice.

The food was great but the service was the most interesting. The restaurant was run by tribesmen. All of them had traditional tribal tattoos and mostly—shaved heads with a tiny topknot of pony-tailed hair. They were covered in tons of tradional body piercings and looked pretty tough. Will said he could tell they had a heart of gold because a cold-hearted man couldn’t make such delicious food. This place was so good we went back again for even more chicken and rice.

KOREA: Taste you later...

The End! I’ve left Korea forever indefinitely. I’ll leave you with a few of the foods I will miss!

1. Dak Galbi. 

          This spicy chicken stir fry was one of my favorites. Its cooked in a cast iron skillet at your table with potatoes, leeks, cabbage, and gummy rice cakes. At the end I like to add some bokumbap (mixed rice) which makes a nice spicy, crispy fried rice using the leftovers in the pan.

         2. Gamjatang.

   It was originally a peasants soup with only pork bones to flavor the broth. It still has the pork bones but now they have the most tender, shredded, flavourful pork attached. Its stewed with a little of everything in a mildly spicy broth. There are egg noodles, potatoes, vegetables, cellophane noodles and sometimes a few other surprises.

3. Sundubu Jjigae. 

             This is my default lunch option. It’s a spicy broth (probably fish broth) that is boiled with fermented tofu, some spring onions and a mussel or two. At the very end an egg is dropped in the boiling broth. Korean soups are  usually made by placing all the ingredients in a single serving bowl, boiling it over a gas flame, and serving immediately.

4. Mul Naengmyeon: 

             My default summer meal: chewy buckwheat noodles in an icy tart,  and slightly sweet broth. Topped with cucumber shavings, sesame seeds, a hard boiled egg, radish kimchi, and (best of all) sliced Asian pear. ( I don't have my own photograph for this one... thanks)

5: And for dessert! 

              Patbingsu is shaved ice topped with sweetened condensed milk, sweet adzuki beans, gummy rice cakes, nut powder, and slivered almonds. On occasion (like it is here) its also topped with ice cream and fresh fruit.