What’s Cookin’ in Battambang
Filed Under: There’s no better way to comprehend a cuisine than to cook something for yourself. To that end, we signed up for a Cambodian cooking course with Smoking Pot Restaurant (yes, clever naming). Along the way, we also picked up some more Cambodian history.
The day starts at the market, where we seek out ingredients for the cooking adventures ahead. Much of the standard Southeast Asian market fare is well-represented – piles of fresh herbs, pots of fragrant rotting fish, and a meat section reminiscent of advanced biology class. Battambang’s market even offers a few visually spectacular twists, including eviscerated chickens with yolk-filled uteri and grilled, peppered eggs on a skewer.
Ingredients in hand, we return to the restaurant to get to work.
Chopping and Chatting
With six students and one teacher, it’s an intimate and hands-on session. We get busy chopping chilis and lemon grass, swapping travel stories between strokes. In a “it’s a small world” lesson, we find out that two of our classmates are the authors of a blog that convinced us not to take the bus from Vientiane, Laos to Vinh, Vietnam a few weeks earlier.
Our instructor (also the owner of Smoking Pot) fields our questions about life in Cambodia. He’s remarkably frank, sharing stories from life in Cambodian refugee camps on the Thai border in the 1980s to tales of Cambodia’s current transitional travails. AIDS is a growing problem in Cambodia. People’s denial of the existence of the disease and refusal to get tested only make the problem worse. He tells stories of infected sex tourists who come to Cambodia and pass the disease knowingly to others, including a close friend of his who recently died. A sad byproduct of tourism.
Cooking Time
After covering NGOs, marriage, life in a Thai refugee camp, government corruption and cooking, we resume the pounding of chili peppers, galangal (ginger), lemongrass, garlic and kaffir lime leaves into a smooth and spicy amok (traditional Khmer fish curry cooked in coconut milk) curry paste with our mortars and pestles. Freshly grated coconut turns to coconut cream with a soft squeeze of our hands and blends nicely with the freshly made aromatic paste sizzling away in iron pans atop kerosene tanks.
With our instructor’s guidance, we all produce more-than-worthy amoks – in appearance, smell and taste. We cook two more dishes – a spicy curry-based stir-fry and a sour soup, but the amok proves the crowd-pleaser and among some of the best we’d tasted during our Cambodian travels.
Photo Essay – Battambang Market and Cambodian Food
Video – Battambang Market and Cambodian Cooking Class
Practical Details – Smoking Pot Cambodian Cooking Course
Where: Smoking Pot Restaurant, Battambang, Cambodia
Cost: $8 includes market visit, cooking and eating three dishes, cookbook with Cambodian and Thai recipes
Our opinion: Highly recommended. One of the best values around for hands-on cooking instruction, interesting dishes, large quantities of food and a bonus insight into Cambodia.
June 16th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Hello Dan and Audrey,
Nice site! We just stumbled upon your site, it looks very nice indeed. Just a comment on the cooking class: Emilie was violently sick a few hours after. Not me though and an other girl in the class that we met later was also sick. I was fine and the food was very good tasting. The conclusion reached by the two sickos was that they had the old fish for their fish Amok?
Here is our blog about the cooking class:
http://ye-blogs.blogspot.com/2007/03/cooking-classes-and-rural-train-riding.html
and our photo gallery:
http://ye-photographs.smugmug.com/gallery/2545609#133498824
We currently are in India, Delhi. We have our Pakistan, Chinese, Tajik and Kyrgyz visa, maybe we will see you in Central Asia if that is still your plan.
take care,
Yann and Emilie
June 23rd, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Hi Yann and Emilie!
I was just about to send you guys an email about the site…but you got to it first!
Sorry to hear that Emilie and another girl got sick! We also had the fish for the Amok…so maybe we just lucky and had a better bunch of fish…or, our stomachs just have a lot more bugs in them already : ) The next day in Battambang, Dan ate some bugs…not for me!
http://www.uncorneredmarket.com/2007/03/bugs-and-blessings/
We will likely be in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in late August/September, so maybe our paths will cross again…I hope.
Take care and happy travels!
Audrey and Dan
June 26th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Greetings from Prague!
Hey, the course is cheap! good value indeed. Does the variety differ alot from Thai cuisine? I like this page ; socio-politics over the grinder:-)).
March 12th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Came across your site via a tweet about an ice cave! (@TheGourmetGirl) There was side link to What’s Cookin in Battambang. As I am the president of an online food and wine magazine, this immediately caught my attention.
Thanks for sharing a great article and pictorial of your experience.
Elaine Giammetta
March 16th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
@Imelda: I just realized after a recent comment came that we never responded to your comment.
This cooking course was a terrific value — for the instruction alone, but then you had the Cambodian market tour, the food of course, the company, and the history lesson. Can’t beat it.
Regarding the comparison between Cambodian and Thai cuisine: without being an expert, I’d say that Thai food is a bit more diverse. In Thai cuisine, I sense more defined, distinct regional dishes and variety. Having said that, I certainly enjoyed eating both Cambodian food and Thai food on the road.
By the way, I’m laughing at the characterization of the class as socio-politics over the grinder. I love it. It sounds like a book title to me.
@Elaine: Nice to see you here. Glad to know that you enjoyed the post and photos. Food is important to us and has proven a gateway to people and culture throughout our travels.