Food and cooking – November 2006

Food and cooking – November 2006

So what is the food we eat really like? I have had more than a year to reflect and I still say that local food is fairly awful. I really would like to be more complimentary but everything is sweet, overcooked and full of oil. I mean even my tofu burger and the hamburgers have the sweetest bread rolls! The tomato sauces are swimming in sugar. This is a nation of eating sugar and msg with just about everything.

Sticky rice with yummy beans? Yummo for me. Truly its great and bought from the local markets and put in a small plastic bag. She adds black pepper, grated coconut and then wants to add sugar! To savoury rice ….

I still eat at the same restaurant every work day for lunch and I switch from fried noodles, fried rice, fried veges or a tofu burger. Meat eaters claim they have a wider range, as they have 3 meats to choose to add to their selection of fried noodles/rice/veges, hehehe. But its good food and Dave another vego has convinced them that adding chicken stock to the veg meals is not really in the spirit of things.

Also learnt how to say ‘vegetarian’ trying to again explain don’t just remove the actual meat but also no oyster sauces, chicken stock etc. Only problem is that the actual Khmer word is difficult to say and if I mispronounce I am actually saying “snake’s food”. Note mispronouncing is not asking for snake with a meal, but actually asking to be served the food that a snake would eat. Hmmmm, spiders and rats really could be delivered to my plate if I tried it at a café who don’t know me!!!

So eating at home is still bliss. The oven I bought is also still the gem of the kitchen. I share my kitchen now with Dave and he loves to cook. So homemade soups, pasta bakes, linguini pesto and Cajun spice roast spuds are all regulars. The old favourites of stir fries are also good.

I miss toast but not too much. No where to buy a loaf of bread up here. I miss good quality junk food like nachos and smiths crisps. I miss yummy savoury biscuits. All plain biscuits are filled with sugar – even ones advertised as savoury. Ya good love the addiction to sugar …….

Pasta is now available in our little “7/11” as I like to call the shop with the savvy owner ordering in items from P Penh for us. But still lots to buy in PP. I am off to the capital in a few days from writing this and I have a long shopping list of spices to stock up on, cheese, Arborio rice, plain biscuits, lentils and look for wholemeal flour and get another vegemite. Yeah vegemite really is available in my capital city!

My homemade lime juice (lemons don’t exist here) is a favourite drink and I have to wait to buy some nice tea from PP as I am tired of the cheap Vietnamese green tea that I am down to. Pantry is running bare at moment.

So there you are, hope you enjoy the next meal you have, as you think of all the things no longer in my diet. But also don’t be too sympathetic. Feasts of good food happens as expats make more of an effort in the kitchen. Just last night I had the most amazing pumpkin pie desert with interesting spices like cloves in it. The pie base made from scratch in a basic kitchen and the filling was stunning. The hosts even managed to have some long-life cream to serve us. It was a desert to end all deserts and left everyone saying, who would have guessed pumpkin could be so transformed. Dinner parties with exotic deserts is what I want you to think of as you think of me in remote Cambodia