Getting Acquainted with Cambodian Cuisine

Having spent the better part of an evening researching Cambodian cuisine and recipes, it appears that when it comes to Cambodian food...anything goes. The bounty of ingredients in typical Cambodian dishes includes nearly every kind of vegetable, meat and seafood imaginable. Spices and condiments are consistent with other Southeast Asian cuisines, including Asian fish sauce, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, coconut, lime, mint, corriander, basil, lemongrass, chili peppers, kafir lime leaves, curry powder, and sesame oil, just to name a few.

A dish called Amok Trei, seasoned fish or meats steamed in banana leaf parcels, is considered by some to be the national dish of Cambodia.

Appetizers (Mahope-Sra) include spring rolls, both fresh and deep fried, grilled chicken wings, skewered meats, dumplings, frog legs, fried seafoods, and fish cakes.

Soups (Salor) tend to be broth-based, such as hot and sour, or savory stews, featuring a seemingly endless variety of vegetables such as winter melon, spinach, taro root, cabbage, mushrooms, as well as all kinds of meats and seafoods. And Rice Soup (Bor-Bo), is a traditional favorite.

Salads (Nhoam and Lap) are often topped with meats or marinated seafoods.

There are an infinite number of Stir-fry combinations (Char), many of which are categorized as Caramelized (Kho).

Deep-fried dishes (Chien) are popular and widely varied, as are steamed dishes (Chamhoy), boiled dishes (Sngo), grilled meats and fish (Dot), as well as those that are baked or broiled (Ang).

Fried Rice (Bai Lieng) and Fried Noodles or Noodle Soups (Num Pa-Chok, Mee, Katiev Char) are everyday staples.

Many dishes are served with tangy dipping sauces (Tirk Salouk), which are made with lime juice and fish sauce, seasoned with ginger, chili peppers, garlic and other seasonings.

Desserts often take the form of puddings and custards, made with coconut and fresh fruits.

With all these tempting ingredients and preparation methods to choose from, the hardest part of my Cambodian dinner is definitely going to be choosing between them without getting completely carried away.

12:06 AM PST Permalink |

Cambodian Recipes in My Cookbooks

Among the many cookbooks in my library, only Corinne Trang's Essentials of Asian Cuisine has any Cambodian recipes. This handy volume, which has served me faithfully through many Asian meals, has quite a few choices, however, only one appealed to me: a pickled vegetable recipe that I am definitely going to include in my menu.

12:03 AM PST Permalink |

Looking for Cambodian Recipes

I had no idea when I began searching for recipes on the Internet what a trove of Cambodian recipes I would find. Unbeknownst to me, Cambodian food is wildly popular, and a simple keyword search for 'cambodia recipes' turned up 162,000 hits. I only had to visit a few of the top sites to discover more than enough recipes for a five-course Cambodian dinner. So, with remarkably little effort, I have already begun to develop my Swimming to Cambodia dinner menu.

10:04 PM PST Permalink |

My Cambodian Cooking Experience

When it comes to Cambodian food, once again, I am an absolute beginner. I have never eaten in a Cambodian restaurant, I've never seen a Cambodian cookbook, I have never studied Cambodian culture or history, and I have no idea what kind of food the Cambodian people eat. But something tells me all that's about to change.

Thirty days from now, I will have done all those things, perhaps with the exception of eating in a Cambodian restaurant. But I am confident that with a little research, I can pull off an authentic Cambodian dinner. After all, my Tibetan, Iranian, and Filipino dinners were delicious culinary successes, all of which I prepared with no previous experience.

06:54 PM PST Permalink |

Dinner & a Movie for the Month of March

Welcome to Dinner & a Movie for the Month of March. This month, I am excited to be featuring the cuisine of Cambodia, and not one but two excellent films: The Killing Fields, and Swimming to Cambodia.

Having spent the past two week on vacation, and the past two days writing film reviews for Cinequest 15, I am a little behind with wrapping up my Road Home Dinner & a Movie. So...without further ado, here are the links to all the Recipes and Photos, as well as my film review of The Road Home.

06:36 PM PST Permalink |

Almost Heaven...

We awoke to the most glorious spring morning that ever dawned in the town of Merced, just 70 miles from Yosemite Valley. I have oft marvelled at how I could have lived in California for more than 20 years, just four hours' drive away and had never visited it. But perhaps I was wise to wait for this very day.

A pastoral drive along Highway 140 took us up a gentle grade that leads straight to El Portal, a vertical granite rockface that rises nearly 2000 feet into the rarefied air above the Sierra Nevada. And from there on, around every curve, the geography and geology becomes more spectacular, magnificent, stunning, breathtaking, awesome... [I'm already running out of inadequate adjectives to describe it].

Yesterday's snowfall was still glistening pristine in the crisp mountain air, while the rays of the sun overhead warmed the snow-capped peaks to feed the cascading deluge of Bridal Veil and Yosemite Falls. We snapped untold quantities of digital photos and shot endless video footage of peak after lofty peak. And at every turn, I couldn't help thinking that Mother Nature wasn't fooling around when she wrought this piece of heaven on earth.

Toward the end of our tour of the valley, we discovered an alluring footpath, upon which a 15-minute walk through a lush and chilly Sequoia grove brought us right to the base of Yosemite Falls. In that moment, gazing up at all that water, plummeting down that sheer granite gorge, we filled our lungs with the ionized air, and renewed our spirits with the energy and the experience of standing on one of the most hallowed places on earth.

02:19 AM PST Permalink |

Leaving Las Vegas

After two jam-packed days of sightseeing, we checked out of the Imperial Palace and made one last stop before heading home: a visit to Sigfried and Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage Hotel, where we saw their world renowned white tigers and white lions. They were absolutely magnificent. Regal and imposing doesn't even begin to describe these feline creatures. They live in the lap of luxury, in an impeccably designed and maintained natural habitat, with an army of park attendants to attend to their every whim. Spoiled rotten.

By about 3:30 in the afternoon, we were finally ready to bid farewell to Las Vegas and head for Merced, our last refuge on the long road home. It was a grueling and seemingly endless drive, with only a brief stop-off in Bakersfield for a bite to eat at Sizzler, where a large-screen television was tuned to the Academy Awards. We were there just long enough to see Virginia Madsen not win for her role in Sideways. Ah well, Virginia, we had our fingers crossed for ya'.

After dinner, the farther north we drove, the worse the weather became. And by the time we pulled into the Travel Lodge in Merced, it was raining buckets. But having been snowed in at the Grand Canyon, we were prepared for the worst and retired for the night with very low expectations for tomorrow's visit to Yosemite. I guess we will have to wait and see what the morning brings.

02:12 AM PST Permalink |

Saturday Night in the Neon Jungle

Upon awakening from a blissful sleep after last night's luxurious soak, we headed out onto Las Vegas Boulevard for another fun-filled day of sightseeing. We began with a stroll through the Venetian Hotel and Casino. For those who have never had the pleasure, it is an opulent replica of old Venice, replete with a ceiling that mimics floating clouds in an arching blue sky overhead, and singing gondoliers on a canal that runs the length of the promenade. We had a leisurely Latino lunch at the Taqueria Canonita, which included Warm Corn Chips and Chipotle Salsa, Shrimp Ceviche, Grilled Chicken and Avocado Salad, and Dungeoness Crab on Spring Greens with Creamy Jalapeno Dressing. To be finishing lunch at four in the afternoon was tres continental!

Afterwards, I went back to our hotel room at the Imperial Palace for a little siesta while Rene toured Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. Later that evening, we continued our sightseeing venue with visits to the Aquarium at the Mandalay Bay Hotel, the King Tut exhibit at the Luxor, a stroll through the Monte Carlo Casino where they film certain scenes in the TV series Las Vegas, a midnight laser show at Freemont Street, and finally, back to our hotel for a late supper at the Teahouse Restaurant.

02:10 AM PST Permalink |

The Imperial Palace...Las Vegas Style

Friday afternoon we checked out of the Palace Station and into the Imperial Palace. Gosh, by their names, you'd think the hotel staff would be treating us like imperial royalty, when in fact, we're getting treated just like regular folk. Nevertheless, our continuing Las Vegas experience has been grand fun.

After an evening of hoofing it up and down the Las Vegas Strip for a sushi dinner at Todai in Aladdin's Desert Passage, a visit to the penguin and flamingo habitat at the Flamingo Hotel, and an elevator ride up the half-scale Eiffel Tower at the Paris Hotel and Casino that took my breath away, we retired to our room, where a huge tub awaited us right there in our bedroom. Exhausted and footsore, we filled it with steaming hot water and had a good soak while we watched the Oscar hopeful and much-ado film Sideways. By the end of the movie, all our knots had been dissolved and our blisters healed. It was the perfect end to a very long week.

02:06 AM PST Permalink |

The Grand Finale

The National Caricaturists Network ended with a bang last evening as more than two hundred caricature artists gathered in the ballroom of the Palace Station Las Vegas for the awards banquet. Trophies and certificates were awarded for speed drawing, best likeness, use of color, exaggeration, studio work, portfolio, best individual caricature and best artist. The Japanese envoys dominated the field with winners in several categories and eight out of 15 in the best individual caricature category.

Before the banquet, Rene and I spent the afternoon browsing the walls of the ballroom looking at all the caricatures, of which there were easily more than 2000 pieces. The representation of artistic talent was overwhelming to the point of bewilderment as I envisioned myself trying to vote for my favorites. Fortunately for me, as a mere guest, I wasn't permitted to vote. Thank heavens I didn't have to choose. It probably would have made my head explode. Anyone interested in learning more about the convention and the caricature network, the web address of the NCN is www.caricature.org.

02:03 AM PST Permalink |

Hack...Wheeze...Cough...Ahhhhh...

Last night around ten o'clock, with the best of intentions, I went down to the casino to have dinner and try my luck at the gaming tables. But when I arrived, the cigarette smoke was so thick I could barely breathe. I had wanted to have a seafood dinner at the Oyster Bar and maybe roll the dice a few times or play a few hands of blackjack. But the smoke was positively unbearable. So instead, I went back up to our non-smoking hotel room, ordered Shrimp Scampi with Linguine from room service and watched Girl Interrupted while I researched the Asian food scene in Las Vegas. Talk about multi-tasking! Tomorrow night, we will be moving to the Imperial Palace, an Asian themed hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

12:10 PM PST Permalink |

Exaggerated Features

As a last tribute to a lost cause, I had one more look at the Grand Canyon webcam today, just to see what we're missing. As ironic as it sounds, I'm glad to say that the view from the South Rim was lukewarm at best; certainly nothing worth sticking around an extra day for. So, in retrospect, I guess I can file that hare-brained scheme under the heading: 'What was I thinking trying to visit the Grand Canyon in February?'

We've been in Las Vegas for three days now, attending the annual convention of the National Caricaturists Network, of which Rene is a member. I've just returned from the main ballroom of the Palace Station Hotel and Casino, where many of the NCN artists, including Rene, are pulling an 'all-nighter'. To get back to our room I had to walk through the casino, past roulette wheels, poker games, craps tables, blackjack dealers and row after row of slot machines. And although it's pretty quiet at this hour, the place reeks of cigarette smoke. As an ex-smoker, I never thought I would find myself saying this, but... I forget sometimes how lucky we are to live in California where all public buildings are completely smoke free.

Tomorrow is the last day of competition for the NCN artists and is therefore the day when they start feeling the pressure. They get totally obsessed and uber-competitive, so some of them stay up all night, working furiously into the wee hours of the morning, finishing up their most impressive caricatures, and putting the finishing touches on their wall displays. So, needless to say, Rene will be rapt in his world all day tomorrow, leaving me completely to my own devices. I've gotten a good bit of work done since we've been here, so tomorrow night, I think I'm going to give myself a little break and go out for a nice dinner by myself, and maybe a little gambling too [...that's IF I'm feeling LUCKY!].

04:22 AM PST Permalink |

Above it All

As the caricature convention commenced this morning with a seminar and a buffet breakfast, I was still blissfully asleep, recuperating from several long days on the road. The weather is still rainy, and after a breakfast of fresh fruit, I spent the afternoon at a table by the window overlooking Sahara Boulevard, editing the photos and recipes from my 'Road Home' dim sum dinner. They turned out beautifully and will be available for viewing at the end of the month as usual, along with my review of 'The Road Home'.

12:43 AM PST Permalink |

Plan B...

Just to be sure that a trip into the Grand Canyon in February wouldn't be utter folly, for the past two weeks, I have been faithfully following the weather conditions at the Grand Canyon both on the Weather.com website, and a live webcam that shows the current view of the canyon from Yavapai Point. Each time I checked, the weather was ideal and the view expansive. So when we arrived in Barstow on Thursday evening, just for a lark, I clicked on the Grand Canyon webcam link and, as expected, got only a dark, blank screen. Jokingly, I said to Rene, 'Wanna see what the Grand Canyon looks like right now?' as I pulled the neck of his black t-shirt up over his eyes, and we both had a good laugh.

On Saturday morning, when we woke to find the world blanketed in snow, I clicked on the Grand Canyon webcam link once again, only to find the exact opposite of last evening's view: a pure white screen with no distinguishing geographic details whatsoever. Once again, I jokingly said to Rene, 'Wanna see what the Grand Canyon looks like right now?' as I pulled the neck of his white t-shirt up over his eyes... and once again, we both had a good laugh.

But upon waking in Flagstaff to pretty much to the same weather conditions as yesterday morning, and after much remorseful deliberation, we decided to scratch the Grand Canyon trip altogether and point the car toward Las Vegas, with a promise to make a separate trip to see it under more clement circumstances at some later time. Next October perhaps...

After a remarkably short and easy trip on Highway 93, which landed us at the Hoover Dam around 4 p.m. for a quick tour, we arrived in Las Vegas around 7:00 this evening. We attended the NCN mixer, where we met up with lots of familiar faces, and have now retired to our room on the 10th floor of the Palace Station Hotel and Casino overlooking Sahara Boulevard, with a stunning view of the Stratosphere Tower. Lots of neon, and city lights as far as the eye can see. Viva Las Vegas!

02:19 AM PST Permalink |

While we slept...

...Mother Nature dropped eight inches of snow on us and we awoke to find the world outside blanketed in white, wrapped in a misty cocoon. I was delighted at first, but upon further investigation, it became all too obvious that the window of visibility for the Grand Canyon had snapped shut sometime in the night. Once daylight came, all the Internet webcams showed the same shrouded view from Yavapai Point. And by all accounts, there's no end in sight... [sigh].

So we drove all this way, only to spend the day in our hotel room watching the Weather Channel and old movies on cable TV. It's a good thing that we enjoy each other's company, and that we both have a sense of humor, and the grace and humility to stay flexible and optimistic in the face of disappointment. But in the immortal words of Scarlett O'Hara..."Tomorrow is another day..."

11:29 PM PST Permalink |