Authentic Local Cambodian Food

So far, I haven’t disclosed one thing fully – the food in the villages. 😂 Let’s have a look at what authentic local Cambodian food I had in the villages. 😂

In the first village:

Starting from April or May, you can find mangoes everywhere. Sometimes you can even see mangoes lying in the streets. There are so many mangoes that nobody takes them in the streets. In the photo, I was helping to take the mangoes from a farm to a centre in town. These mangoes were excellent! @Boskhnor, Kampong Cham province.

This is a very common combination – soup, rice and vegetables (fruit may not be present). Meat can also be found in soup and vegetables.

At a wedding banquet in Prey Veng.  It was sumptuous. One of the priests who had attended numerous weddings in Cambodia said the food was the best he had ever had. The food was Vietnamese food because the bride and groom are Vietnamese Cambodians.

Guess what they were? A burnt fish and a few pieces of tough overcooked pork and chunks of hard rice. 🤣 This was ‘sumptuous’ compared to one piece of chicken drumstick with a lot of rice which I later had before I left this village. 🤣 I don’t believe I had eaten this kind of food for 5 months. 🤣 One question: which one do you prefer, burnt fish or not-so-well-cooked fish with blood? You can only choose one. No other options. 🤣 That’s what I had – either one of them. 🤣 OK, honestly, I did occasionally have normal (salty) fish. 🤣

My beloved student was having her lunch. 😄 Very common village food in Cambodia. Cambodians like to put the soup in their rice. I think that’s because they cook their rice too hard or maybe it’s the other way round – because they like to put soup in their rice so they cook their rice so hard. Actually, I don’t know. I just guess.

They also eat snails. I think it is from the French cuisine.

This is snack. Honestly, I don’t know what it was. It tasted like some fish and it’s chili.

Directly from the rice field. You can eat this middle part. It’s quite tasty.

This rice dumpling is also very common in the wet markets in Cambodia. It’s stuffed with some meat and beans. (Click here to learn the touching story behind this rice dumpling.)

My students made this pumpkin dessert.

At the college:

I love the noodles. The food in the college is so much better than that in the first village. The staff told me they asked the cook to make this because they wanted me to try. I was so pampered by them!! So blessed as well!!! 😊 She also told me the sauce they use for making the noodles is the same as the sauce they use for Amok and I like Amok. I can write a blog about Amok. 😄

Unborn chicken. I didn’t try it. I can still see the feathers of the chicken. (Just realised it could be a balut but I was told it’s chicken. So, I don’t know the proper name.)

An aisle dedicated to MSG in a supermarket in Phnom Penh. Like I said in my previous blog, MSG is one of the essential ingredients they put in their food. Some people from Phnom Penh start to realise MSG is not good for their health so they start having MSG free food but people in the villages are still addicted to it and they put A LOT in their food.

My students in the village call this Khmer cheese but it is far from it. The lecturers in the college told me they are salty fish with some other stuff. There is no English name for it and the Khmer name is Brohok (thanks to my colleague who reminded me after she read this blog). It doesn’t taste bad at all but it is indeed very salty.

They look like glass noodles. But the focus should be on the ingredients. You can find crabs and shrimps in the soup. They are only available in some months, if I remember correctly, because this kind of crabs can only be found in certain months.

It is a wood apple. It was my first time to try it. When wood apples are ripe, the local people like to put sugar on top to make them taste better. Here, this one was still not ripe. It tasted like hard mangoes and it was a bit bitter. The little plastic bowl contained chilli and salt. People eat this fruit when it’s not ripe with this condiment. (Thanks to my colleague who gave me additional information after she read this blog.)

Another typical meal – soup, rice and one more dish. That brown thing was actually fish fried with flour. The soup had vegetables and meat.

These flowers suddenly appeared on the dining table one day at lunch time. We just ate them like this. They were quite delicious.

😁 This is not Cambodian food. I bought the chocolate fudge mix in Phnom Penh and made it with my colleague in the kitchen of the college. The kitchen has an oven so it was very handy.

Here’s the finished product. We were so eager to try it. 😍 It was very sweet for them but it wasn’t toooo sweet for me. 😜 It’d even be better if we ate it with ice cream.

Pudding prepared by the students (Click here to check out the Christmas party).

Hot pot. The soup is beef soup and they put some other food in this soup to cook (Click here to check out the Christmas party).

Christmas cake.  It’s the same as any other cakes and it’s not too sweet (Click here to check out the Christmas party).

Use the comparison table below and buy the cheapest ticket to / hotel in anywhere you like. 🙂 By purchasing through this aggregator, you are also supporting my work. 🙂 Thanks. 🙂

[tp_search_shortcodes]
Country Name cannot be blank. Location cannot be blank. Name cannot be blank. Search Type cannot be blank. Search Id cannot be blank.