Morning Glory/Water Spinach, Vietnamese Persimmons/Golden Apple and Guava: New-to-us Khmer Food

I've learned several new fruits and vegetables lately. I thought I'd share them with you.

Below you see the water lily stems that take special talent to harvest. When you pinch off the stem, if you are not careful, mud will be drawn up the stalk. The Khmer lady who sells these has four children depending on her at home and something happened to her husband. She walks around town with a big basket of these carried on her head calling out the name of them in Khmer. Our neighbor said she uses these to make a salad with thin strips of the water lily stem, chicken, lime juice and herbs.

Water spinach, or morning glory, are the stems of the sweet potato plant. They are used in soup the same way you would use spinach and with a similar taste. Many times it is used in a soup with rice noodles.

I had no clue what these were when my friend gave them to us. My Vietnamese friend helped me out with the Latin name: Diospyros decandra, or a type of persimmon. One way the Khmer eat these is with the flesh mashed in a mixture of milk, sugar, and chia or basil seeds. The pulp is pretty astringent in the mouth, so all of that can be pretty necessary!

Here you see a guava. These were really popular in Mexico, but the ones I saw were smaller, many times made into preserves. Here guava is enjoyed dipped in salt, sometimes with garlic powder, chili or sugar.

The kids all tried a bite and thought it was good, but even better, the pasabulong from our Filipina friends who came home from holiday and were so kind to think of us:

The biscocho is from Iloilo and the piaya is from Negros Occidental.

Yep, it was yummy!

Elias had fun trying on his father's shirt... it'll be a few years before it fits.

 

The boys love to help cook! Here they were making cinnamon rolls:

 

One of them wants to be a fireman who owns a restaurant on the side when he grows up. The other one wants to build "helico'ters." I can't wait to see what they become!

Khmer Curry

There is an argument over who curry really belongs to, the English or the Indian, but today I'm going to show you a completely different version of curry; Khmer.

We started out chopping up lemon grass, turmeric, garlic, and some kind of fragrant leaf that I didn't know the name of, and the person teaching me only knew in Khmer. My friends told me it was Kaffir lime leaf.

 

We had some dried red peppers soaking while we did this. 

Next we blended up the lemon grass, turmeric, Kafir lime leaf, and garlic with..... roasted peanuts! Then, we blended up the red peppers. These two were kept in separate bowls.

 

Of course, anything Khmer style has all of the bones. They just chop it up, bone and all. We chose to do a chicken version.

 

One of the coconut vendors nearby had a machine to extract the juice and oil of  the coconut. We started by boiling a small bag of coconut oil/juice to evaporate the water and leave the coconut oil.

 

When it had evaporated, she added the blended up mixtures and some curry powder.

 

When the spices were cooked and fragrant, we added the chicken.

 

After the chicken was well on its way, we added a big bag of coconut milk, (being sure to discard the brown pulpy part in the bottom of the bag from the husk of the coconut) and let it boil a while.

 

Last, we added salt, a little teaspoon of sugar and vegetables. It is usually cooked with green beans, sweet potato or pumpkin, and onions. I made it with what we had, so regular potatoes, carrot, onion and green beans.

It is usually eaten over rice or with fresh baguettes from the local bakery. Everybody really liked it and asked if we can make it once a week!

Eating Lotus Blossoms: More Khmer Food and Baby Update

Here are a few more interesting Cambodian/Khmer foods:

This is a lotus blossom. It is sold on the side of the road and eaten in Cambodia. You push the seed out, peel the outside off and eat the white, nutty, middle part. It tastes similar to a peanut.

Do you have an opinion on tempura battered mushrooms?

Ben thinks they taste like fried chicken, Ezra eats the outside and spits out the mushroom, Talia loves them, Elias turns his nose up at them all together, and I like them! The boys like tempura onions (I totally introduced the concept of onion rings to the Cambodians here: they were amazed!) and zucchini, just not mushroom. 

It's a big, flowering, white clump of mushrooms that grow  together- I don't know their name...

Although it looks like a doughnut hole from the outside, with its sugary coating, this is no ordinary doughnut. The inside is stuffed with what tastes like cheesy mashed potatoes in a unique Cambodian spin on things. I think the outside dough is made with rice flour because it is very chewy. The mixture of savory and sweet is a little different. Also sold near it was a flatter-looking version without the sugar coating. That one had a sweet potato filling.

I'm thankful everyone has been well enough to go to school and work this week! Zoe is almost 6 weeks old today. She's very active all day long, here she was trying to tell me something, but she sleeps most of the night only waking to nurse a couple of times. 

I think all of my babies look very similar, but Ezra looked the most like me and got my mom's Swedish roots. The other three got their father's dominant genes. Can you tell who is who?

Cambodian Market Food

So I have this friend who is persuaded that it is her job to make sure I experience Cambodian cuisine. It seems like every time she goes to the market, she brings home something new to try. Here are a few things that were new to me:

Persimmons: these were bright orange with a smooth, firm peel on the outside and the inside, tasted to me, a lot like a peach. I've been wanting to try these for a while, so I was glad she brought one.

This seems to be a typical breakfast food: Tapioca with sweetened milk of some sort, toasted sesame seeds and plantain.

These grilled bananas on a stick were brushed with something like soy sauce, because the outside was crispy and salty. It also came with a potato that had been boiled, mixed with vanilla and sugar and then formed into a patty and grilled like the bananas... it was interesting. The kids preferred the potato and I preferred the bananas.

This was another version of tapioca; this time with sweetened sweet potato, not quite mashed, but giving body to the soup. It also had egg, like in the version you would find in egg drop soup. I was starving, and it was a filling, if un-thought of combination for me.

On the top of the plate you will see a banana that has been battered and fried. The batter includes sesame seeds and I think vanilla and sugar from the flavor. As a bonus, when you get these, the little batter pieces that fall off into the hot grease and cook are put in the bottom of your bag so that in addition to the bananas, you get a bunch of crunchies. These are my children's favorite thing to eat here, so far... they get it every once in a while.

I'm sure there are a lot more things to discover when it comes to market food. I'm not interested in the bug/snake options, but when it comes to vegetables combined in interesting ways, I'm a lot more open to trying it. Would you?