Khmer Food – Chopped Prohok with Krasaing Fruit
Prohok is Khmer fish paste that has become the best Khmer preserved food since ancient time. Thus most of Khmer traditional foods are having prohok as ingrediant. It is very often used in Khmer soups such as Samlor Korko (Khmer fish soup with vegetables), Samlor Tumpang (bamboo shoot soup), and also Khmer sour soup with water spinach. Prohok Khtis is another favorite Khmer food, which prokok is cooked with ground pork and coconut milk.
Today I would like to present another dish of prohok which is more special for prohok lovers, it is prohok ching chram plae krasaing, the chopped prohok with krasaing fruit. The preparation is simple without involving fire.
Chopped Prohok with Krasaing fruit
Ingredients
- 100g prohok
- 3-4 krasaing fruit (a kind of fruit having a thick hard and dark green cover, look like a green orange. The flesh inside, together with its edible tiny seeds, taste sour. Khmer people use it for this special prohok dish. Krasaing is also used instead of turmarine for sour soup.)
- 3 stalks lemongrass
- 5-6 kaffir lime leaves
- 6 cloves garlic
- 4 red chilly
- 4-5 tbps sugar
- 3/4 tbps salt
Ingredients for chopped prohok with krasaing fruit
Preparation
- Prohok must be cleaned with warm water, then finely chop
- lemongrass, thinly sliced, then also chop well
- Krasaing fruit, split into two parts, and take only the flesh inside, also finely chop.
- After all, prohok, lemongrass, krasaing, kaffir lime leaves, garlic, and chilly are chopped well together. Then add sugar and salt and taste it to your favorite.
Chopped prohok with krasaing fruit taste great with the mixture of prohok, lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves, especially, the sour taste of krasaing. It’s served with steamed rice together with many kinds of fresh vegetables such as cucumber, water spinach, long bean, eggplant, green banana, and more.
Khmer Bitter Melon Soup
Khmer Bitter Melon Soup
Bitter melon is a well known vegetable for most of us, especially Asians. It’s among popular vegetables for our daily receipts. Bitter melon is cooked as soups, bitter melon fried or stir fried with egg, bitter melon stir fried with beef and many other delicious dishes from bitter melon. The young bitter melon is even eaten as salad with Prohok or Prohok Khtis.
For the bitter melon soups, we usually see more often the stuffed bitter melon soup, in which the bitter melon are cut into 6 cm sections, take out its seeds and the white fluff part, and fill in the ground meat. To be more simple, bitter melon is cut into small pieces and cook with chicken or pork. Today I would like to present the Khmer bitter melon soup which contain the flavor of Khmer food, in Khmer it’s called ‘Samlor Praher Mras’.
Khmer bitter melon soup ingredients: the sliced bitter melon and the mixture of the Kroeung and fish flesh.
Ingredients for 2 servings:
- 1 bitter melon (about 200g)
- 250 g fish flesh
- The Khmer Kroeng: lemon grass leaves sliced into very tiny pieces; finger root (ខ្ជាយ) thinly sliced; turmeric thinly sliced; 4 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced. Then finely pounded all of them in the mortar.
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 4 tbsp fish sauce
Preparation
- Split the bitter melon into two part, remove the seeds and the white fluff part, then sliced it into thin slices.
Khmer bitter melon soup
- Fish after cleaned and drained, boil it in a pot with about 550 ml of water. After about 10 minutes, the fish get cooked. Take it off from fire, keep it cool and take out its bone.
- We have a choice of pounding the fish flesh with the pounded Kroeung or just mix with it while the fish flesh is in small pieces. Though it’s pounded or not, after they’re together, add sugar and fish sauce.
- Reheat the soup of boiling fish just now, let it boiling, then add the mixture of the Kroeung and fish flesh, the bitter melon is also added. About 10 minutes later, when the bitter melon is cooked, adjust the flavor.
The Khmer bitter melon soup is served with steamed rice and dip with chilly-fish-sauce. The bitter taste of bitter melon is going very well with the Khmer Kroeung, that made Samlor Praher Mras a popular soup for daily dishes of Cambodian families.
Krolan – Khmer Sticky Rice Cooked in Bamboo Tube
Krolan – Sticky rice cooked in bamboo tubes
Krolan is a kind of food in which sticky rice is cooked in bamboo tubes. Visitors from Phnom Penh to other provinces will often see Krolan being selling on the bus stops on national roads, especially the trip from Siem Reap, Pusat, Battambang, Kratie, and Kampong Chhnang. Some visitors might be wondering about what’s inside those tubes that they are selling?
Continue reading
Collection of Khmer Snack Made of Banana
Banana or Chek in Khmer is among the popular fruit in Cambodia. It’s eaten as fresh fruit and also prepared into various kinds of desserts and snacks. Below is a list of Khmer snacks and Khmer desserts made of banana. The kind of banana used for all kinds of snack is Chek Namva.
1. Chek Khtis – Banana coconut milk dessert
Chek Khtis is a very popular homemade dessert for Cambodians. As a kind of Khmer traditional dessert, it’s cooked very often at home as well as serving as dessert after lunch in restaurants of Cambodia. Chek Khtis is also served with sticky rice and ambok (Khmer flatten rice) and they are made perfect desserts. Interesting in making Chek Khtis? It’s easy.
Continue reading
3 Ways to Eat Boiled Banana
Boiled bananas
Banana is among most growing plant in the tropical area as well as in Cambodia. It’s likely be the fruit that most consumed for Cambodians. On every Buddhist holy days (there are four days in a month), every house of Cambodians would have at least a hand of Banana (can be Chek Namva or Chicken Egg Banana) as offering for their Chum Neang Ptas (the spirit of the house). Because it’s so popular that banana is not only served raw but it is prepared into many kinds of desserts in the form of cooked, boiled, fried, grilled, wrap with sticky rice etc. Some kinds of Khmer snacks made of banana are: Chek Khtis, Chek Chean, Chek Ang, Chek Chhab, Chek Chheung, Chek Sngor, Chek Bok, Ansom Chek, Ansom Chek Ang.
Continue reading
Num Banh Chok Samlor Namya Khmer
Num banh chok Samlor Namya Khmer
Num banh chok or Khmer noodle is a Khmer traditional food which made of rice paddy flour. Num banh chok is served with some kinds of soup such as Khmer Curry Soup, Samlor Praher Khmer or Teuk Samlor Khmer (the most traditional Khmer soup for serving with num banh chok), Teuk Samlor Namya, and it’s can be served with the typical sour soup as well.
For the Khmer Curry Soup and Samlor Praher Khmer, we already posted. Today we would like to introduce about Teuk Samlor Namya.
Continue reading
Ambok – Khmer Flatten Rice
Ambok : a kind of snack made of paddy rice grains. At the time of taking this picture, ambok is almost sold out.
Ambok is pounded rice (by the action of making it) or flatten rice (by the shape of it) that is a kind of Khmer snack made from paddy rice. Ambok is a main offering of moon praying ceremony on the full moon day of the 12th Lunar month. During this period of time is the harvest time of paddy rice in Cambodia. The new harvested paddy rice grains are well suited for making delicious ambok. Ambok is only available one week before the full moon praying ceremony day and about one month after the ceremony.
At the first time seeing ambok, one might not know that it’s made of paddy rice grain. So have you ever wondered how ambok been made?