Tag: Dinner

Beyond the cooking class in Siem Reap

Written by André Ruys on 07/26/2019. Posted in eat in Siem Reap, Experience Cambodia, Khmer food.

When I was traveling through South East Asia 15 years ago, local food always was my main focus. Since many journeys were half leisure and half business, we mostly stayed in hotels. We had at least dinner there. but here and then we escaped and tried the local food next door. And sometimes we got invited to our guides or business partner‘s homes. We could experience what we call now beyond the cooking class.

Women selling honey at a local market in Siem Reap

Nothing is wrong with a cooking class as an activity in Siem Reap and other destinations in Cambodia. You usually go to the market, what for many tourists is an exciting experience itself. You indulge in exotics smells, watch Muslim women selling meat, jump aside when a motorbike drives between the stalls and may even help to catch a fish that tried to escape from the bucket.

With a tuk tuk full of groceries you head then back to the restaurant, hotel or a special place. Guest wash the food and prepare it for the actual cooking. Some hotels may even swap the food from the market with their own stock out of quality concerns. Then the cooking starts. You cut the greens, pound the paste and make nice decorations from a water melon and carrots.

Once the meal is done, guests sit together and the tour leader or guide gives further explanations about the food, the local life and when is the best time to grow and harvest rice. You learn a lot about a culture quite different from what you know in the west.

Why we want to go beyond the classic cooking class

At Dine With The Locals we go beyond the cooking class. We skip the market, because it saves time and many tourists have been to markets anyway. Another reason is that our hosts grow some of the food in their own backyard. Panha Yem in Battambang runs her own organic farm. You harvest some of the vegetables used in your meal with your own hands. Nue Thai in Siem Reap has a small garden, but shows you how the galangal plat looks like, let you pick a custard apple and make tea from jasmine flowers or lemongrass. If you like to eat eggs at Vannarith‘s home, you have to go to the chicken sheds behind the house and get some.

Cooking together is a great experience of local life in Cambodia — Prepare food with the family is more than a usual cooking class in Siem Reap.

As it is custom in Cambodia, every host offers three dishes. Those are most of the time the families favorite Cambodian food. Quite often families trade a recipe from generation to generation, with little variations. For example Samlor Chi. You will not get this in a restaurant, and its not mae in cooking classes. Samlor Chi is a soup with chili paste, garlic, ginger and coconut milk. Then you add fish, eggplant and pumpkin i. We invite guests to make the paste for themself, so they get a better understanding what tools are used and how a traditional Khmer family prepares their meals.

Holistic approach to food experience

Experience means for us a holistic experience. The house we hosts our guests is not just a nice decoration or background for pictures, but it’s home for our guests during their time. Tourists in Siem Reap may know the history of the temples but not the history of the food they make in a cooking class that is different. Just look at Beef Lok Lak, a dish famous with tourists – at yet not a real Khmer dish, but from Vietnam. And although we don’t serve crocodile meat, we do have a host with a crocodile farm (they just breed and sell eggs and babies).

Food experience is a whole experience, from preparing a meal to eating it and talking about it. Why not trying it?

How to cook homemade Khmer food

Written by André Ruys on 07/15/2019. Posted in eat in Siem Reap, Khmer food, local life.

Cooking is passion, and it doesn’t matter if you do this at home or as a professional chef. We focus on food in Cambodia and the traditional way of cooking. The recipes at our host families were handed down from generation to generation, from the grandparents to the parents to the children. Dishes at our hosts are also prepared the traditional way, often on open fire, using ingredients from the garden or the own farm. When you visit our host, you will learn how Khmer homemade food is prepared and cooked in a very authentic way. And of course we and the hosts are happy if you want to help cooking. So we take you today on a food tour in Cambodia and show you how to make delicious local food.

One of the main differences to western cooking are the kirchen and the tools. Many of our hosts cook outside the house, what is still common all around Asia. Even modern houses have the kitchen outside, nowadays behind under a tin roof. The reason: ventilation systems aren’t known here and you don’t want to have the smell of cooking in your house. Some of our hosts do have a kitchen room, but will always open all doors and windows then get fresh air and the feeling of openness.

While in houses and apartments the use of gas is more common, on the countryside most families still use wood or charcoal. Both is cheaper for them, and charcoal can be bought from passing by vendors with long trailers. Wood is mostly collected from the ground or from dead trees. When you eat with locals, it is also common to help each other and cook together.

How to make Tuk Meric

Our host Srey Moch makes a delicious Beef Lok Lak, one of the most famous meals in Cambodia, even if its not a traditional Khmer homemade food (it came from Vietnam, and you can read more here). What makes the difference is the sauce on the side: it is a mix of lemon, salt and pepper, called Tuk Meric. Some families like Srey Moch’s use a dash of fish sauce and sugar and some minced garlic and chili in it as well. The beef itself comes already with a sauce (made from oyster sauce, soy sauce and onions), but will be dipped in the side sauce as well. You can also try to just eat the rice with the lemon-pepper-salt-mix!

Homemade Khmer food 101: Pork balls

There are many ways to make a vegetable soup with pork balls, but our host Vannarith has a special recipe. Usually you would just like season minced pork and form it to small balls. But when we talk about homemade Khmer food, the pork balls aren’t just rolled. The pork will be minced and them smashed on a table of wood board, picked up and smashed again. The reason for this process is to break the proteins, what enhanced taste and texture. If you come a bit more early, Vannarith will show you how it’s done properly, and you can even try it out yourself. You will see that the shape is also different, they aren’t formed like perfect round balls, but a bit more flat.

Soup with papaya (Sngor Sup Lahong )

Papaya soup with pork rib is one of the homemade Khmer food

In Cambodian cuisine you see the use of fruits as vegetables quite often. The mango salad is made from green or sour mangos, so is the papaya salad. Our host Panha Yem in Battambang cooks Sngor Sup Lahong, and one important ingredient is green papaya (Khmer: lahong). You may only know papaya as a sweet orange fruit, but in most dishes Khmer homemade food is made with the, not ripe state. It will be cut into cubes and then cooked together with pork rips. The soup itself is clear and the meat and papaya giving it the distinctive taste. It is common that you eat the soup together with rice and other dishes. Most food comes either as it is cooked or together, but there is no concept of courses (only fruits will be served last.)

Want to try it? Just check out all of our hosts.

Book now your cooking class experience!

Experience local life in Cambodia

Written by André Ruys on 06/11/2019. Posted in Experience Cambodia, Khmer food, local life.

One of the most recent trends in the travel industry are authentic experiences. While overtourism let travelers reconsider to go to the hotspots in a country, they may change to lesser known, but more individual destinations like experience local life in Cambodia when you visit families. The travelmarket report recently wrote: “More and more travelers are demanding an “authentic” travel experience, a trend that experts say plays into the hands of experienced, high-touch travel agents who can help consumers sift through the vast array of opportunities the world offers. According to a recent Expedia survey, 76% of baby boomers rate experiencing authentic local culture as “the most important” aspect of their decision making, while 62% of Generation X consumers rate local culture most important.”

If you are looking for authentic experiences, you may have to look very close. Nowadays many classic tour packages are just wrapped in new paper. Village tours and cooking classes, food tours and home stays are all a kind of authentic and locals experience. But the are also organized, and quite often there is not much time to interact with locals. Also, interpreters and tour guides may help to communicate, but can be a barrier as well. We are a cooking class with families.

Time needed to experience local life in Cambodia

At Dine With The Locals we do not provide guided tours. We let you have the full experience with the host family, without interference. Our hosts are not working in the tourism industry, their houses are private and not open to the public. Also, the tour itself is private: It’s just you, the people traveling with you and a Khmer family. If you are curious enough, you will get a much deeper understanding of the daily life, the dreams and challenges of locals in Cambodia. Dine With The Locals means that you cook with locals, eat with locals and experience local life in Cambodia.

Rice harvest at the organic farm in Battambang

You can stay one or two hours, and even longer if the hosts have time. We had guests staying for 4 hours with our host Vannak Khun in Phnom Penh and talking about modern art. We had even requests if guests can stay overnight at our host in Banteay Meanchey, because it was so beautiful there (we do not provide accommodation yet).

So much to learn from locals

One great example of local life is the use of the mortar. In Khmer its called tabal, and we use it as well in the official name of our company tabalr technologies Co. Ltd. It is one of the most common tools used in Khmer cuisine. In former times, it was the only way to blend spices and other ingredients. But even now, in the age of electricity, most Khmer will use the mortar instead of the blender. The latter is mostly used to make fruit shakes. When you make the Kroeung spice paste with your hands, crashing the lemongras and tumeric until it becomes a thick paste, you understand what local life is.