cambodian cuisine

Natang Recipe for a Cambodian Pork Coconut and Peanut Dip with Crispy Rice Cakes

Natang Recipe

pork

vegetable oil

coconut cream

coconut milk

g peanuts (roasted, pounded)

garlic (chopped)

shallots (sliced)

red medium chillies

tbsp fish sauce

tbsp palm sugar

Rice Cakes

Kaffir lime leaves

Remove the seeds and chop the end off the chillis and slice the chillis. Soak the chilli pieces in hot water for 15 minutes. Break down the pieces either with a mortar and pestle or in a food processor.

Add the oil to a wok over medium heat and stir-fry the shallots. When translucent, add the garlic and cook for one minute.

Add the mince and cook through. Add the red chilli paste and cook for 1 minute before adding the coconut cream.

Stir-fry constantly for about 3 minutes more until the coconut cream is incorporated into the mixture.

Add the coconut milk and season with fish sauce to taste. If the mix tastes a little bland add some more fish sauce. Do not add salt. If you want the dip to be a little sweeter, add the palm sugar. Add most of the crushed peanuts, reserving some to garnish. Remove from heat.

To serve, you can either serve the dip in a bowl or serve on individual rice cakes, sprinkling the rest of the crushed peanuts and top with Kaffir lime leaves and sprigs of coriander leaves.

The Cambodian curry paste called kroeung is an irreplaceable ingredient in Khmer cooking and yellow kroeung is the most versatile of the curry pastes, used in many classic Cambodian dishes, especially soups and dips.

Khmer Yellow Kroeung — Kroeung Samlor Machou Recipe

tbsp galangal (peeled and chopped finely)

kaffir lime zest

tsp turmeric (peeled and chopped finely)

garlic (peeled and chopped finely)

shallots (peeled and chopped finely)

Place the lemongrass in a well-supported mortar and pound with the pestle until you can no longer see the rings of the lemongrass and it's all mashed up.

Add the galangal, turmeric and kaffir lime zest and pound until they're incorporated into the mashed lemongrass.

Add the garlic and pound and then add the shallots and pound.

The finished paste will still have some fibres from the lemongrass but should otherwise be quite smooth.

This pork spare ribs with star anise recipe makes a wonderfully aromatic Cambodian style of pork ribs that you can tuck into on their own, washed down with cold beers of course, or you can serve as one of a number of dishes as part of a Cambodian family feast.

Cambodian Pork Spare Ribs with Star Anise

500 g pork spare ribs (should be 6 ribs)

star anise pods

garlic

tbsp honey

tbsp light soy sauce

Cut the spare into 2 pieces of 3 ribs. Make an incision between each rib of around 4-5 cm, keeping the ribs together. If there is a significant amount of fat at the thick end of the ribs, score the fat to allow deeper penetration of the marinade.

Steam the ribs for 20 minutes and allow to cool.

Heat a skillet and toast the star anise pods.

Add these and the garlic to a mortar and make a paste.

Transfer the paste to a container, add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.

Add the ribs and coat with the marinade. Marinade the ribs in the fridge for at least 3 hours and up to 24 hours for best results.

As the ribs are cooked through already from the steaming, we just want to caramalise that marinade to get a glossy finish on the grill or BBQ.

Place on the grill or BBQ over medium heat and turn frequently, using the leftover marinade to baste the ribs.

Serve immediately.

This Cambodian green papaya salad recipe makes Cambodia’s Bok Lahong or Nhoam Lahong, a fragrant, crunchy pounded salad that’s a little funky, spicy, sour, salty, and sweet. Typically eaten as a late afternoon snack, and made to order, it has cousins in Laos (Tum Som), Thailand (Som Tum), and Vietnam (Gỏi Đủ Đủ).

Cambodian Green Papaya Salad Recipe

garlic (finely chopped)

2-3 bird’s eye chillies (finely chopped)

purple shallots (finely sliced)

tbsp liquid palm sugar –

tbsp lime juice

shrimp paste (optional)

shrimps

green papaya

carrot

cucumber

cherry tomatoes

herbs

peanuts

Throw the finely chopped bird’s eye chillies and garlic, finely sliced purple shallots, fish sauce, palm sugar, lime juice, and optional shrimp paste (only add this if you like funky flavours) into your big wooden mortar and pestle and pound until everything is well combined and soft and juicy. You don’t want the consistency of a spice paste so don’t go too far.

Soak your dried shrimps in a small dish of hot water for about ten minutes.

Prep all your fresh fruit and vegetables, grating, shredding or julienning your green papaya, carrot and cucumber, and slicing your cherry tomatoes in half, then pop the lot in a big salad bowl.

Wash and gently pat dry your fresh fragrant herbs – basil is essential, coriander and mint and also nice – pluck the basil and mint leaves from stalks, but leave some coriander sprigs in there. Add most to the salad bowl, leaving some to garnish.

Drain your dried shrimps and add half to the salad bowl, along with two tablespoons of peanuts, and the juicy dressing that you first pounded until soft. Gently combine everything together, using gloved hands.

Pile the salad onto a serving plate and then garnish with the remaining fresh herbs, dried shrimps, and peanuts, and serve immediately.

This Samlor Korko recipe makes a traditional Cambodian stirring pot soup, a healthy and hearty Cambodian vegetable soup. Also written as samlor korkor, samlor koko, samlaw kako, and so on, it&#39;s a much-loved soup that for many Cambodians, particularly of an older generation, it&#39;s Cambodia&#39;s national dish. With the inclusion of kreoung and prahok, it&#39;s quintessentially Cambodian.

Samlor Korko Recipe for a Traditional Cambodian Stirring Pot Soup

tsp prahok (or 2 tbsp fish sauce)

pumpkin

long Asian eggplant

eggplants

pea eggplants

carrot (large)

beans beans

winged beans

green jackfruit

green banana

tbsp neutral cooking oil

catfish

tsp salt

tsp palm sugar or brown sugar

water (or vegetable stock)

Use our recipe to make a green kroeung Khmer herb and spice paste.

Put 1 teaspoon of prahok (fermented fish paste) in 50 mls of water, stir vigorously and mash any chunks until they’re almost dissolved. Discard any bones and stringy pieces.

Dry roast the long grain rice in a wok (see notes above).

Prepare the vegetables and fruit, chopping everything into bite sized pieces: chop your Asian pumpkin and long Asian eggplant into bite sized pieces; cut the small round eggplants into quarters; slice the carrot into ½ cm slices to give colour to the dish; chop the beans into pieces of approx. 4cm length; chop the papaya into bite-size pieces; slice the green banana into ½ cm slices; and cut the green jackfruit into strips lengthways. Set everything aside.

Stir-fry the pea eggplants in 1 tablespoons neutral cooking oil in a wok on medium-high heat, constantly stir-frying the eggplants until they are soft, brown and a little charred. This removes the bitterness and sweetens. Set them aside.

Heat 2 tablespoons of cooking oil in a large soup pot. Add two tablespoons of green kroeung and quickly fry for a minute or less to release the aromas, before adding the chopped pork or chicken, the prahok in its liquid or fish sauce, salt, and sugar, and fry until cooked.

Add two cups of water (or vegetable stock), then the firmest vegetables first, such as the pumpkin, carrots and green fruits, along with half the dry-roasted rice, stir, and bring to a boil, before turning down the heat to simmer gently.

Add another two cups of water to the pot, along with the catfish if you choose to use it (or fish of your choice), the remaining vegetables that take less time to cook, and the other 2 tablespoons of green kroeung, and stir.

Continue to simmer gently, add the remaining roasted ground rice, and the remaining water, stir, and continue to simmer until you have a dense, hearty, almost stew-like soup.

Taste, and add more salt or sugar if needed so that the flavour is balanced. If necessary, add more water, stir, simmer, then ladle into individual bowls. If this is a main meal, Cambodians would eat this with steamed white jasmine rice.

This Cambodian sour soup with pork, pineapple and coconut milk recipe makes versatile dish that you could serve as a soup by thinning it out with stock or water or as an almost curry-like stew by letting it simmer longer and reduce right down. Serve with rice.

Cambodian Sour Soup With Pork, Pineapple and Coconut Milk Recipe

pineapple

tbsp yellow kroeung

tsp prahok (can use 1-2 tbsp fish sauce)

pea eggplants (around 32-40

400 ml coconut milk

tamarind juice

water or stock (we prefer stock)

Thai basil

red chilli (finely-chopped, optional)

Make the Khmer yellow herb/spice paste called Kroeung Samlor Machou (see recipe link, above).

Prepare the pineapple: depending on the size, cut the pineapple in half or one-third from the top. Peel the top part of the pineapple and chop it into bite-sized cubes. For the remainder of the pineapple, which you will use as a bowl, scoop out the pineapple meat and chop into similar size pieces and set aside.

Heat 2 tablespoons of cooking oil in a pan and fry the pork, prahok or fish sauce (optional) and 3 tablespoons of kroeung until the pork has some colour. When done, transfer to a soup or stew pot.

Heat another tablespoon of cooking oil and pan fry the pea eggplants, continually turning them, until they begin to brown and even char a little. Transfer to the soup or stew pot.

Add the coconut milk, pineapple, palm sugar and the rest of the kroeung (3 tablespoons) to the soup/stew pot and stir everything until well combined.

If you’re making a soup, add the cups of water/stock and simmer on low heat for at least one hour, stirring and tasting occasionally until the pork is tender. The water will give you a lighter soup, the stock a richer and more intensely flavoured soup. If you decide to make a curry-like stew, skip the water/stock, simmer on low heat, stirring and tasting occasionally until the pork is tender.

Add the tamarind juice when you think the pork is done, taste. It should be balanced, both sweet and sour. If it’s missing something, add a pinch of salt and taste again. If you want some bite, finely chop the small red chillies, and add those.

When the pork is tender, you’re ready to serve. It won’t all fit in your pineapple bowl, so pour as much as you can into the pineapple, garnish with Thai basil, and set at the centre of the table.

You could distribute the rest between small individual bowls for your guests, garnishing each with basil. Or you could simply serve from your pineapple bowl and top it up with the rest as needed.

Serve with a big bowl of steamed rice and a small dish of finely-chopped chillis.

Terence and Lara, we can't find prahok here (I've looked before when I wanted to make another of your recipes) so we used a little shrimp paste. Is that okay? Tasted great to us! We will definitely be making this again.

This was perfect! Just like my mom used to make. Cant get tamarind juice so was a bit sweet. Will balance better next time. Thank you!

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Top 6 cambodian cuisine recipes from across the web

The most viewed cambodian cuisine recipes by Recipe Cart users, saved from over 20,000 sites. Or, go to our Recipe Search Engineic_arrow_forward_48px

Top Tags

Natang Recipe

Khmer Yellow Kroeung — Kroeung Saml...

Cambodian Pork Spare Ribs with Star...

Cambodian Green Papaya Salad Recipe

Samlor Korko Recipe for a Tradition...

Cambodian Sour Soup With Pork, Pine...

The most viewed cambodian cuisine recipes by Recipe Cart users, saved from over 20,000 sites. Or, go to our Recipe Search Engine