Woks & Amoks in Battambang

We’re not quite sure why we ended up in Battanbang. The guidebook tells us that it’s Cambodia’s second largest city, urges us to admire the lovely French colonial architecture and strongly recommends the bamboo train - a small self propelled cart which travels along the regular train line. Part of the fun (they tell us) is that when an actual train comes along you jump off and quickly dismantle your bamboo vehicle. No thanks. What we actually discovered upon arrival here is that Battambang is somewhat of a one horse town, lacking Siem Reap’s generous helping of Angkor razzle-dazzle

In spite of our dubious first impressions, we dutifully went to look at the French Colonial architecture. It’s a bank now, painted marigold yellow. Somewhat desperately, the guidebook also heaps praise on the four faced clock tower. The four faced clock tower is made of concrete, is about 15 years old and filthy. And 3 of the faces don’t have hands.

In view of our reluctance to be killed on a railway line, we decided instead to enrol in a Kymer cooking class. Smokin’ Pot is run by an entrepreneurial Cambodian called Vannack. At 27 he’s already set up a restaurant, cooking school and is 2 days away from opening a hostel. On top of this he has been married for 10 years, has 2 children and has grown an extremely impressive moustache.

First we picked the 3 dishes we’d be making: hot and sour fish soup, chicken amok and stir fry beef with basil leaves. We walked together to the market to buy the ingredients, including the snake-head fish which was plucked, still slithering, out of a shallow box and bonked on the head and scaled in front of us. We also picked up some fish paste – made of fish bits and salt which have been left to ferment for up to 2 months. Joe was aghast at cooking with such a pungent seasoning, but bravely resolved to eat whatever it went in.



Back at the school the first task was to make the paste which serves as a base to 90% of Khmer dishes. Sat outside in the sunshine, we used enormous cleavers to slice and chop chillies, lemon grass, lime leaves, garlic, turmeric, ginza then smooshed the whole lot together with a pestle and mortar, adding salt and sugar. With the paste made, we prepped the veg: snake beans, aubergine, pebble-like mushrooms and morning glory. Vannack was bemused to learn that we don’t generally eat morning glory back home – rightly so, because it’s actually very tasty.



All the dishes were cooked speedily in a smokin’ wok and intriguingly the secret ingredient in all of them was water. Vannack revealed that Joe’s meat had been cut better (mine was ‘too chewy’) but thankfully he judged my paste to be superior. Predictably, even though we missed breakfast, eating 3 main courses in the space of 2 hours took its toll and we waddled back to the hotel for a well earned (sort of) kip.