Ed Charles
The Australian
March 24, 2007
I AM at the new central market in Siem Reap, Cambodia, enduring the smell that pervades every market here, from Battambang and Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville on the coast. The odour comes from a red washing-up bowl filled with grey sludge in which float pieces of silver fish. The smell is outdone only by an equally pungent pile of grey paste with bits of rotting fish poking out.
The wet grey stuff is fish sauce, while the other is fish paste, although both seem to be called prahoc; they smell and look awful to the unaccustomed nose and eye.
Prahoc is a vital flavouring in almost everything savoury in Cambodia. So common is it that the national flag, which features the ubiquitous emblem of Angkor Wat, should be soaked in the stuff.
Despite the appalling smell, the sauce doesn't put me off my food. At a market cafe, I find Angkor beer perfectly complements a green mango salad. Inevitably, the salad is made with prahoc, sugar and tomatoes, plus crispy caramelised chips of, yes, dried fish. Not since kipper have I thought dried fish could be this good.
After this entree, I order a main course of amoc, the soup that is Cambodia's national dish. Every local chef has a twist on the traditional recipe but there are only two ways of serving it: in a coconut shell or in a container fashioned from banana leaves. Today we are eating it from the former.
Helpfully, the menu lists the ingredients in picture-book form. It seems we are trying snakehead fish with green vegetables, something referred to as "a kind of gourd", lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves and whole piles of other stuff. Most important, the dish contains palm sugar and krachai (or kachai), a sort of rhizome. Oh, and piles of sticky rice. It's absolutely delicious.
The next day at dawn I travel to the village of Chong Kneas. As we arrive, the rising sun peeks through stilt houses and reflects off the surface of Tonle Sap (literally: the freshwater lake). Sprawling across a shallow 3000 sq km in the middle of the country, the lake feeds the river of the same name that joins the Mekong at Phnom Penh. Long narrowboats are weighed down with large catches of tiny fish that are shovelled into wicker baskets numbered in red. We cross the lake to the river, where we see the floating and stilt villages of the fishermen at Prek Tuol.
Everybody is fishing. Teenage boys crouch on the bows of ancient canoes, throwing nets. Fish traps bubble with frenzied occupants. Fishermen operate large traps that look like stick-thin trebuchets. There's no sign of the rare, 3m, 300kg Mekong giant catfish today, one of the hundreds of species that live in this lake. But I can't escape the fact that fish, together with rice, is the national dish.
Indeed, fish represents 80 per cent of the protein eaten here. If a family doesn't have an earthenware jar of teuk trei -- a small anchovy-like freshwater fish -- fermenting away somewhere, the chances are they are out fishing, farming or selling the 400,000 tonnes of it caught annually.
Come September each year, the Mekong bursts its banks here, reverses its flow and sprawls across up to 18,000 sq km. For the Khmer fishing is an ancient practice and the result is those never-ending piles of prahoc.
The wet grey stuff is fish sauce, while the other is fish paste, although both seem to be called prahoc; they smell and look awful to the unaccustomed nose and eye.
Prahoc is a vital flavouring in almost everything savoury in Cambodia. So common is it that the national flag, which features the ubiquitous emblem of Angkor Wat, should be soaked in the stuff.
Despite the appalling smell, the sauce doesn't put me off my food. At a market cafe, I find Angkor beer perfectly complements a green mango salad. Inevitably, the salad is made with prahoc, sugar and tomatoes, plus crispy caramelised chips of, yes, dried fish. Not since kipper have I thought dried fish could be this good.
After this entree, I order a main course of amoc, the soup that is Cambodia's national dish. Every local chef has a twist on the traditional recipe but there are only two ways of serving it: in a coconut shell or in a container fashioned from banana leaves. Today we are eating it from the former.
Helpfully, the menu lists the ingredients in picture-book form. It seems we are trying snakehead fish with green vegetables, something referred to as "a kind of gourd", lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves and whole piles of other stuff. Most important, the dish contains palm sugar and krachai (or kachai), a sort of rhizome. Oh, and piles of sticky rice. It's absolutely delicious.
The next day at dawn I travel to the village of Chong Kneas. As we arrive, the rising sun peeks through stilt houses and reflects off the surface of Tonle Sap (literally: the freshwater lake). Sprawling across a shallow 3000 sq km in the middle of the country, the lake feeds the river of the same name that joins the Mekong at Phnom Penh. Long narrowboats are weighed down with large catches of tiny fish that are shovelled into wicker baskets numbered in red. We cross the lake to the river, where we see the floating and stilt villages of the fishermen at Prek Tuol.
Everybody is fishing. Teenage boys crouch on the bows of ancient canoes, throwing nets. Fish traps bubble with frenzied occupants. Fishermen operate large traps that look like stick-thin trebuchets. There's no sign of the rare, 3m, 300kg Mekong giant catfish today, one of the hundreds of species that live in this lake. But I can't escape the fact that fish, together with rice, is the national dish.
Indeed, fish represents 80 per cent of the protein eaten here. If a family doesn't have an earthenware jar of teuk trei -- a small anchovy-like freshwater fish -- fermenting away somewhere, the chances are they are out fishing, farming or selling the 400,000 tonnes of it caught annually.
Come September each year, the Mekong bursts its banks here, reverses its flow and sprawls across up to 18,000 sq km. For the Khmer fishing is an ancient practice and the result is those never-ending piles of prahoc.
5 comments:
This is super reflection as said "prohoc should be raised as national flage...like Angkor Wat.
Wow, so interesting!
Where Angkor Wat is the Landmark and National Symbol of Cambodia territory, Prohok is the National Symbol of Cambodian Food. There is no such thing as Thai or Loa prohok, Vietnamese prohok, or Chinese prohok, it's only Cambodia prohok. I'm proud of it and it really tasts awful the cambodian food without prohok in it.
I'm proud to be called Prohok because I'm Cambodian.
How about Khmer's Phauk? In addition to Phauk & Prohok, Khmer makes the best dried fishes (just like Korean is good in Kimchee). There are so many kinds of dried fishes out there that aren't found anywhere else on earth. I'm so prouded.
yes you can call yourself Prohoc, ok with me!
Prohoc is fermented fish with heavy salt! Does Prohoc smell pungent?? Well! It is depend what kind of fish is used and what ingredients is used such as herbal!
American or European love to eat Cheese! Prohoc is a form of cheese for Cambodian people!
By the way fish sauce is also made from Prohoc!!!!I had seen how it is done too! Sorry I can reveal in here because it is trade secret!aha
Like any food it is an acquire taste!!!
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