Mother-Daughter Cookbook Takes Gourmand Award

Pomme cythère: Phler Makak in Khmer

By Neou Sarem, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
22 March 2010

Cambodian food is not well known. There are few Cambodian restaurants in foreign countries, and until recently there were not that many restaurants in the country of Cambodia.

But a Cambodian mother and daughter have put Cambodian cuisine on the map, winning in February a prestigious Gourmand Award, for 2009’s “Best Asian Cuisine Cookbook in the World.”

“Au Pays de la Pomme Cythere,” by Long Serey and her daughter, Kanika Linden, is an authentic Cambodian cookbook, with recipes for fish in coconut milk, salads and lemongrass soup.

It also the reclamation of an identity, one Linden said she might have lost.

“One day I invited my friends over, and I made amok, and they loved it,” she told VOA Khmer. “As I closed the door after the last friend left, I said to myself, ‘Why didn’t you do that before?’ Because I was ashamed.”

“You have to be proud of yourself,” she said. “You have to be proud to be Cambodian, to be Khmer.”

Linden did not always know how to cook. She learned from her mother, who was born Pol Sorey and escaped the Khmer Rouge three days before the fall of Phnom Penh. She resettled briefly in America and then moved to France.

“My daughter didn’t know how to cook,” Long Sorey said. So she tried to teach her.

“War destroyed everything we loved dearly,” she said. “So what is left? If any of us survives, we still have some of our traditions and Khmer mores, which we can pass to the next generation.”

Linden said she wanted to learn to cook when she was first pregnant, living in London with her husband. The book came from her mother’s efforts to teach her.

“And it was not an easy cooperation, because there were a lot of tears, a lot of crying, because my mom is a professional,” Linden said. “She knows about Cambodian food, even French food. She is an expert, and I am not. She knew that I wanted to have something in the simple ways.”

At first, her mother used terms that were too technical and confusing—something the two fixed when they made the book.

“She had to explain things to me in a very simple way,” Linden said. “So the book is designed for someone like me, with a lot of pictures, a lot of step-by-step.”

The 218-page “Au Pays de la Pomme Cythere,” which translates as, “In the Country of the Cytheran Apple,” took them 10 years to finish. It took phone calls and face-to-face meetings of a mother and her daughter.

It beat 6,000 entrants.

At last, Linden spent three months in Cambodia finishing the book. She lost 4.5 pounds doing it, because, she said, Cambodian food is healthy.

Cambodian food: Food trend prediction for 2008 by US magazine Bon Appetit and Gourmet

Our Predictions For 2008

12/31/07
By Tanya Steel
Excerpt from epicurious Bon Appetit magazine (USA)

...

4) Cambodian is the New Thai: A triangulation between Vietnamese, Chinese, and Thai cooking, Cambodian's emphasis on noodle dishes, curries, stir fries and prahok, the strong-flavored fish paste, will grow in popularity. Cambodian food has stronger flavors than Vietnamese, slightly more subtle that Thai and is not as heavy as Chinese.

Cambodia excited to be touted as the new trendy cuisine

Wed, 02 Jan 2008
DPA

Phnom Penh - Cambodian-based foodies and restaurateurs have gleefully greeted a prediction by top US magazines Bon Appetit and Gourmet that the nation's food will become 2008's new "It" cuisine. The Conde Nast-owned website Epicurious, which displays information from both magazines, posted the bold statement as a New Year prediction, saying the flavours were more subtle than those of neighbouring Thailand.

"A triangulation between Vietnamese, Chinese, and Thai cooking, Cambodian's emphasis on noodle dishes, curries, stir fries and prahok, the strong-flavored fish paste, will grow in popularity," Epicurious wrote.

"Cambodian food has stronger flavors than Vietnamese, slightly more subtle than Thai and is not as heavy as Chinese," it said, indicating it was perfect for figure-conscious celebrities looking for exotic tastes without Thai spice.

A prominent food expert, Australian Phil Lees, posted the link on his website Wednesday, cheekily throwing down a challenge to the huge international popularity of Thai food.

Although allies, Thais and Cambodians are historical rivals, and cultural experts from the two countries are constantly bickering over issues of cultural sovereignty.

In January 2003, rumoured comments by a Thai soap actress that the sacred Angkor Wat temple complex, featured on the Cambodian flag, was rightfully Thai resulted in an angry Cambodian mob burning the Thai embassy and a number of Thai businesses.

Food keeps alive memories of Cambodia

By fish and noodle soup
May 2, 2007
By Jane Dornbusch,
Boston Globe (Boston, Mass., USA)

LYNN -- When Cambodian native Kimthorn Penh arrived in the United States in 1984, she brought her husband, six of her eight surviving children, and little else. Her daughter Chanthou Taing, who was a teenager then, just laughs and shrugs when she's asked what the family was able to carry with them out of Thailand, where they lived in a refugee camp for nearly four years after fleeing the violent clashes between the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese in their homeland. The large stone mortar and pestle Penh uses to prepare her traditional dishes -- surely that came from home?

"Oh, no," says Taing. "Nothing that big or that heavy."

But the family did bring an intangible legacy with them: the elegant, refined cuisine of Cambodia, which Penh 70, has passed on to her children, and, they hope, to the next generation: Taing's 10-year-old daughter, Shainlee, loves Cambodian food, her mother reports. Today, Penh and her husband share a comfortable home in Lynn with Taing, Taing's husband , Hong, Shainlee, and another of Penh's daughters, Chanthang Ros.

"All my siblings know how to cook," says Ros, at 28 the youngest of Penh's children. "My mom is the root of all of it. I learned traditional dishes at home, where we cook together." Still, she says, "I wouldn't compare my skills to hers."

At home in Cambodia, Penh and her husband farmed, and she had a sideline selling her homemade specialties for parties, weddings, and temple ceremonies. When the communists took over, and the Vietnamese invaded, the family headed for the Thai border. "We were lucky," says Taing. "We made it through." In the refugee camp, Taing received some medical education and worked assisting American doctors there. After four years, those doctors used their influence to help the family relocate to the United States. Today, Taing is a nurse; Ros -- an infant when she left Cambodia -- is a senior human resources administrator for John Snow, Inc.

In the kitchen, the sisters defer to their mother as she prepares num ba chok, a rice vermicelli soup with fish. It's a typical dish, says Ros, in that it's light, healthful, and deeply flavored.

"It's complicated to describe and time-consuming to make," she says, a special-occasion dish. To make it, a trip to a well-stocked Asian grocery is in order, to obtain ingredients such as krachai , a rhizome that faintly resembles ginger root; the Cambodian anchovy paste known as prahok ; and the subtly tart, green Thai plum leaves or mokak leaves, whose bright flavor is far preferable to the puckery sourness of lime juice in this dish.

Once home, there's chicken soup to prepare, then simmer with tilapia and ground seasonings. In the oversized mortar and pestle, Penh grinds the kroeung, the characteristic spice paste of lemon grass, krachai, and turmeric. She deftly wraps cooked vermicelli around her fingers to form tidy bundles for serving. The vegetable garnishes that complete the soup are sliced paper-thin, lending the dish a sublime delicacy. The soup is delightfully layered in flavors and textures, served with a sweet-spicy sauce made from peanuts and coconut milk.

In her bright, airy dining room, Taing has created a space that echoes the feel of the homeland she remembers perfectly but hasn't seen in nearly 30 years. "It's open, more like Cambodia, with lots of sun for the plants," she says. "I wanted it to be open, for my mom." And in here, her American born and bred daughter can also connect with her heritage. Will Shainlee carry on the family cooking tradition? "She's trying to learn," says her mother.