Trying Cambodian Food

As you might expect, Cambodian food is very different from what you might typically find in Britain.

Up until now we have been eating mostly at the CHO restraunt: it is run by the NGO we are working for. The only customers ever here are us and the other volunteers. It serves good Cambodian food at a good price, but of course eating here day after day we run out of new things to try, and all the food they serve here is based around rice anyway. It is also where we seem to be doing most of our work so we do our best to get out and about.

Nowhere else we have found does food we can really trust though. We have eaten at one of the casinos which was nice. They did an all you can eat salad bar but when we ordered a beef burger as well it was only half cooked.

Last night we really went all out. We went to a busy restaurant and simply ordered what most of the other people in the restaurant were eating. 

Unfortunately we hadn't checked what it was. Alison let out a squeal of delight when she saw one dish arrive: "entrails!" (I might have thought they were mushrooms otherwise). We also got a big bowl of fish pastey stuff, some rare-cooked beef (the only part of the meal I quite enjoyed- although we still didn't finish it), a large bowl of salad with ice cubes on it (we were dubious about how well washed it was) and a few little extras like chilli and some sand-like powder.

We had Angkor beer with the meal: possibly the nastiest beer I've ever tasted: very watery. 

After Alison's apparent delight at getting entrails she didn't manage to eat more than one piece. Then it was Jack and I's turn, they were very very chewy. I think the following picture says it all:

We had Oreo's back at our guest house.

Today we were treated to another Cambodian delicacy. We were doing some work in the CHO restaurant when we were unexpectedly given some white eggs. We were shown how to open them and inside they didn't look like any kind of egg I'd seen before. Unfortunately Alison was quick to inform me that these were duck fetuses.

They actually tasted very good; something of a cross between chicken and egg. As we ate through them and recognised bits of the developing duck, however, it took a lot of mental focus to continue eating them.

I'm sure lots more Cambodian delicacies await us...

Angus