Me at The Smokin’ Pot Cooking School, Battambang :
Battambang has been saved! I had a nice relaxing evening eating at the hotel and watching Crash in my room (great film). Although it probably sounds a bit sad if you read this sitting at home, but it was a great comfort as it’s only the second film I’ve watched since June, and the first one was at Raleigh fieldbase, and was crap.
I went cooking this morning and out with a moto guide this afternoon. I had a great cooking class today – it was similar to a Thai class last year, but this time I went to the market, which was a real eye opener. All kinds of things were for sale – insects, bettle nuts, the staple ingredients, frogs, live fish, snake type fish, live (and cooked) turtles, a cow’s cock (described to us as a “cow’s snake, if you know what I mean”) and an extremely varied selection of fruit. The guy from The Smokin’ Pot restaurant was great at explaining stuff, even the fruit which weren’t part of the course. We took quite a while going through the market as it was a larger than usual class.
The market should be visited on the first day of training for a Health and Safety Executive graduate trainee. Fish were being cut up in front of you, they were jumping out their bowls, fish heads were all over the place, and there was a lot of marinated meat ‘that was good for up to 7 months’. A couple in the group even saw a skinned frog, still gasping on for its last breaths. When the market seller saw their surprise, she apparently gave it a good thud over the head.
Fish anyone?
Who could refuse buying someone from this guy?
We started off with a traditional Khmer Chicken Amok Curry, then a beef stir fry, and a sweet fish soup. Some of the group then tried their first Durian fruit, and I got stuck into a ‘custard apple’ and ‘milk fruit’ (see picture below, left and right respectively).
Market trading :
A “Cow’s Snake” ;-> :
Shortly after I headed off on a moto to see Phnom Sampeu (Sahm-Bpoh) but I’ll stick that in another post with pictures.