On the way home from work I stopped at a different restaurant on one of Phnom Penh's main streets. The kitchen is in front of the restaurant on the sidewalk.
Just in front of that there was a glass case with sausage, fish, pork and chicken hanging; I was surprised; there were very few flies around. The kitchen was four very large pots filled to the brim with dark liquid and bulging items sticking out of the water. I could not tell what was in the pots.
The woman tending the pots told me that I could have "pork leg". I looked at the middle pot and it looked like there were several pork hocks with the skin on soaking in a very dark brown liquid.
She asked if I wanted fried rice or rice porridge. I looked at the bowl of rice porridge and said fried rice. The porridge looked like water with just a little rice thrown in to say it was porridge.
The chairs were bright pink, tables were a thin metal with wobbly legs, some had bare metal tops and others had sticky shelf paper decorating them.
On the table was a very small bowl with soy sauce and another with about 1/3 cup of the of sliced extremely hot red peppers. I normally use one or two slices of these peppers to warm my soy sauce. This many peppers would take care of me for a year. There was another sauce in a similar bowl that appeared to be made with beans, I tired the sauce but could not determine the main ingredient.
My fired rice arrived, there was enough rice for two people, the "pork leg" arrived, and it was also large. The pork hock was dark brown resting on a bed of very well cooked vegetables which were the same color.
When I saw the meat, I thought "this will be an expensive meal." I pealed the skin and fat from the meat and bone. For a Cambodian meal there was a lot of meat and there were no splinters of bone. The pork had a flavor with a faint hint of cinnamon.
As I ate the pork, I thought "this is the most meat I have had in Cambodia." I knew that much meat would be expensive. I was still surprised when the bill came, $7.00.
No comments:
Post a Comment