Pork-stuffed bitter melon in clear soup

Over the weekend my friend Rina took me to her homeland in Kandal province. She spent the time at her parent's house alternately working in the rice paddy, tormenting me, and cooking huge meals for all of the family friends who came to help with the farming.

I did my best to try and record the recipes as she was making them, but the amounts given are just estimates. One of the things I have learned so far about Khmer food is that it is not a precise science. If you don't have an ingredient, you substitute something else. If you have something extra, you can probably add it in. Every recipe is made slightly different every time, but still turns out delicious.

Bitter melon is bitter. There's no way around it. The boiling does soften the taste as does the pork, but it's still a bitter flavor. Americans don't have much appreciation for bitter the way many other cultures do, and although I'm learning to adjust, it's not on the top of my list of favorite foods (and is why I haven't tested this recipe at home before posting it).

Ingredients (approximate):

3 bitter melons

For the filling:

2 cups pork

2-3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tsp msg

2 scallions/spring onions, chopped

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

For the soup:

Water

3.5 tablespoons fish sauce

1.5 tablespoons sugar

1 tsp msg

1 tsp salt

Note about the msg--although it was used in this recipe, you can omit it. It will still be flavorful without. You'd be surprised how often you find msg in food around here.

Directions:

1. Rina got a giant hunk of pork and then basically battered it with a knife to make it into a mince/mush. The notes I took while she was doing this was "chop shit out of pork." You can use her method or get minced pork.

2. Combine pork with all of the other filling ingredients. Mix well.

3. Cut the bitter melons in half and remove seeds with a spoon.

4. Stuff hollowed-out melon with the pork mixture.

5. Add to pot and fill with water until covered. Bring to a boil.

6. When melon becomes soft enough to break with a spoon, add additional fish sauce, sugar, msg and salt to the broth.

This dish is made in Thailand and Vietnam as well. In Khmer, it's name sounds like "sngor mras." Here, it's served with rice, and is not eaten the way we westerners usually approach a soup. The soup is served family style and each person gets their own bowl of rice. Everyone serves themselves and small spoonfuls of the meat, melon and broth are added bite by bite to the bowl of rice.

Lunch on National Road 5

Another lunch in the field. This time it consisted of sweet pork with a marinated egg that was reminiscent of the "bacon candy" that Robyn from EatingAsia tipped me off about, green peppers and pork and because I was feeling sick, tom yum soup. I had a long debate with my co-workers about whether or not tom yum was Khmer, one arguing that it was and the other arguing that it was of Thai origin. I've had it at Thai restaurants, so I guess I'll give it to them.

First lunch in the field

I'm mostly settled in here in Phnom Penh. A big part of my job involves visiting rural Kandal province outside of town. (If you want to know more about what I am doing, check out my Kiva blog.) We call these days going out "in the field." Yesterday was my first day in the field and as such, my first lunch in the field.



When the Khmer fellow I was working with asked what I wanted for lunch, I said, "Oh, anything" and let him do the ordering. My laissez-faire attitude was rewarded with a big bowl of duck in a sans-coconut milk green curry with water morning glory and giant hunks of blood.

Now, this isn't my first run-in with blood. I'm generally pretty disgusted by blood sausage of any sort and find a full English breakfast to be pretty unpleasant due to the blood angle. But there have been occasions when I've actually enjoyed duck blood, so I gave this one a shot and was pleasantly surprised. Mild and overpowered by the curry, it was not unpleasant, and the bone-in duck meat in the dish was tender and delicious. I got the sense that this duck had been quacking pretty recently.



We also had fish, one big one and a plate of small ones that were meant to be eaten whole, bones and all. Another dish was papaya soaked in copious amounts of fish sauce. They love fish sauce around here it seems, which is lucky because I do too.



My favorite dish was the kro auchhouk with beef. I had never eaten lotus rootlet before, and in fact, we just had a group huddle here in the office trying to figure out what it's called in English.

We decided on lotus rootlet or lotus rhizome, although there may be a more common variation that I'm not aware of.

All in all, my "field" meals was the best I have had so far in Cambodia and it almost made the 7 hours on the back of a motorcycle worth it.