Cambodia's Forgotten Food

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2018

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Food writer, chef and presenter Genevieve Taylor tells the story of how Cambodia’s cooking history was almost lost in the genocide that saw millions die in the mid-1970s. While food from its neighbours Thailand and Vietnam was spreading all over the world, Cambodia’s finest dishes were side-lined or lost. In the UK, there are just three restaurants focussing on Cambodian cuisine. Now, slowly but surely its traditional dishes are making a comeback.

Genevieve goes to Cambodia in search of the ingredients that make up its distinct flavours and in the UK she talks to Y Sok who runs two Cambodia restaurants in Marple and Altrincham, she meets Simon and Kamya Allen from the Khmer Kitchen in Somerset and she hears the story of Longteine de Monteiro, a chef who fled the Khmer Rouge regime and set up Cambodian restaurants in France and the US.

Transcript

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0:43.9	Hello, you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program.
0:48.9	Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure. We hope you enjoy it.
0:55.0	I want you to understand that Cambodian cuisine is rich, is an ancient art, it's complex, it's
1:08.0	refined. My name is
1:20.0	I'm Jennifer's out here, so I'm a food writer and I'm really interested in
1:24.6	Cambodian cuisine. So I'd wanted to go to Cambodia for a very long time. I'd read
1:29.2	about the food and it was really intriguing. So I went to the main food market in Phnom Penh.
1:36.0	It was like no market I'd ever been to before.
1:39.0	It was sort of a whirl of activity
1:41.0	and tucks and animals all sort of marching around.
1:46.1	From the market it was clear that the food culture was vibrant, but outside of the country
1:50.7	Cambodian food is hugely overshadowed by Vietnam and Thailand. It's a country
	...

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