Fishing on Koh Trong

Fishing happens every day on Koh Trong, nets and lines are cast out into the Mekong along the waters edge. A less common occurrence is the opportunity to fish in the ponds dotted around the centre of the Island. This is not your regular pond fishing and there is no sitting for hours waiting for a fish to take the bait. Here you dive right in, mud knee high and poised ready to pounce on the first fish to make a dash for freedom. 

The water is first emptied using a pump attached to a generator into an adjacent pond. Once the levels are low the pump is switched off and the water is emptied one bucket at a time to reveal the thick mud at the bottom. The fish are Snakehead fish which like to bury themselves into the mud. The team dig away into the bottom of the pond using their hands hoping to grab onto a fish.

Spotters are dotted along the edges of the water ready to shout as soon as they see one escaping, the fish are quick but no match for the team who work together to flush them out. There is a lot of shouting, a lot of laughing and a lot of mud.

Once water has been emptied, it is returned from the neighbouring pond and the process is repeated in reverse in order to catch as many fish as possible. Soon bags and tubs are filling up with fish of all sizes. At the moment they look like muddy eels but after a day spent in clean water they are ready for selling and cooking.

The fish are sold on Koh Trong and go for around 15,000 Riel per kilo for the larger ones so it's a good way of earning some extra money for the farmers.  

Cooking Kralan

Kralan is something of a speciality in Kratie. It is not uncommon to see sellers dotted along the roads with bundles carefully weighed and bound into neat parcels. If you are unfamiliar with Kralan it is a dish of sticky rice and beans cooked inside bamboo. The recipe itself is quite simple, using ingredients and bamboo packaging that are found in abundance. The preparation and cooking are a different story all together. 

Cooking started at 8am, the beans were toasted (check out the slippers) and steamed and the rice was washed and covered to stop the chickens from feasting. Meanwhile the men set out to find the perfect bamboo just outside the front of the house.

Three hours later it was time to start mixing things together, we had 10kg of rice and there was a lot of debate over how much sugar, salt, condensed milk and fresh coconut to add. The debate draws in a few more cooks and soon there are 5 women tasting, mixing, adding and re-tasting. By the time the final mix is agreed upon the men have got to work cutting the bamboo and the children have got hungry and started to drink the condensed milk.

At 1pm we were ready to start filling the bamboo. The end is capped off with the fibres from the fresh coconut and soon there is a wall of fire burning just behind us. Each Kralan is roasted against the fire for 3-4 hours and turned regularly for even cooking. I am jokingly invited to warm myself by the blazing fire and reminded that it is cold in my county.

At 4pm the first batch is ready but it can’t be eaten yet, first the outside of the bamboo must be carefully peeled away. One by one children and adults walk away with their prize and the cooking goes on until 10pm, a full 14 hours since we started.

Cooking Grilled Banana With Sweet Rice

Shopping on the Island is never a fruitless experience. On the occasions when a shop has run out of stock it is not long before a neighbour pays us a visit bearing a gift. This time we were presented with a huge bunch of bananas fresh from a tree in the garden. The banana here are delicious but these things ripen at a rate of at least 10 a day. 

To avoid several days of bananas for breakfast, lunch and dinner I called on my friend So Tee to show me how to make grilled bananas with sweet rice. Within minutes she had arrived at our house with family in tow. After realising I did not have enough coconut milk So Tee called to our neighbour and soon came back with a coconut and this intimidating contraption that I soon realised would help us to make the fresh coconut milk.

So Tee put me to work grating the coconut while she prepared the rice, boiling it with coconut milk a little sugar and salt. 

Once the rice was ready and all of the kids had approved the taste we got to work shaping it into thin sheets and carefully wrapping it around the bananas.

Everything was tightly rolled inside a banana leaf which was then secured with bamboo skewers ready to grill.

The process takes time and we were all getting hungry so we recruited an extra chef to help us.

There is a lovely shop on the Western side of the island that sells these tasty snacks for just 500 riel. They take time to make so you will often only see them in the afternoon. Keep your eyes open as you travel around and if you see them make sure you stop to buy one or two.

Good Food Good Health

With great care, time and effort the families on the island ensure that there is an abundance of fruit, vegetables, herbs and rice. There is in fact little that need to buy from the market across the river. Chickens are free range or 'freedom food' as they were described to me, fish and crab can be caught in the Mekong or local ponds. 

Several times now I have made the return ferry ride from the Market in town only to be told that the food I have brought is available on the Island where it is much tastier, much healthier and of course a better price. I am learning very quickly thanks to the ladies who dutifully pick through my shopping and ask me how much each item costs. I think they also like to see what I cook and how much I know about Cambodian food, I hope they are pleasantly surprised. 

In an effort to learn as much as possible I have found a good friend So Tee who is willing to swap cooking classes with me. I teach one recipe, So Tee teaches me one in return and of course the produce must come from the Island. The first dish I have been taught is a nutritious fragrant stew called Samlor Kakor. The stew is packed full of freshly harvested veg and a prime example of the variety of produce grown on the Island. There is a good recipe and description for this dish on the KhmerFood.Bizz website if you would like to try cooking it. 

http://khmerfood.biz/index.php/soups-curries/20-recipes/soups-curries/133-soup-samlor-kako

The key to this dish is the fresh green kroeung spice paste that is carefully minced and crushed in a pestle and mortar. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the lemongrass leaves were used to give the paste its colour and extra flavour.

So Tee added a selection of green papaya, green banana, aubergine, green bean and pumpkin all fresh picked from the garden.

After frying off some prahok, diced pork and the curry paste she added the veg and cooked everything together with water and coconut milk.

The finished dish was as good as promised, a fragrant lightly spiced soup packed with vegetables and filling enough to eat on its own.