[Cambodia]

If I had to eat one cuisine for the rest of my life, I would likely choose Thai. I would pick a subpar plate of pad kee mao over any of my dinner recipe regulars. It was for this very reason that I didn’t include Thailand in my list of countries. Still, I knew I wanted to hit southeast Asia on my culinary journey. I looked to Thailand’s neighbor, Cambodia, and realized I knew nothing about the country or its food.

After some research, I discovered that my lack of knowledge wasn’t abnormal—many consider it the “underrated” cuisine of southeast Asia. I stumbled upon an article from South East Asia Backpacker that outlined some features of Cambodian cuisine. Similar to its neighboring countries, the food has a Chinese influence and features rice in most meals. However, it doesn’t use quite as much sugar, chilies, or coconut milk as similar cuisines. The flavors are aromatic, using spices like lemongrass and coriander, and feature seafood from the Mekong River that flows through the country. As I scrolled, I found a dish called Lort Cha, which was a stir fry dish with rice pin noodles, which looked like large blades of grass. Everything I found online appealed to me, and I also thought this would be a fantastic opportunity to go to an Asian market. I drive by Tsai Market to get to my Meijer. It’s a teeny, pan-Asian store crammed between a Men’s Wearhouse and a yoga studio. With cold food in the car, I never justify a stop there after I’ve finished my grocery shopping. Now that I had a dish in mind, I could make the market my destination rather than an afterthought.

Walking into Tsai Market overwhelmed my senses. For one, the store was much larger than it looked on the outside. I stared down aisles and aisles of color—packages in hot pink and traffic-light green, sauces in every shade, sweets with cartoon drawings of fruits. The shelves were only up to my shoulders, so everything was in my line of sight. In one corner of the store, there were a few refrigerated shelves, displaying cold foods from bok choy to mochi. I grabbed some bean sprouts and kept moving. Fish sauce was next. I knew this would be tricky; even though I knew what it looked like, there was an entire aisle solely for sauces. Half of this space was used for soy sauce, in sizes ranging from five gallons to smaller than a bottle of Tabasco. It took some careful searching, but I finally found a small bottle with an English translation. Bonus: it was about three dollars cheaper than the Meijer equivalent.The next item on my list was oyster sauce, and though I looked for what felt like half an hour, I only found half gallon bottles of it. As much as I wanted to follow the recipe, I only needed a tablespoon. I would have to improvise at home.

As I wandered, I did notice that Cambodian cuisine was not as well represented as other Asian countries. Japan and South Korea dominated the snacks and sweets, Chinese pork and sausage sufficed for meat, and Vietnam ruled the rice noodles. I found the closest equivalent of Cambodian rice pin noodles. As I went up to check out, I admired the Korean beauty products near the register, wondering how to get the impossible “glass skin” look that was on each model in the advertisements. I grabbed a box of strawberry Pocky to push my total past the ten dollar card minimum. Not the most adventurous snack, but I was on a time crunch.

Once I got back to my apartment, I got cooking. I started boiling water, which would be poured over the rice noodles to cook them without overcooking. I knew from pad thai that putting rice noodles straight into boiling water resulted in a gummy mess. I marinated a chicken breast with cornstarch (common in many Asian cuisines to help tenderize the meat), soy sauce, and a half tablespoon each of soy sauce and hoisin sauce to substitute oyster sauce. This combination provides the earthy, rich flavor without going overboard. From there, I chopped green onion stalks, garlic, and onion while the meat marinated. I let oil heat in my pan while I opened my pack of rice noodles. They weren’t quite the pin noodles that I had been hoping for—they were a bit too thin and too long—but they would have to do for tonight. I poured the hot water over them, making sure to check them frequently. The best part about stir fry is how easy the actual cooking part is. Once everything was prepped, I just plopped elements into my pan, ensuring that the meat went first since it needed the most time to cook. Keeping my pan moving, I added everything else, before pouring a sauce of dark soy, regular soy, fish sauce, and sugar over it all. The result was a sticky, delicious-looking pan of lort cha.

I used chopsticks to dive in. The sauce gave every part of the meal a salty, fishy note that perfectly defined “savory.” The meat was tender and the green onion was still crisp. Every so often, I got a welcome hint of garlic. While the authentic pin noodles would have likely been chewier, I still appreciated the texture of my accidental substitute. The bowl tasted a bit like a fishier pad thai. I did my best not to compare the two in my head, and instead treat this dish as something new entirely, but I couldn’t help but make mental notes. The basic elements were the same, but the lort cha had less heat and more acidity. Everything about it felt a bit more pungent.

Overall, the dish was a hit, and I could see a Cambodian restaurant succeeding in a city like Ann Arbor. That night, I did some research on the presence of Cambodian cuisine in the United States. An article from Fine Dining Lovers explained that many Cambodian immigrants have lost parts of their heritage due to the Khmer Rouge. When the Communist party attempted to reinvent Cambodia in 1975, they burnt cities and the belongings of families to the ground. Music, art, and food were lost. Though the Khmer Rouge government was overthrown only four years later, citizens couldn’t recover what had been lost. Cambodian restaurateur Diane Le explains that “Our grandparents and parents are trying to recreate and remember, after four years of Khmer Rouge and then in the refugee camp, ‘How did I make this?’”

Cambodian restaurants in the United States are full of chefs who are picking up the pieces of their history, using the basic flavors and elements they remember to create new dishes. This poor country relies on bitter, in-your-face flavors to make inexpensive meals feel more satisfying. That method fits in well with the Asian fusion trend that swept through the states several years ago. Cambodian restaurants are far more popular in this decade than in the past, giving hope to those who came after the Khmer Rouge. The allure for this type of cuisine is there, and as the number of Cambodian restaurants keeps growing, more people from this country with a troubled past can dine somewhere that tastes like home.