Cambodia – Page 2 – Courgettes and Limes

Hello, remember me?

I disappeared from food blogger cyberspace again, didn’t I.

I’m sorry.

A few years ago I did the same thing and wrote about when I went missing in action. However, that was only for a few months. This time, it’s been over a year. I’ve been drafting and redrafting this post ever since I listened to Adele’s comeback single, Hello, it’s me back in December, and was inspired to get back into blogging again. And therefore, if this post creaks a bit and the flow isn’t quite there, please understand and allow me a bit of time to adjust back into writing.

At the start of last year, one of my friends shared a picture of how this would be a year when I go deeper with God, richer like when you boil beef for a long time to make a rich broth that is delicious.

The beginning: beef rib bones to make a stock

I didn’t realise that this richness would come out of a (relatively) short season of depression, rejection, various relationship mishaps, misunderstandings, and self-loathing as I gained almost 10kg and couldn’t motivate myself to do anything. This coincided with an extended hot season in Cambodia which exaggerated all the ugly parts of me. Believe me, nobody tries harder than I do, to assassinate my own self-esteem and point out all my character deficiencies. In that hot season, I felt like I was boiling in every sense. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, and as a result, all the ucky scum of my nature was coming up to the surface.¹ You know like when you make a good stock. *wink, wink* It was an act of grace, someone chasing me up to hand in an essay that was long overdue, that helped snap me out of my funk.

It’s taken a few months of being honest, refusing to indulge in the negative thought patterns, eating well, exercising regularly and laughing A LOT to get my equilibrium back. In the recovery, I’d choose to laugh and laugh SO hard that it felt restorative and that the joy would continue, past that evening and carry on into the next morning, and even the following week.

So, I guess it makes sense that I tell you about a recipe that involves making a rich beef broth! Except I won’t in this post. Funnily enough, I made one recently with beef rib bones for Tteokguk, a.k.a Korean New Year Rice Cake Soup while I was in the middle of writing this post. (The photos are from that time, which may give you an indication of how long this post has been lurking in the drafts folder.) There was a lot of simmering, skimming of the scum and the resulting stock was indeed rich, but a bit too rich for me for tteokguk. I’ll hone the tteokguk recipe a bit more before I write it up. So, instead of a recipe, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from one of my favourite authors, Isobel Kuhn:

¹On the ship on the way to China, a veteran missionary was meeting with the new girls going over, and one day she said, “Girls, when you get to China, all the scum of your nature will rise to the top.” Isobel was shocked. Scum? Was that not a strong word? All of us were nice girls, were we not? Scum? A bit extravagant surely. And so I was totally unprepared for the revolt of the flesh which was waiting for me on China’s shores. The day was to come when on my knees in the Lord’s presence I had to say: ‘Lord, scum is the only word to describe me.’” – Isobel Kuhn, In the Arena

Korean New Year Meal with friends — Enjoying Tteokguk with friends at Korean New Year 2016

An Evening Walk in Phsar Doeum Thkov

a view from the frangipani flowers on my street

I’ve joined this writing group and the first assignment was to write a poem in iambic pentameter (penta, means 5. iambs, that’s a unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, think daDUM. So iambic pentameter is 5 sets of iambs). They gave us some lines to start us off. I found the exercise much trickier than I thought it would be. In the end, I wrote something but it felt like it was fitting a square peg in a round hole.

So, I’ve unpegged it. And let the lines run free. I think they feel better for it. I’ve tried to keep the ending in iambic pentameter. A bit of discipline never went amiss.

It’s a bit dark… but it was sort of inspired by the upcoming 40th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge.

*Phsar Doeum Thkov is the neighbourhood where I live in Phnom Penh.

An evening walk in Phsar Doeum Thkov*

These streets have no name. They’re just numbers on a map.

Street five hundred is mine.

I walk them as sun sets.

Five-0-two is next.

Dogs shake off hot sun,

stretch and yap at my feet.

I don’t like it.

5-0-4 is cheerfully lined with white, pink and yellow

frangipani trees. I’d linger but,

for the dogs. Besides, I’m meant to be doing exercise.

There, a huge white house stands behind

iron gates. Next door, a wooden shack.

Do the neighbours talk to one another?

These nameless streets hold innumerable,

unsaid, unspoken, memories. Walls, Stones,

dare I ask, what happened? Who fell? When? Who

cowered? Cried? Wept? Died? How? Bludgeoned? Shot? Who

survived? What? And can they grieve now? Or do

unspeakable acts of terror haunt them?

As sun sets? As the dark draws in. I wonder.

Mosquito, a haiku

sunset by the sailing club — sunset dinner by Kep sailing club

I went away on holiday with five friends to the sleepy seaside town of Kep (pronounced Gaip), in Cambodia recently. I forgot to take my journal with me and I felt like I couldn’t do any meaningful reflection without it, as I wouldn’t be able to write it down.

Instead, I chose to write down a few poems that I’ve been mulching on for pretty much a year. Actually, pretty much the entire time that I’ve been in Cambodia. They’re all about mosquitoes. Here’s the first one.

It’s a haiku for no other reason, than that’s how it came out. I had this image in my mind, of a squadron of mosquitoes flying in formation at night, getting ready to attack. Mosquitoes don’t hunt in packs; it can sure feel like it when you have multiple bites within 5 minutes. Why stealth fighters? The peculiar thing about Cambodian mosquitoes is, is their silence.

You have to imagine the venom in my voice towards the mosquitoes as I’m saying it.

Mosquito

stealthy night fighter,

flying under the radar,

leaving pock-marked skin.

the prepared fish in their 'marquee' — the prepared fish in their ‘marquee’ before the seafood barbeque

Making mincemeat of khmer (and two suet free mincemeat recipes)

Ha! If only. It’s more like I’m butchering the language, particularly since I’ve been away from Cambodia for almost 3 weeks. But, indulge me in my choice of slightly obscure title. When I came up with it before Christmas, it seemed like the perfect lead into giving you an update on my language learning and include a Christmas mincemeat recipe, or two, at the same time. Then my NZ holiday scuppered the timings, ever so slightly…

Well, 3 months into learning khmer and my efforts have been paying off to varying degrees of success. It’s nice to get comments from people who kindly tell me that I speak khmer well, or that I know a lot. I realise that we are generally our worst critics when we are learning language, but honestly, their feedback couldn’t feel further from the truth. I make a lot of Khmers laugh at how I trip over words, mix up words that sound similar (think bye and bike), struggle with the pronunciation of peculiar sounds that are foreign to the english and korean tongue. To illustrate the kinds of mistakes that I’ve made, look below:

mürl (10 000) and mürn (to watch)
toe’it (small) and doe’it (similar/like)
ban cha’oo (Vietnamese pancake) and ban ???? I still don’t know what it is that I say. But when I say it, it’s a swear word apparently. Can you imagine how nervous I am about asking for one from a seller?

It’s not just the laughs that make language learning so enjoyable. I think that I’ve said before how I’m really enjoying learning this very literal language. The other day, I learnt that the khmer for the colour burgundy is poah chreuk chee’um. The literal translation is ‘the colour of pig’s blood’; not quite as majestic sounding as burgundy, the word we use to describe a regal red colour!

More recently, my improved language skills has meant that more and more Khmers feel able to have a ‘proper’ conversation with me. Unfortunately, I only understand 50% of what they are saying! So, I have to make up the rest of what they have said because I don’t want to break the flow of the conversation. As you can imagine, this could lead to all sorts of misunderstandings. I think that the real problem is with me not wanting to lose face. I’ve been doing this in korean for such a long time that it’s become some sort of default setting in me. In korean, we call this pretending, 아는척 – ah-neun-chug.

Some people are much braver than me and stop to clarify meaning. I’m going to have to adopt some of their bravery to force myself out of this habit. You’ll have to imagine my big sigh, just now, in this realisation and resolution.

Nevertheless, even with all my bad behaviour and language, the Friday before Christmas, I sat an exam, passed and graduated from the Survival Khmer language course. Hurrah! So, I celebrated by getting on a plane and going on holiday to New Zealand for a few weeks! Yeah 🙂 because that’ll really consolidate my language learning!

But my time here isn’t all about language learning is it? I bake a lot too. Simon had asked me to make some Christmas refreshments and baking for the church’s Christmas service. So, I made two versions of mincemeat based on the availability of ingredients I found, or lack thereof! Andrew gave me this recipe and normally I make this recipe with sultanas, currants, citrus peel and most importantly fresh cranberries. But my efforts to locate any cranberries, fresh, dried or frozen, in Phnom Penh have yet to bear fruit. Pun unintended. 😛 Even with the deviation from the original recipe, these mincemeat recipes were a hit and I was asked for the recipe – particularly for version 2.

And that was my astonishing discovery whilst recipe testing. The vast majority of Khmers like mincemeat, even amongst children. Of my Khmer taste testers, I found that only 1 in 20 didn’t like how it tasted. Is that the same in the UK too? Have I been long under the wrong impression that 50% of UK population don’t like mincemeat?

Or is it, just that this is just one of the tastiest mincemeat recipes out there? Lol. I’ll let you decide in due course.

Mix it all together

I don’t use suet in these recipes. Instead, I use grated apple to give moisture and bulk. The advantages of this approach are that you don’t have to cook it and you can use it immediately. Taste-wise, I think that it’s superb. It’s fresh from the apples (it’s even better with the cranberries) and zingy from the limes. The only spice I added was nutmeg. The nutmeg I used was ground already and thus, I used more than I expected. Using freshly, grated nutmeg will have a much stronger flavour so add to taste. You could always add cinnamon, cloves or a hint of ginger. In future versions, I would like to add some alcohol of a sort, like rum or brandy. This time, however, I had a budget to stick to.

Jar of mincemeat

Ingredients for Mincemeat v.1
Makes about 650-700g
2 green apples, grated (preferably cooking apples, but any tart green apple will do)
150g seedless raisins
250g mixed dried fruit – the pack I found had glacé cherries, raisins and citrus peel
75g roughly chopped blanched almonds
60g dark brown sugar or muscovado sugar also works. I used light brown sugar because that’s what I had then added 2 tbsp of dark brown sugar later for flavour. If I made this again, I’d only use dark brown sugar.
Zest and juice of 1 or 2 limes, depending on their size
2 tbsp orange marmalade or 50g of chopped candied citrus peel
Ground nutmeg to taste – I added 1tbsp in the end but do add it 1 tsp at a time

Ingredients for Mincemeat v.2
Makes about 650-700g
2 green apples, grated (preferably cooking apples, but any tart green apple will do)
150g seedless raisins
150g mixed dried cambodian fruit – pineapple, papaya and mango
75g roughly chopped blanched almonds
50g sunflower seeds
60g dark brown sugar or muscovado sugar also works
Zest and juice of 1 or 2 limes, depending on size
2 tbsp orange marmalade
Ground nutmeg to taste – I added 1tbsp in the end but do add it 1 tsp at a time

Method
Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl. You can use it straightaway or store in sterilised jars in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

Happy helpers learning how to make mince pies

How to blanch almonds

blanched almonds

It seems that I spend most of my time learning, nowadays. Learning language, learning the geography of the city, learning where to go shopping, learning how to, or rather how not to, negotiate with tuk tuk drivers. The other day, I had a tuk tuk driver explode in my face because I hadn’t told him that I wanted him to drop my friend off at her house en route to mine, prior to agreeing the price. The frustrating thing was that, even after I apologised, the tuk tuk driver refused to tell me what I should have done to ‘not treat me like a slave’ – quote verbatim from the tuk tuk driver – because he ‘didn’t know my plan’. What? Once he’d said that, I figured it was best that this strange tuk tuk driver and I never meet each other again and we go our separate ways, swiftly. I paid him for that part of the journey and walked the rest of the way to my house. Typing ‘how to negotiate with tuk tuk drivers’ into a search engine and reading the results doesn’t prepare oneself on this eventuality.

Whinge over.

What I love is, even on the other side of the world, fortunately there are food blogs, youtube and google for so many of my food-related questions. Somewhat naively, I hadn’t anticipated that my move to Phnom Penh would necessitate me learning some back-to-basics skills: the supermarkets here haven’t got a readily available of supply of conveniently prepared cooking ingredients, like in the UK. For example, the other day, I’d decided to make ouzi for my friends and discovered that you can’t buy blanched almonds anywhere. If you’re lucky, you’ll find some whole, unblanched almonds in the supermarket. So, what’s a girl to do?

But learn.

Google search and a peruse on about.com greek foods later…

I find that there’s something therapeutic about the repetitive nature of this simple task. And as I’m standing by the sink, popping almonds out of their skins by myself, I imagine that in other countries, this could be a community, or at least a familial, endeavour, in which you get together and have a good gossip.

20 minutes later, I’ve got a bowlful of beautifully blanched almonds drying on the countertop, ready to be roasted for ouzi.

Ingredients and Method for Blanching Almonds

You’ll need raw shelled almonds, a pan of boiling water and a colander.

Bring the water to boil in the saucepan, take the saucepan off the heat, add the almonds and keep them in there for 1 minute. If you leave them in for too long, then the almonds get soggy.
Drain them in the colander and rinse them in cold water for a few seconds so that they are just cool enough to handle.
The skin removal process begins as soon as the almonds are cool enough, not to burn your fingers. Take an almond in between your thumb, forefinger and middle finger, massage or squeeze the skin and let the almond pop out of its skin.

Allow the blanched almonds to dry before using them.

If you want to ground almonds, you can put the dried, blanched almonds into a food processor and grind them up.

Ta da! Simple.

Now to learn about the proper etiquette for negotiating the price with a tuk tuk driver. 😛

My 21 baking essentials

My boxes are currently winging their way over to me in Cambodia. I am so excited about being reunited with them. It’s been two months! I keep clicking on the ‘track your shipment’ link, like an excited child counting down the days until Christmas. I’m looking forward to being able to hang up my artwork, rifle through my CELTA notes and of course, reacquaint myself with my cookery books.

But most of all, I’m excited about using my Microplane zester and dough scraper again.

Do you know, it’s weird reading facebook status updates of the first frost, gingerbread lattes and the Good Food Show – all of which I associate with Christmas – when it is 30°C and humid outside. I never really liked the run-up to Christmas with all the commercialisation and hype. Especially, when shops started selling Christmas decorations in October!!! Ask my family and friends – I was more Mrs. Bah-Humbug than Mrs Santa Claus. So, I like it that I’m kind of removed from it all in Cambodia; it still feels weird. A signal of how life and time is moving on for my friends in the UK, while I feel like I’m still in summer.

Anyway, back to zesters and dough scrapers – why all the excitement about them?

During my two month moniversary street food dinner, Simon asked me what I was most looking forward to having again from my boxes. Without a moment’s hesitation, I replied, ‘my Microplane zester.’ It takes zest off oranges, lemons, limes… so effortlessly. My previous zester had me almost reduced to tears because it would get so slippery with the moisture from the peel but without producing any zest! So, when my brother bought this zester for me for my 30th birthday present, I was thrilled. Every time I use it, I think of him and how much I love him for buying it for me.

You see, I’ve been wanting to make all sorts of things with pomelo since I first ate it in Cambodia. Cakes, curds, puddings… but I feel like I can’t until I have my Microplane zester. Pomelo is a citrus fruit, by the way, for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about. I’d never seen, heard or tasted one until I moved out here. Now, I can’t go a week without eating one.

And then there’s bread. The marble work surfaces here cry out for some proper dough slapping, folding and kneading. But, I need my trusty red dough scraper for that task. I am also dying for some wholesome wholemeal loaves and can I find any in Phnom Penh?

There are other things that I am really looking forward to seeing and using again. While I was listing them in my mind, I realised that it was fast becoming a list of my baking equipment essentials.

And just so we’re clear – I don’t get commission from Microplane, nor is this a product placement ad.

Microplane zester
Dough scraper
Piping bags and nozzles
Rolling pin
Pastry cutters for making shortbread and tarts
An assortment of cake tins – but definitely a 23cm spring form tin and 2x 20cm cake tin
Various Baking trays – definitely have a square deep baking tray (metal or stoneware) and a high sided baking tray in my collection for making roulades, swiss rolls, opera cakes…
Large plastic bowl for making bread
12 hole tart pan
2x 6 hole muffin tin
Pastry brushes
Metal sieves
Measuring jugs
Loaf tin – 1.5lb-2lb size
Flexible spatulas – small and large sizes
Pampered chef measuring spoons
Pyrex bowls – small, medium, large
Electronic kitchen scales. I’d already packed them with me. I figured that my scales have always made baking a much happier experience and I’d have a more contented existence with them.
Oven thermometer – my current oven has no temperature markings on it at all, so it’s currently all guess work.

Lastly, I’d include:

20. Electric hand mixer. My £6 Sainsbury’s basic mixer served me well for years before I left the UK. However, I foolishly gave it away before I left because I thought that it would be easy to source one in Cambodia. I haven’t spotted one yet.

And because it’s me. I guess, my final final baking essential is a stool: so that I can get things from cupboards without precariously clambering onto kitchen surfaces.

Short girl in the kitchen

Learning Khmer 101

Before I moved to Cambodia, I set myself the fun challenge of seeing how fluent I could be in khmer within 6 months. (Khmer being the language that they speak in Cambodia.) 1.5 months in, I’m enrolled onto a ‘Survival Khmer’ course at a school called Language Exchange Cambodia (LEC) near the Russian Market, which is a 20 minute walk or a 5 minute moto ride away from where I’m living now.

Classes at LEC — The rooftop at LEC where I have my language classes in one of the cubicles

You can have group or individual lessons, but since most people turn up at the language school on their own like me, most of LEC’s clients have lessons one on one. I began a week after I arrived, which means that I’m coming up to my fifth week of lessons. I started off with 2 hour lessons, 4 days a week. However, as the one on one teaching is taxing to both teacher and student, I downsized it to 1.5 hours 4 days a week to make them more enjoyable. Learning language is not a sprint race, it’s more like a marathon, so I’m trying to pace myself. After my language lesson, I’ll try and make myself use whatever I have learned in the classroom with anybody who will talk with me. The guard at the school, my motodop driver, the housekeeper have all been subjected to rather random conversations with me. Some topics are easier to practice than others…

Asking Narith what time he brushes his hair

LEC’s motto is, learning to speak khmer like khmer. This means that they teach the informal khmer that is spoken first, rather than the formal khmer that people use for reading and writing. It’s quite an unusual approach and it’s certainly raising eyebrows with rather a lot of people, khmer and expat alike: I come out with a lot of slang and drop off the ends and beginnings of words, like many of the native speakers do here. Not only that, but I have also discovered that Cambodians have a quick wit and love to play with language. I don’t know the linguistic term for this, but they often like to swap the sounds around e.g. sok sabbei → sei sabok. From time to time, my teacher unconsciously drops into this slang slang khmer, as he calls it: I’ve dubbed it cockney khmer. Here’s a recording of some numbers in cockney khmer. See if you can work out what he’s done.

My teacher is from Kratié province, in the northeast of Cambodia, which he pronounces K’tech. Therefore, I joke with my friends that I’m acquiring a northern khmer accent, the equivalent of a ‘geordie’ accent. Then, there are some khmer sounds that I find difficult to get my tongue round, and so my teacher occasionally adjusts the way that he says them. ‘This is how they say it in Takeo province, which is south of Phnom Penh. I think that this way is easier for you.’ So, how about that, eh? My khmer accent has even acquired ‘somerset’ notes.

learning khmer — a page from my khmer vocabulary book

LEC won’t teach me the khmer script on their ‘Survival Khmer’ course, so I’ve come up with my own method to master the different sounds. I have a vocab book, in which I write down all the words and phrases that I am learning. Each page is folded down the middle and on the left hand side I write the english word; on the right, the khmer word in phonetic roman script. And then, more often that not, I’ll write the sounds phonetically in korean too. The korean alphabet is phonetic and there are lots of sounds in korean that are much easier to write than in english, which isn’t a phonetic language. As I lack a khmer alphabet on which to hang the sounds, my brain often visualises the sound in korean, and actually what I end up doing, is seeing the sound in korean, writing it in english, and then writing the sound again in korean so that I can write it phonetically. It does sound rather long-winded and absurd, but that’s how it has to be because my memory fares poorly in remembering korean letters. In fact, on my first lesson, it was a real headache because I was using korean to write some words and english for others, and my poor wee brain couldn’t take in learning a new language using two very different scripts!

I’m certainly not learning perfect khmer. But, for the first time in my experience of learning languages, I don’t care. There’ll be an opportunity to learn the more formal stuff later… In the meantime, watch out inhabitants of Phnom Penh – there’s a wee scottish-korean girl with absurd questions on the loose.

Spiced Banana and Dark Chocolate Chunk Cake: the first foray into baking in Cambodia

I hadn’t meant to create an entirely different cake when I decided to bake the chocolate, whiskey, currant banana cake (or Dumb Rum Banana Cake, as it’s known in Emma’s house) as my hello gift to Liberty Family Church. The cake just morphed into something different as Becci and I trawled along the aisles in Lucky Supermarket, looking for ingredients, on my first Saturday in Cambodia.

Firstly, I discovered that butter is expensive. The cheapest block of 227g of butter was $3.50
Chocolate is expensive as I expected. There isn’t a tesco value or sainsbury basic equivalent block of dark chocolate that I can use either. Hmm…
Sultanas and currants are ridiculously expensive. The 180g of sultanas was going to cost me $1.90.
I couldn’t see a bag of walnuts or pecans that I can use in baking.
Rum or whiskey – well, alcohol is pretty cheap in Cambodia. I wasn’t sure whether Cambodians would like the flavour of either one of them in a cake.

I’m standing looking at the dried food shelves and wondering if there’s any cheap dried fruit in Cambodia. I’m scratching my head, ‘what am I going to do about flavour and texture?’ All my normal options were out and obviously I needed to economise on some ingredients. And thus the cake transforms from a chocolate, nutty, whiskey, currant, banana cake into a spiced, banana cake with chocolate chunks. ‘Out with the dried fruit and nuts’, I decide. ‘I’m going to add flavour with a mix of spices and create texture by adding a greater quantity of chocolate chunks to it.’

Plenty of chocolate surely covers over a multitude of improvisations.

There was never a moment of questioning whether I should bother baking. Needs must and all that – I wanted to give a hello present to the church and I needed to do some baking.

Ingredients for the Spiced Banana and Dark Chocolate Chunk Cake

175g plain flour
2 tsps of mixed spice or 1 tsp of cinnamon powder, 1/2 tsp of ground ginger, 1/4 tsp of ground nutmeg, 1/4 tsp of ground cloves
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp salt
125g unsalted butter, melted
90-100g soft brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 large or 4 small very ripe bananas, mashed (about 300g in weight with the skins off)
200g dark chocolate, roughly chopped

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C/325°F/gas mark 3 and line (preferably) springform cake tin, anywhere between 23-25cm. I only had a 25cm round cake tin at hand. It was the first time I’d used it and it worked beautifully for sharing with so many people.

2. Measure out the plain flour, spices, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, salt and give them all a good mix with a metal or wooden spoon. This means that you don’t get any lumps of salt or bicarbonate of soda in the eventual cake.

3. Melt the butter either in a pan or in zap it in the microwave in a pyrex bowl. Now add the sugar to the butter and stir well until the sugar is well blended into the butter. It should look almost toffee-like in colour because of the brown sugar. Follow with the eggs. Beat them in, one at a time, to the sugary buttery mixture.

Top tip: Emma shared a really good tip with me, if you are going to melt the butter in the microwave. Use a pyrex bowl, add the butter and COVER IT WITH KITCHEN PAPER. It means that if the butter happens to explode in the microwave, because you zap the butter for a bit too long, it won’t go all over the inside of your microwave.

4. Now add the mashed bananas,vanilla extract and the chopped chocolate to the mixture and mix them in well.

5. Add in the flour mix (from step 2) but add a third of it at a time, stirring well after each addition. Once all of the dry mixture is mixed in, add the cake mixture into the cake tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 50-60 minutes. I check after 40 minutes and if the cake looks like it is browning at the top too quickly, then I cover it with some baking paper to protect the cake from burning. The time needed for the cake to bake will vary depending on the size of the cake tin that you use, so don’t worry if the cake needs an extra 15-20 minutes in the oven. You’ll know when the cake is done when you insert a cake tester, or I use a sharp knife, into the cake and the tester comes out clean.

6. Let the cake cool completely. Then cut it up into as many pieces as you like and share it around.

Of course, you could serve it whilst it’s still warm with cream or icecream. I just find that the cake is easier to cut when it is cold and you don’t get so much chocolate goo all over the knife as you are cutting it. The cake stores well in an airtight container – not that this one had a chance. It was all gobbled up in under 10 minutes.

The verdict? The cake is really tasty. The chocolate chunks give it texture and bite that would be missing if you omitted them. The spices worked really well in transforming the flavour of this cake and it went down really well with the Cambodian palette too. I still prefer the chocolatey, whiskey and currant version of the cake (who would blame me) but while I’m here, I will quite happily bake this new banana and chocolate cake.

Kat’s mum’s apple cake

Apple cake baked in Phnom Penh — The apple cake that I baked living at Simon and Becci’s in Phnom Penh

I recently found out that these apples are really tasty and cheap, compared to the other varieties of imported apples that they sell here. So, when I woke up, I realised that the one thing that I really wanted to do today was to bake Kat’s mum’s apple cake.

Remember how I confessed to being a baking addict? Since moving to Cambodia, I’ve limited myself to baking once a week and I think that’s as far as my baking addiction allows me to go before I get my next fix.

That need fuelled my first ever visit to a fruit stall in the Russian market, where I bought 8 pomme for 8400 riel (the equivalent of $3.50). I may have overpaid for my apples: I haven’t learned yet how to bargain for food in the market. But, I didn’t mind paying a bit extra if if meant that I could bake. However, I wasn’t quite prepared to pay $3 for 250g of palm sugar (the only raw sugar they had available), when what I really wanted was demerara sugar. Let’s bake together at a later date, palm sugar. I think that you’ll be delightful in a cookie.

This apple cake goes down in my baking history as the third ever cake I made on my own. I was 21 at the time. Kat’s mum baked this apple cake for us when Kat invited a few friends to her Devonshire home for a holiday during our final year at university. The cake tasted wholesomely delicious and I found myself asking Kat’s mum for the recipe. I was no baker in those days so what convinced me to attempt making this cake was her reassurance that the recipe was really simple.

And it was. Once it entered into my baking repertoire, it was then pretty much the only cake that I baked for the next 2 years.

I told you that I came late into this baking thing later than most foodies.

The only step that requires a bit of time is peeling, coring and chopping the apples and this time, Simon and Becci did that bit for me this time round. Hurrah for happy helpers. But once you’ve done that, you can pretty much throw the ingredients altogether, mix it around with your hands and pop it into the oven. There’s no faffing with trying to make it look pretty: part of the charm of baking this cake is that is meant to look rustic. I’ve made it before when I’ve reserved a few choice apple pieces to make it look prettier, but the detail got lost underneath the topping of sugar and ground cinnamon. You can also use a loaf tin or a round tin, as you can see from my photos.

Since being here and discovering how expensive it is to bake with butter (the cheapest i’ve found is $3.50 for 227g) I reverted back to using margarine. The cake tastes better, I think, if you make it with margarine rather than butter.

You can also use any apples. I really like using cooking apples because of their tartness and size, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

Ingredients for Kat’s mum’s apple cake

8oz/225g self-raising flour
4oz/110g margarine
4oz/110g granulated sugar, preferably golden but it can be white
3 or 4 cooking apples, peeled, cored and sliced into 1-2cm slices.
2 large eggs, beaten
a splash of milk

Cake topping – adapt the measures according to taste.

1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp demerara sugar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas mark 6. Grease and line either a 2lb loaf tin or a cake tin, that is deepish and anything between 8-10 inches.
2. Prepare the topping first for ease because your hands will be gloopy by step 5. In a small bowl, mix together the demerara sugar and cinnamon.
3. Peel, core and chop the apples and put them into a large mixing bowl.
4. In a medium sized mixing bowl, rub together the flour, butter and sugar until they resemble crumbs. Add this crumbly mixture to the apples.

5. Add in the eggs and a splash of milk. Mix it around with your hands so that it all combines into a gloopy mess.
6. Sprinkle the demerara sugar and cinnamon mix on top of the cake.

Trying to make it pretty apple cake — you can prettify it if you want

7. Pop into the middle of the oven and bake for about 1 hour. Check after 40 minutes. If the top of the cake is browning too much then cover the top with foil. The cake is ready when a tester comes out clean.
8. Let it cool down and rest before taking it out of the tin.

trying to make it pretty baked apple cake — but the cinnamon/sugar topping negates the efforts

Enjoy while it’s still warm if you can. I think that it’s worth pointing out, that with this cake you get one portion of your fruit and veg allowance, only if you eat a quarter of the cake.

Glamping and Saying Goodbye

A few weeks before I left for Cambodia, one of my friends, Helen, organised a glamping weekend away with me and some friends as one of my leaving do’s and very wittily called it my Han-do. Nine of us girlies ‘glamped’ in beautiful bell tents in this beautiful orchard in Worcester. Everything was set up for us when we arrived: tents, beds, cutlery, plates… They provided wood for campfires and charcoal of a BBQ. It was a brilliant set up and I loved the glamping experience. We could just walk in and enjoy it. We played games, tried geo-caching for the first time, built camp-fires (some more successfully than others), spent an evening praying for each other, drank wine, caught up with each other’s lives and a few of us even braved the bracing temperatures of Droitwich Lido. I remember thinking what lovely friends I had, how we all got on so well with each other and that the activities were exactly the sort that I enjoy.

No surprises there as the whole weekend was for me!

At the beginning of the weekend, Sarah (of the Kenwood lending kindness) and I remarked to each other on how much we had been looking forward to the Han-do, until it had dawned on both of us separately that the whole weekend was happening because I was leaving. That made us both sad.

So, helpfully, or unhelpfully (I don’t know) I said to everyone at the start, that I was looking forward to the weekend but was sad because I knew it was because I was leaving for Cambodia. So perhaps we could sort of ignore that the tiny fact that I was leaving and focus on having fun and enjoying each other’s company. It made the whole weekend much less miserable for me.

Oh gosh, leaving! How was that?

‘Miserable’ is how I described myself to friends, family and colleagues in the 2 months leading up to my departure date.
‘Unbearable’ to quote my mother, is how she later described me, in the lead up to our Berlin, Dresden and Prague holiday when I was tired from the CELTA course, packing, sorting and to top it all off had PMT.
I’d also add ‘selfish’, ‘out of character’ and ‘acting up’ to the mix. When I saw poorly children acting up, I suddenly realised that I was behaving in the same way.

I knew that I was going through some sort of grieving process and that the intense sadness I felt was completely normal; it was still a difficult thing for me and those around me to go through. Some days, all I could do was pray, “God, help me, help me, help me…” It’s not just the emotions; the never-ending todo list of moving my life across continents resulted in me developing atopic eczema because of the stress. I’ve moved countries, cities, houses many times before, but this time beat it hands down.

‘They’ (those experts in moving across cultures and countries) say that it makes for a better transition if you say farewell to people, places and things. Imagine daily saying goodbye for the 3 months to such and it may help you to understand my misery.

saying goodbye to Haribo (my car) and selling him onto my sister

Nor was it wasn’t an entirely joyless period of time. Many people and things made me laugh. I also deliberately did things that make me happy and/or take me out of myself. My top 3:

Playing with young children and babies
Swimming
Baking

When there were 2 weeks looming before my departure date and I was still miserable, I wondered whether Simon and Becci were going to receive a joyless wretch. But then, God turned it around with 10 days to go.

Oh gosh, writing about my experience of leaving has rather taken over this blog post. The glamping in the orchard bit was meant to be an introduction to Kat’s mum’s apple cake. However, now that I’m in Cambodia and I’m happy, I don’t want the apple cake to be forever associated with the pain of saying goodbye. So, here’s a photo of the apple cake that I’ve baked, since living in Phnom Penh and I’ll write up the recipe as my next post.

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Category: Cambodia

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