Cooking class in Phnom Penh
I started my adventures in Phonm Pen with a cooking class with Banana Leaf Cooking School. I took the tuktuk over and joined Kimberly, who, turns out, lived in Olympia, Washington, where I used to live. Turns out, we share many of the same friends! Anyway, we quickly became friends and did many Cambodia adventures together. She was traveling with her husband, Diego, who I met another day at the Night Market. For the cooking class, we went to the Boeng Kang Keng (BKK) market and bought the ingredients for our dishes. We went to a variety of different vendors. First at the fresh vegetable vendor we got bean sprouts, carrots, cucumber, Thai basil, lettuce, egg, dried red pepper, sweet potato, onion, long bean, eggplant, lemongrass, fresh lime leaves, roasted peanut, shallot, water, banana and pineapple. Then we went to the fresh rice noodle vendor and got a hunk of rice noodle. Then we went to the spice vendor and got liquid palm sugar, and spicy pepper, and chicken bullion and coconut milk. Then we went to the chicken vendor and got chicken for our dishes. Then we packed it all back up, got in the tuk tuk and headed back to the Banana Cooking School. Our chef was Lom Ang Peark and she led us around the kitchen. We washed and then chopped our fresh vegetables. Then we made our curry sauce. We prepared our spring rolls individually and our sauce. Then we individually made our curry. Then we individually made our caramel sauce and prepared our dessert. Then we had our feast. It was amazing. It was the best time and then plus, I made a new friend.
For the banana palm recipe, we used 2 small bananas, like apple banana, 80 grams of liquid palm sugar, or palm sugar blended with water, 150 ml pineapple juice, 3 slices fresh pineapple, 200 ml coconut milk, 50 grams coconut cream, 1 gram corn flour in 30 ml water.
You start with a teaspoon of palm sugar in the skillet and move it around until it thickens but does not burn. Then add the pineapple juice, coconut milk and stir. Then add the cornstarch and water in one teaspoon amounts until it thickens. Then put the banana in the pan and continually put the carmelized syrup over it to cook it a little bit. Then spread the caramel over the bananas and pineapple on the plate and drip coconut cream over the top.
