Cooks in tuk tuks cooking class

With a name like Cooks in Tuk Tuks, it had to be a winner, really.
Despite living here for seven months – yes seven already! – and two previous visits, I had never done a Cambodian cooking class. So a visit from my friend Lisa was a perfect opportunity to rectify that.
The adventure started with pickup in the Cooks in Tuk Tuks tuk tuk, (it’s a mouthful isn’t it?) and a visit to Psar Leu.

It’s not every day you get a guided tour of the market. We arrived with our chef, around 10am and much of the early morning hustle was over. But the colours are just as vibrant and the smells are perhaps even more pungent as the sun climbs higher. There’s nothing like the whiff of a an open sewer clashing with pungent aromas of meat and fish and motorbike exhaust fumes. The energy here is buzzing and there is so much to take in.
Markets are such an important part of life in Cambodia and it’s where the majority of Cambodians source all their food and household items. Psar Leu is the biggest in Siem Reap. The chef pointed out different fruits, vegetables and things like prahok, the popular fermented fish paste.
It was a nice group of six for this course. And after the market tour we hopped back in the tuk tuk and headed back to the River Garden kitchen to plan our feast.
And it was quite a feast. Banana flower salad, amok, lok lak, and a sweet potato, sago and coconut milk dessert. The lok lak was an added bonus and not part of the usual class.

I finally learnt how to prepare a banana flower. Yay! It’s more complex than just peeling off the outer leaves and chopping. You have to remove all the baby bananas, which seem to be in multiple layers. One of the awesome things about a cooking class is learning what to do with all the unfamiliar fruits and vegetables.

There was lots of chopping, and bashing with a mortor and pestle to prepare the ingredients for our meal. And many hands make light work, as the saying goes.

I love amok, but not fish, so I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to make a chicken amok instead but it was a minor disappointment given we had the extra dish of lok lak.

And how good does the finished product look?

I’m thinking I might try this dessert with banana instead of sweet potato for breakfast. It’s worth noting we toned down the sugar quite a bit compared to how the Cambodian’s usually eat it.
The cooking class is $25 per person and is held in the beautiful setting at River Garden on the western side of the river, a few kilometres north of Siem Reap city centre. It’s a lovely setting for a cooking class and afterwards you can lounge around the swimming pool or go for a swim.
We were all given a little recipe book, which includes some great information about herbs, spices, fruits and vegetables commonly used in Cambodian cooking. I really need to get cracking and put it all to use.