During August the director and 3 children from CCH (the children's centre) came to stay in England. It was a trip mainly organised by a film maker IAnna) who is sponsoring one of the children to attend ISPP one of the best international schools in Phnom Penh but as she was coming over to see her (and think about which English universities she would like to study at) with the director and his son we thought it would be nice if one of the other children came and stayed as well. Ravuth, one of the older students at CCH who works very hard and deserves a holiday, came to stay!
I think it was a bit of a culture shock (as predicted). There was a lot of super noodles being cooked during their holiday! By the end of the trip they were all pretty well travelled and had taken part in activities not usually available when you are living in Phnom Penh - like attending a music festival (WOMAD) horse riding up welsh mountains and viewing dinosaurs at the natural history museum.
My mum has cooked lok lak a few times following her trip to see me in Cambodia and as the Cambodian's were craving "real" food she bravely took it upon herself to cook lok lak for 9. She had done so much preparation - even the obligatory pepper/garlic oil sauce that appears on every Cambodian table. However, the excitement could not be contained in the kitchen as my mum arrived with her prepared marinated meat for this Cambodian curry. 4 Cambodian's then assisted in making the dish even tastier.... With the director frying up the individual portions and the others arranging the necessary lettuce and tomato (one leaf with three slices of tomatao)adding more garlic and pepper and sugar and salt and...well, luckily we had no MSG in the house as this is popular.
We then all enjoyed what turned out to be some of the best Cambodian food I have tasted. I was never a big Cambodian food fan as I found it to lack subtle flavours and thought it was quite tasteless or just loaded with MSG/pepper/salt but this was great! Well done mum and her helpers. It was agreed across the whole table (which I might add included a student from France so the standard expected was high(!)) the lok lak was great.
How many people does it take to cook a lok lak?? ...Lok lak perfection! - Well done mum and helpers!
2 comments:
great pictures and great work you are doing helping these kids!
cheers!
Thanks for the great blog. We were at CDCC earlier this year. We would have loved to have met up with you guys. We live in South East London if you fancy meeting up. We would love to hear more about CCH's work and if there is anything we can do to help.
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