Ready Steady Cook

After discovering what Sisaphon had to offer last week (lots of dust), I took the opportunity this weekend to travel by bus to Battambang. Battambang is a lot more ‘on the map’ in Cambodia for lots of reasons. It is supposed to be the second largest city after Phnom Penh – although I think it’s been overtaken by Siam Reap and Sihanoukville by now – shows evidence of French influenced architecture from colonial times and is where Angelina and Brad have spent some of their money. I have some fellow volunteer friends living in Battambang and within the province and they were all around this weekend as we had a Christmas party invite which was really weird – we sang Christmas carols sweating in our flip-flops on someone’s balcony – but fun!

On Sunday morning Onno and I joined 8 other travellers and tourists for a day of Khmer cooking lessons. It was such fun - and what a great idea! The Smoking Pot restaurant (‘smoking’ is an adjective in this context, not a verb as we were informed!) runs lessons for up to 10 people at a time and is so well run. We broadened our cooking repertoire by 3 dishes and cooked a delicious fish Amok, peppery Beef Lok Lak and yummy chicken soup – and it was so easy! We followed our guide round the market to buy the ingredients we needed, which was an adventure in itself – Onno dropped the bottle of chilli sauce and got glass stuck in his big toe, an American girl almost fainted and I shop-lifted half a coconut (by accident, I hasten to add!). Once back at the restaurant, all our equipment was set out for us to use and we followed the instructions given to create a veritable feast! And, after eating all that we cooked, learning some interesting stories from our cooking teacher and taking the mickey out of each other’s nationalities (you can tell the Dutch don’t do Home Ec lessons at school – it’s all in the presentation you know!) we even got to take home a very useful cookery booklet of recipes and ingredients information!

I will definitely be frequenting Battambang and was sad to have to leave on Monday. In the evening I was introduced to Battambang’s nightclub and got to have a bit of a boogie which was a bit of a treat despite the slightly dodgy music. There is a much bigger ex-pat community here and lots more going on than in sleepy Sisaphon. And perhaps I’ll get to catch a glimpse of Brad one of these days?