Everyone loves a little spice in life. A well-spiced dish can set you aglow with gustatory anticipation and open the senses. Combined with freshness and variety, Cambodia has a plenitude of herbs and spices that offer amazing taste and health benefits! But what exactly are these herbs and spices, and their health benefits?
Cambodian traditional herbs and spices were designed to boost our mood, alertness, circulation. Whether it’s a wild river prawn dressed in savory herbs and flavors, a tangy hand-made curry, or slices of grilled beef with a salt-pepper-and-lime dip, you can’t lose!
In a Cambodian kitchen, you will see riot of hues: jade-green kaffir-lime leaves, sun-dried, or whole. The smell is overwhelming, and simply mouth-watering.
This intense, pungent rhizome related to ginger can be blamed for many a yellow stain on clothes or kitchen counters. Did khaki come from a stained uniform after British soldiers munched on a delicious curry?
TURMERIC
Turmeric (romiet in Khmer) is second to none in Indian cuisine with spice, flavor and health benefits. Turmeric has a warm, bitter flavor with an often earthy aroma. It’s grated and mixed into the ubiquitous kroeung paste used in a slew of Cambodian dishes. Kroeung can be a long complex recipe almost like a Central-American mole.
Turmeric is a powerful ingredient in life-giving curries, a fan-favorite of the British, and is a radical antioxidant fighter as well. Add a lot of turmeric to breathe fire into your bellows! Finish with creamy coconut to soothe the burn.
Get it fresh or whole, and grate it yourself. Combine with pepper for maximum benefits.
PEPPER
Ground or whole peppercorns add zip to any meal. On a steak or in a Bloody Mary, pepper berries promotes alertness, aid weight loss, and even gives relief to coughs and colds.
Kampot pepper is best and known for its sharply aromatic, floral flavor, with a long, warm finish, due to the quartz in Kampot soil. In 2010, Kampot received a Geographical Indication (GI) brand certification, much like Swiss gruyère or Darjeeling tea.
Peppercorns have a colorful life cycle: green when young, black when dried, and red is sweet and mature. White pepper is simply the inner-skinned pepper seed, often used in cream sauces. As always, fresh and whole is best.
Ground or whole, pepper spices up stir-fry, crab, tender grilled squid or a fine steak. Cambodians make a simple blend of salt, pepper, and splash of lime as a dip with a zing of fresh flavor.
THE SPICE OF LIFE
Freshness is unmatched, and farm to table here is the norm. If variety is the spice of life, then Cambodian herbs and spices are for you!
