Wow this is such an unusual set up!
today we're in Battambang northwestern
Cambodia and we're here to get to the
heart of the food culture we have got a
ton of delicious food lined up to share
with you
Cambodia is a country with a rich food
culture where influences from India
China and its Southeast Asian neighbors
can be found in a cuisine which is
unique and exciting to discover this is
our second video from Cambodia and we're in Battambang
a province famous for its delicious food
and produce we eat a quintessential
Cambodian breakfast from an
out-of-bounds street stall where your
food has to be passed over a fence and
take you into the heart of a traditional
wet market where we snack on Cambodia's
tasty street food we eat coconut rice
flour pancakes which are deep fried to
perfection and one of the nation's
favorite snacks of sour fruits in this
Cambodia series we'll take you into the
heart of the country's cuisine from off
the beaten path street food to
traditional Cambodian recipes you don't
want to miss this series get ready for
some mouth-watering food I'm Thomas and
I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate we
hope you're hungry
let's eat
Battambang is famous for its food
culture as well as being the heart of
Cambodia's art and cultural scene this
region is really rich in agriculture and
so there are a number of really special
dishes and unique foods to find here in
the research leading up to this series
and particularly with filming in Battambang
I got so excited because there are
a ton of markets to discover here
there's loads of street food we can't
wait to show you what we find
our first
street food is a quintessential
Cambodian breakfast pork on rice so it
sounds very simple but this is very
classic here and a delicious dish but
what's not simple is where we're going to
eat it so check this out you can see all
the tables lined up these are all for 
different stands but as you might notice
there's a fence between the tables and
where the food's being cooked that's
because in this big building here is a
school so actually all the cooking happens
in the school grounds and they pass all
the food through the fence to their
diners which I reckon is a really cool
setup so let's go get some pork and rice
for breakfast
bai sach chrouk, okay muoi, arkoun
chhnganh arkoun
Wow this is such an unusual setup so as
Thomas was mentioning before the vendors
are all inside the school the kids have
actually gone back to class now but
before we started filming this piece all
the kids were actually eating on that
side of the of the fence so inside
school
you can't like the public can't get into
the school obviously so they have to sit
on public property on the street outside
and the vendors pass the food through
the fence it's such a neat setup
this looks like my kind of dish it's called in
Khmer bai sach chrouk so grilled sticky pork so there's the pork on top served
with rice and it comes with a ton of
different ingredients so we've got the
rice we've got the pork and then we've
got this fried egg check out that yolk there
it's pretty much the perfect fried egg
we've got some cucumber and I think there
on the side is pickled mustard greens
she also drizzled a sauce over the top
I'm not really sure what it was but
there's also a ton of customisation
options on the table so there's dried
chilli there's fresh pounded chilli
there's some chilli sauce there's I
think a fish sauce chilli mixture and then
a garlic sauce here so you can customise
your bowl or plate of food as to how you
want it to taste this is, the atmosphere is
just top-notch so we're sitting right
outside the school I can see the kids in
the classroom the vendors are yelling
out to passing scooters and motorists and
they're whipping in and getting takeaway
and we're right opposite the wats or
the Buddhist pagodas
this just looks like the best way to
start your day so I think what I'm going
to do is just not customize but just
get into the original dish first and see
how we go so I've got tons of that yolky
rice there and then some of the
pork a few spring onions on the top as
well
that is amazing I can see why
people like to start their day with this
dish so the pork is really thinly sliced
it's very sticky and what they've done
is cooked it over the grill and basted it
with a marinade so it's very sticky it's
sort of a little bit chewy but also tender
that egg the yolk oh my gosh it 
just burst with gooeyness in my mouth
all right I want to get another mouthful
with these pickled mustard greens
because I think they'll really cut
through the richness of the pork
they do they're perfect they're very
tangy very crispy and the sauce that she
drizzled over the top of the rice is
quite sweet this is such an amazing dish
and again just the environment it's not
something that we've ever come across
before in our travels there's something
like ten vendors lined up all along the
side of the school I suppose at
lunchtime the kids will come out and
get a feed of pork on rice
I might slosh some of this garlic and I think it
might be yeah fish sauce mixture over
the top and I might add a bit of chili
too so I'm gonna go for this
fresh pounded chilli give it a bit of a
kick all right let's go for another
mouthful that egg again some of
the the pickled mustard greens rice and
pork oh yeah
mmm adding that chilli was fantastic
it's a little bit spicy it's not too
crazy doesn't burn your mouth off and
that garlicky fish sauce adds
just another level of flavor there's just
so much to take in here Thomas just
pointed out the spiky fence what
they've done is actually just put a
wooden pole across the spike so that
when they're passing the food over the
fence they're not spiking themselves and
when they need to clean these tables
what they do is is that they push a pole
through the gap in the fence and clean
it with a a rag stuck on the end of the
pole and clean it that way that's just
such a great atmosphere
we've come to one of the many local
markets here in Battambang and this is
really to the heart of the street food
there is a ton of street food here in
amongst all the actual the fruit and veg
and the meat and the fish it's a crazy
market with so much going on and there's
definitely a bunch of things here that
we want to show you so let's go get
these street foods
the markets in
Cambodia are so colorful and such a hive
of activity we're just wandering through
all the different stalls now there's fresh
fruit and veg there's fresh meat it all
just smells really beautiful and right
up ahead is our first food that we want
to show you from this market it's called
num chak chol which is a a coconut rice
flour and tapioca flour pancake it
looks really good
suostei, neak sok sabai dte
num chak chol? num chak chol I think I pronounced it correctly num chak chol, bpee
arkoun her set up is pretty
basic so she's just crouching down in
the corner she's got her bucket of
batter which is quite a runny batter and
then she's got her wok which is filled
with hot oil and she pours a cupful
of the batter into the hot oil and it
bubbles away crisps up it's in there for a
couple of minutes and then she whisks it
out
we've grabbed our num chak chol from
that amazing stand there and look at it
like right amongst all the action of the
market got a bunch of pork being sold
here some chickens over there fruit and
vegetables and she's just sitting she's
sitting on a tiny little stool about
that high off the ground cooking these
up and she's doing a roaring trade
people are just constantly going in and
grabbing these and that's because they
look like a fantastic snack so very
basic you saw that very thin batter that
was being poured in there when Sheena was
at the stand and it's just made this
sort of little pancake-y thing look
how crisp it is on the end so the batter
is very very basic rice flour tapioca
flour and then coconut milk as the as
the liquid so super simple let's rip on
in should be and you can see here
actually the big fluffy bit in the
middle so it should be super crispy on
the
outside but I'm gonna rip right through to
the middle oh look at that
ohhh nicely aerated in the middle there
rip it in two ohhhh
it's really sticky which I
like so that outside where it's super
golden it has got a great crunch but
it's actually turned sticky very quickly
so it's got a beautiful texture as you
eat it the coconut milk flavor is very
strong so lovely burst of coconut milk
and so this is a sweet treat but it's
not very sweet at all it's just got a
very little underlying hint of sweetness
oh actually that's coming on a little
bit more now so as I've swallowed it the
sweetness is sort of coming out of it so
it is quite sweet actually
I can feel it in my throat but it's not
crazy you don't bite into it and
feel that sweetness so it took a while
for that to come about it's a really
good snack and just the environment I
mean it's crazy look down here these
chickens just hanging out here we've got
some cut up looks like probably catfish
there everything about this market is
great and we've got a bunch more to eat
here so let's make our way through the
market and find you some more food
the outside of the market's pretty
frenetic but the inside is actually
quite peaceful and it's quite a big area
and there's some really neat stuff in
here so fermented sausages so lots of
sausages hanging up it's mainly meat
inside it looks like this is a great
market to explore so we're just cutting
through the market to go to our next
street food but oh there's so much to
look at in here all the fruit on the
ground I love this sort of place in
Southeast Asia
Cambodians love bitter pungent and sour
flavors and our next street food is all
about sourness so mouth puckeringly
sour flavors and its this which is
right behind me so sour fruits
Cambodians love sour fruits and
this lady suostei this lady has got
an array of sour fruits lined up so
they're in big metal pans and they're
just resting on a few plastic buckets
I can see guava there's mango there's tamarind
all sorts so let's order some umm neak sok sabai dte? Sok sabai
can I have mango guava
tamarind maybe some june plums arkoun
mmmm arkoun
so she's chucking on a bit of oooh yes please arkoun
got some chilli that's going to go over the fruit perfect arkoun chraen
whoa so got a huge bag so a dollars worth of sour
fruits these are gonna be great
her stall is 
just insanely colorful greens and reds
and browns and yellows it just makes you
want to suostei it just makes you want to
eat everything and this whole market is
just awash with color there's a
colorful fruit stalll there's 
a beautiful flower shop here it's
it's just a real feast for the senses 
this place is so invigorating please walk through it's so
invigorating to explore now I've got to
get into this bag of sour fruit so
what's in here
there's green mango
there's tamarind there's guava there's I think
baby June plums and then she's given me
a little bag of dipping chilli and
salt in there so green chillies and red
chilli so what you do is oh nearly lost
my fruits so you grab a fruit and then you
just dip it in in the chilli salt
mixture now this one this mango has
already got a ton of that on there so I
might just pop it straight in my gob
whoa okay sour spicy salty it's intense
 so that was the green mango it's
picked very young and so it's very sour
almost has a chalky flavor oh that's
really good
okay what else can I find I want to give
this tamarind a go because I've never
eaten it whole before alright
quite chalky and it's relatively
soft so the inside is soft there's a tiny bit
of crunch on the outside spicy from the
chilli on top there and mmm quite bitter once
you start biting into it mmm bitter
chalky sour spicy
it's midday but the market is already
starting to pack up and I can just see
up ahead a snack we really want to
eat so let's see if we can still
grab it in time
suostei wow beautiful arkoun chraen
we made it
just in time to catch this lady who's
selling jackfruit amok which is jackfruit
steamed arkoun chraen jackfruit 
steamed in coconut milk I'm so glad we
get to sample this let's go and eat
I've
whipped this jackfruit amok out of the
bag and I'm a little bit concerned that
we don't actually have jackfruit amok
here there's a few giveaway signs I don't
think it is what we ordered so I think a
language barrier issue has happened here
so you can see that it looks sort of
cake-like I'll just peel into it and see
what's actually going on here so it's
got a sort of a coconut milk batter on
top yeah this is not what we expected oh
so it's like a cake I think it might be
a jackfruit product I'll eat it and see
what it is
it's jackfruit in a type
of sort of a muffin batter with a lovely
sort of sticky coconut milk icing it's
nice it's not amazing it's a little bit
dry it's definitely not entirely what we
wanted to show you this sometimes
happens language barrier means you don't
quite get you what you want sometimes so
this this topping this coconut milk
topping so steamed milk topping on top
that is essentially what we expected we
expected almost a batter of that with
pieces of jackfruit in it so jackfruit
is a really lovely fruit that you find
here in Southeast Asia big green fruit
they cut it open and there's these nice
yellow pieces inside but obviously
that's not what we've ended up with but
amok is arguably well is really the
national dish of Cambodia normally served
with fish so the jackfruit version was gonna be
very interesting so we're gonna have to
get back to this market and try and have
it while we're here in Battambang but so
it's sort of is that says what we
should have had but it should have been
all of that white stuff on top with big
pieces of
jackfruit in it and steamed in banana
leaf just like this little muffin has
been so a nice little snack but definitely
not quite what we were after
