My first taste of prahok was about 5 years ago when I was living in a suburb of St. Paul, MN. Prahok is a fermented fish paste used as a condiment in Cambodian cooking like fish sauce is to Vietnamese cooking. When I opened the jar, the smell was so pungent, it reminded me of garbage rotting in the sweltering heat of Indian land fills. I immediately closed it, stuck it in the freezer and waited for trash day to take it out.
Although my parents are Chinese, they were raised in Cambodia so when I was growing up my mom would occasionally add some Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Thai food to her repertoire of Chinese dinners.
Thanks to Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime, I grew up in the very Nordic South Dakota, where I was related to every Chinese person in the community. My mom was MY authority on Chinese food and everything she made I considered Chinese food. Even though my mom would call those various dishes by their native names, I, having a very limited Chinese vocabulary at the time, thought it was all Chinese food and everything she says must be Chinese. Silly me.
It wasn't until I left home and went to university that I started to really distinguish the differences in Asian food and realized what my mom called those dishes were not in Chinese.
From the "plethora" of Asian restaurants in Arizona, where I went to university, I started to learn the country of origins of the food I ate as a child. However, some of the dishes I craved, no one sold. When I asked my mom, she said they are Cambodian dishes and started to teach me how to make them. She warned me her recipes are not exactly authentic as some Cambodian flavors are just too pungent for her Chinese palette. One of the most significant difference is that she eliminates the prahok in her recipes. I was fine with it as long as it tasted like what I remembered.
As I became more and more adventurous in my cooking, I also started to become more curious about authentic, traditional recipes.
Then about 5 years ago I took a job that required me to move back to the midwest. I was still experimenting with recipes and came by some traditional Cambodian recipes. Some of it required the use to prahok. That's when I had my first encounter with prahok as described in the beginning of this story.
Now living in Los Angeles, I recently watched an episode of Andrew Zimmern in Cambodia and how much he enjoyed prahok. So I decided to try it again especially since about 2 years ago I visited Cambodia for the first time and yes, although the food looked like what my mom cooked, there was a slight difference.
This time I asked my aunt, my dad's brother's wife. Like my parents, she is also Chinese but grew up in Cambodia. She prefers prahok and doesn't think Cambodian food tastes right without it.
So yesterday I ventured to Cambodia town in Long Beach, CA, where the largest Cambodian population resides outside of Cambodia.
I went into one of the bigger grocery stores there KH Supermarket. As I was walking down the spice aisle, then the jarred sauce aisle I was starting to get a bit upset. There was not a jar of prahok to be found. How could this be possible??? A Cambodian grocer not selling prahok is like a Japanese market not selling soy sauce! Then I found it, prahok has it own aisle.
Confused as to which to buy, I asked a lady that was holding her sleeping child on one side of her body. In part Cambodian, part English, she recommended one in its plain form but highly recommends another that already has a slew of spices added to it. She says she uses that everyday. I figured I'll save that one for when I'm extremely versatile in my prahok uses.
Armed with my shiny new jar of prahok. I'm going to make a pork and prahok terrine. Its a steamed meatloaf similar to a dish my Cantonese grandma use to make but she used Cantonese style dried salt fish and julienned ginger, where as I'm going to use prahok and lime zest.
Wish me luck and stay tuned for the results. ;-)
