Sea Creatures I Have Et in Kampot and Kep

I have this backlog of photos on my computer, staring at me, and they're from the Kep Crab Market. And I wanted to share them with you. They relate to no particular restaurant but do give some impression of Cambodia's pretty remarkable array of edible and (mostly) delicious sea creatures - and what goes into catching them and bringing them to market.



A bit of complicated and death defying Internet Research revealed this strange creature is a Melo miltonis sea snail, also known as the southern bailer or "bailer-volute." It is named "the bailer" because the (de-snailed) shell apparently is extremely handy for bailing out a sinking canoe or small water vessel. Like everything else that draws breath on this planet, Cambodians eat it. How's the taste? A colleague of mine noted, "I thought something that looked that freaky had to be delicious. I WAS WRONG." Noted.



All this dazzling sea-life is brought to the surface by means of rather small and basic boats, which troll the waters near Kep daily and bring the goods back to the market. Crab traps are ubiquitous, and almost all of the seafood sales appear to be conducted by women. Arguments over crab size and quality can get exceptionally heated, and everyone gathers around and begins eyeballing the crustaceans when a trap is brought in from its mooring near the shore.



During the prime-time of day for seafood sales, a number of people will be standing around in the water, waiting to be called in. Kep is tiny and quiet but the seafood market is by far the busiest thing about the place.



This is the standard view from all the Crab Market's restaurants - fishing boats bringing in their nets, and people wading into the shallow water to get the crab-traps out. It is all very bucolic, and only occasionally smelly.



The prawns are gorgeous, of course - wild caught, scrumptious - and kept in large yellow buckets by fearsome looking Ladies of a Certain Age. They do try to convince me to buy a bag or two although I am holding a camera and looking every inch the part of the barang, although half-heartedly, and while laughing. Buying prawns out of buckets reminds me of home, of New Orleans.



The Crab Market's restaurants all seem to feature a grill station of some kind, selling seafood of all kinds on a stick to those who prefer to eat ala-carte, or just prefer to eat things off a stick in general. I prefer to sit down for reasons of air conditioning, but the goods look tasty - and eminently simple.



Cambodia happens to possess an abundance of squid. I hope you like tentacles. I sure do.



And here is the Durian, the most infamous of Southeast Asia's fruits, reputed to taste alternately of paradise, a woman's nether region (a-hem), cheese, something in-between cheese and a nice mango, and three-week-old-ass, depending on who you ask. I haven't really made a call on the flavor as no one has offered it to me and I have not yet bothered to try, though I did enjoy a durian milkshake once, a long time ago. I do know that it smells awful (and is not allowed on airplanes in Southeast Asia due to its potentially nausea-inducing effects in close quarters).

Cambodians find endless amusement in foreigners hatred of durian. "Ah, you like that?" one man said, grinning, as I took this photo.

"No, I don't think so," I said, "though I do like krowd (pomelo)."

"None of you like it! Too smelly," he observed, still laughing as he walked away.



Kampot is proud of its durian crop, and happens to have a massive, ornate statue of one smack-dab in the center of town. It is attractively lit up at night and attracts a large number of families. Adults sit and chat around the Giant Durian, and little children chase each other around The Giant Durian, and a small fountain plays around the edges. If only it possessed the olfactory abilities of the real thing.

Trei: Best Dang Crab Market Seafood in Kep

Trei
Crab Market
Kep, Cambodia


The view outside the crab market's restaurants. It's salubrious.

Kep is famous for its "crab market," which is what they tell you all about in the guide books. The guidebooks made me think this would be some kind of elaborate affair, but the reality is that the Crab Market is a strip of 8 or so restaurants right up next to one another, all of them serving the fresh seafood Kep is known for, all of them at rock bottom prices, and insofar as I can determine, they're all pretty good. Within such close proximity of each other, they'd have to be.

I selected Trei because they were not playing bad electronica inside and it seemed a tic or two more upscale then the others judging by napkin-folding skill and the furnishings. It's little things like this that stave off the food poisoning when eating crab in a third world country. And it was this I intended to do. Trei means "fish" in Khmer. You learned something, just now.



The menu, as is expected, focuses on Kep's remarkable array of super fresh seafood. There's everything from whole fish (multiple varieties) to skate to squid to crab to shrimp on the menu. As crab is my favorite food, my choice was an easy one. I picked the crab with sauteed Kampot peppercorns. A medium serving goes for a princely 7 bucks. I also chose the stir-fried morning glory with chili and garlic, which is a traditional Southeast Asian accompaniment to crab, and also happens to be delicious.

The restaurant, like all the restaurants here, is built right out over the water, which means you can hear the water lapping underneath you and watch the fisherpeople (mostly women) bring in their nets or traps. The restaurants all keep their stock in little bamboo traps underneath or beside the restaurants. Trei's cooking team seemed to consist of a fat middle aged women in a small open-kitchen off to the side, with a couple other girls peeling things.



The crab was absolutely fantastic. Ultra-fresh. Bits of bright orange roe hanging off the bottom. They're small crabs, and you have to work a lot to get at them, but they are worth it. The fresh peppercorn is really a pretty delightful thing if you haven't had them before - I am not fond of dried pepper but I have a taste for the fresh stuff, which is less harsh and more invigorating. They're also served with a sprig of green onion. The Crab Market's other restaurants prepare it with a thicker sauce with a lot more spice paste in it, but I personally prefer Trei's more delicate, subtle variant on such. You can taste the crab better.

The serve of morning-glory was also immense and also delicious, with plenty of garlic and chili. It's a standard dish and doesn't vary much, but they certainly gave me enough for 2 bucks.



A note must also be made on Trei's green mango salad. It's another Khmer standby and is often treated rather apathetially. This was a revelation: tons of flavor, tons of peanuts and dried shrimp, a sharp and perfectly sweet chili dressing. Fried shallots and the little sweet ones I love so much here. It's perfect on a hot-ass day, which are most Cambodian days.



The inside of Trei has wooden tables and the napkins are folded all pretty. This is why it's the Upscale choice. The prices, however, are on par with the other crab market establishments.



I came back to Trei twice because I felt loyal and because I could think of no ultra compelling reason not to do so. That night, I came back and had the sampler seafood platter. It's a bit of a splurge for a Cambodian-budgeted type at 11.00, but you get: two prawns, fish fillet, squid, and boiled crab, with accompanying sauces. That kind of platter would be $30 bucks and served with attitude in the USA.



To be able to afford all this and a glass of wine at the age of 22 is something of a realized dream - I cannot tell a lie. It's the freshness that really makes Kep's seafood remarkable. They're swimming around in bamboo traps until you eat them. It's all very simple.

Yok Yor Seafood, Bangkok: Beer and Innocent Sea-Life

Yok Yor Seafood Restaurant
885 Soi Somdet Chao Praya 17, Bangkok, Thailand
#863-0565-6

There's an entire genre of Thai water-front seaside restaurants - an entire genre of Asian water-front restaurants, really. They crop up from Hong Kong to Vietnam to Singapore to Taiwan, and they all specialize in fresh seafood, chilled beer, and some sort of musical "entertainment" (depending on your proclivities). Yok Yor is a classic example of the genre: on the banks of Bangkok's river, it features tanks of live seafood, a very extensive menu, a sappy Thai singer and a karaoeke stand. Oh, and girls in tight-fitting and skimpy beer dresses.

As is the case with most of these restaurants, the food is fabulous.

Yok Yor is right next door to the Millenium Hilton hotel and we could probably have walked, but the guy at the dock said they'd send a boat for us. And it's sort of hard to resist being personally delivered to a restaurant via a boat. The boat, however, appeared to miss us sitting all hungry-like on the dock, so the Hilton guy's agreed to make a special dropoff for us.

We sat by the river and watched Thailand's startlingly glittery party-boats go by. I perused the money. If it swims and is tasty, they have it here, along with the full complement of Thai dishes and some Chinese and Western stuff besides. My mother was on the hunt for prawns - those massive, beefy Thai monsters that lurk in the semi-saline waters of the region. I live for crab, and so I wanted to get a crab (because, well, why wouldn't I). And then, there was the consideration of sea-bass steamed in a preserved lemon sauce.

We threw up our hands and just ordered all three. And a papaya salad for palate-cleansing. Som tum is good for that.

These prawns are Godzilla-like and would probably intimidate anyone with a bit of an insect phobia. They were scandalously good. The meat was tender, pink, and streaked with buttery red roe, and there was a lot of it.

You could suck out the heads like a good crawfish, and these were buttery and delicious also. There was a sweet chili sauce on the side for dipping, but there wasn't really a point, not with prawns that tasted like this.

The crab was a big, meaty local crab cooked in the usual yellow curry and green onion sauce. Big and fresh and with very sweet meat. The sauce was subtle and didn't hide the flavor of the crabmeat. This was a smaller crab and sometimes I wonder what kind of beasts they've got lurking in the back of the restaurant. Do they take off the cook's fingers on a regular basis?

Finally, the seabass. The preserved lemon sauce is something I hadn't tried yet in Thailand, and it was very good: extremely tangy and perfectly suited to the firm fish. Not overdone, as has been known to happen with whole fish, and not underdone, either. Make them blow out the atmospheric flame they stick under the serving plate for you, since it WILL get overcooked if you let it burn.

We somehow managed to devour just about all of it. The boats went by and there were a lot of families around us drinking beer. There were two precocious children singing karaoke inside the restaurant who really should not have been encouraged in this by their families. The beer-girls were here, there, and everywhere. It was, I think, a moment quintessentially Bangkok.

Yok Yor is expensiveish, especially if you get greedy and order everything like we did. It'll still cost less money then a fancified place without beer girls and karaoke and with subdued lighting and hip music, and who the hell wants that when you're getting down and dirty with some seafood, anyway? I mean, really. They'll even send a boat down for you and bring you back if you're staying along the river. Dinner and a Ride.

SINGAPORE CHILI CRABS: OH GOD YES

Singapore style chili crabs are my favorite food in the world. The confluence of fresh delicious Dungeness crabs, spicy-ass chili sauce, and snappy green onions is magical for me, pure alchemy, the sort of thing I can see myself chomping through endless servings of in some unnamed and undefined Elysian Field after I am dead and gone. I am considering a journey to Singapore for the primary purpose of eating crabs until I am throughly sick. I badger my poor long suffering father constantly to make them for me whenever I am home.

This has taken on the ken of ritual, to me: the visit to the local Asian market, where we jockey for position at the aquarium table (the one with the tank of live frogs) to get our live crabs, the purchase of a long French roll from the bakery next-door. The rustling of the live crabs in the plastic covered brown paper bag we receive them in. When we come in with the crabs and put them in the fridge, my mom inevitably repeating the old story about her cook in Hong Kong long ago, who enjoyed placing the crabs on the kitchen floor then going to get the family cat (always named Sam, as was family custom), who would become petrified with fear at the sight of enormous crustaceans on his very own kitchen floor.

















My dad boils the crabs until they stop scrabbling at the sides of the stockpot, of course, that's something you can't avoid. I'd like to believe there's something elemental there, like what a hunter supposedly feels after stabbing a wild boar to death or whatever, then sitting down for a nice dinner of its prepared and deliciously braised flesh. But I suppose it isn't really the same, with crabs from the Asian grocery store. Not really.



SINGAPORE CHILI CRABS


Dungeness crabs (as many as you'd like)
Onion
Red bell pepper
Green onions

SAUCE:
Tomato sauce
Sambal chili-garlic sauce (not sricha)
Garlic
Sugar
Salt
A little bit of corn starch


















To make the sauce, combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well. This is a very subjective thing, so tweak ingredients according to your taste and personal proclivities.

Boil the crabs until they dead, then take them apart. The Chinese style of "whacking apart with a cleaver" works tolerably well in this instance.

Get out your big-ass wok and add the garlic, the onion, and the red bell pepper. Cook for a while until soft and fragrant.

Add the crabs en-masse. Stir-fry until they're just done (you don't want to overcook them). This usually takes around four or five minutes, but keep an eye on things. Once that's achieved, add the sauce ingredients and stir well. Finally, add the chopped green onions and serve.

I usually make Chinese broccoli, greens, or stir-fried long beans with pork to accompany this dish. Fried rice would also be a delightful addition to the menu. Serve with sake or beer, and don't forget to spread out some newspapers - you won't regret it.

The Crescent City Farmers Market, The Lee Brothers, and Other Concerns

The Lee Brothers came to the Crescent City Farmer's Market a couple of weeks ago, selling signed copies of their new cookbook, Simple Fresh Southern. They're truly delightful guys, and we had a nice conversation about the joys of okra - I need to try eating it raw on really hot summer days. A true Southern cook can talk about okra for a very, very long time. I mean, good lord, lookit how wholesome and friendly they look. How the heck could you not buy their cookbook? They sure roped me in.

As for the book? Total keeper. I cooked it from a bunch during the week of Thanksgiving and will be posting pictures soon. It's a great varation on their first cookbook, which was, as you may remember, a delicious but very heavy-dish oriened treatise on Southern cuisine. The recipes in this book are much more focused on uber-fresh ingredients and recipes that can be slapped together in about an hour or so: great to have around when you're sick of cooking the same goddamn thing over and over and over.



We had a few other doings at the Market. Gabrielle at the Uptowner owner and local chef Greg Sonnier gave away samples of his gumbo, in an effort to support his ailing friend, Ray Brandhurst. The gumbo was perhaps the best damn stuff I'd ever had. I tracked him down and asked whatever he'd done to it to make it so good, and he filled me in.

The trick? A whole smoked turkey. He made stock out of the carcass and used the dark meat in the gumbo (along with the usual seafood and sausage suspects), producing a smoky, earthy, down n' dirty flavor. It tasted exactly like BBQ gumbo, with an alluring smokehouse flavor. The other trick? Sonnier does his roux in the oven. Sounds obscene, but judging from this gumbo, it's a fantastic idea. Hopefully my dad and I can get some turkey parts, fire up the smoker, and try to replicate this over the holidays. It's too good to let it pass me by.




Gorgeous winter greens. Collards, kale, Asian greens, mustard greens, you name it, they got it. Along with scallions, broccoli, and other delights.




Blue crabs, always a beloved staple around here. These folks bring them in live and put the disgruntled little beasts into crates during market-time. This would be the view inside one of the aforementioned crates.