Why I love Khmer food

I love Khmer food.

The country is blessed with fertile land on which grow a wonderful range of fruits, vegetables, cereals and nuts. Subtle spices and interesting herbs abound.

Propagandists for Thai food conveniently forget that much of the country’s cuisine is based on Khmer recipes. Detractors of Cambodian cuisine often repeat old prejudice rather than taste the food for themselves. Simple maybe, uncelebrated certainly – but the food here is frequently delicious and those dismissing it are missing out!

Top 10 culinary champions:

10. Pumpkin: I can’t believe I never ate this before. Now I eat it every day. Cambodian pumpkins are large, rich and intensely flavoursome. Gently fried with noodles they soften to a delicious texture. Even better, simmer with potatoes and carrots in coconut milk and flavour with local spices and a squeeze of lime for the simplest and most exquisite curry this side of India. And then there’s pumpkin pie…

9. Kingdom Ale: At last Cambodia has produced a decent beer! This Phnom Penh brew is a tasty, highly drinkable pale ale. Cheers!

8. Cashews: Grown in the Eastern hills, and underappreciated even in their country of origin, these nuts go beautifully in a stir fry with pineapple or tofu, or on their own salted. And they cost a fraction of the price you’d pay overseas.

7. Rich fruit, dragon fruit, rambutans, and treefulls of fruits which don’t even have a name in English. Sure, bananas and melons can be great, but at their best these fruits are tasty, succulent and truly exotic.

6. Ban Sum: Thick rice noodles served cold with cucumber, mint, beansprouts, chilli, and chunks of veggie spring rolls. Best in Stung Treng market - for breakfast.

5. Noodle soup: More noodles for breakfast? Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Koy Taeo is a lip-smacking soup, the veggie version coming with spring onions, beansprouts and a zingy wedge of lime. Soak up the sauce with chunks of fried Ta Kwai bread. Now you’re set for the day.

4. Coffee: The sweet and chocolaty coffee from Cambodia’s North-East may not be for aficionados but it is undeniably tasty. Add an unhealthy dollop of MyBoy condensed milk and serve over ice and you have a delicious, teeth-janglingly sweet morning pick-me-up.

3. Tofu: Who needs meat when you can get all the goodness and none of the nastiness from this wonder food? Simply chunked and deep-fried with veggies and noodles it is awesome; my girlfriend Katja’s tofu-burgers fashioned with carrot and onions and flavoured with Kampot pepper were so delicious they’ll send Burger King shares into freefall.

2. Rice: Not just a staple, rather the very essence of Cambodian food (‘to eat’ in Khmer – nyam-bai - actually means ‘to eat rice’). Methods of production may be less mechanized than in neighbouring countries, and sadly brown rice is still tarred with memories of the Khmer Rouge forcing its production. But don’t worry: the nutty taste of the jasmine rice here is unsurpassed, and the sweet sticky rice is an unmissable dessert.

1. Mangoes. Sugary, smokey and succulant. The most tantalising treat in this Kingdom of Wonders.