Eating with (Cambodian) Pepper Can Spice Up Your Life

[CEOCambodiaNews]

In Cambodia, pepper is on a pedestal
J.M. Hirsch
September 19, 2020
In northern Cambodia, even the names exude an ancient romanticism. Angkor Wat. Phnom Bakheng. Phimeanakas. Meandering miles of movie-perfect temples. Join the masses at dawn and stumble through, awed by the stone intricacies of lost centuries.

In southern Cambodia, it's a romance of a different sort, a marriage taken for granted turned on its head. Unfurling across the shores and valleys of Kampot Province — 1,800 square miles wedged between the Gulf of Thailand and Vietnam — is the soul of Cambodian food: salt and pepper. But not how we know them.

Start at the coast, where men with pant legs rolled wade methodically across a mirror-like grid cut into brown earth, ponds sectioned by a patchwork of ochre dirt roads stretched to a stark horizon. Get closer and the mirrors break into a million refractions of captured light.

The men dredge rakes and the shards pile, glinting crystals mounding and breaking the water's surface. They are harvesting the salt of the sea, coarse flakes that turn brittle in the sun before being heaped in barn-like sheds to be bagged in 50-kilogram sacks. Taste a pinch and your mouth pops with minerals and brine.

Elsewhere in the world, salt this good would take the lead. But in Cambodia, it's backseated to the long-revered Kampot peppercorn, one of a few bold flavors — mostly fermented fish products — that define Cambodian cooking, an amalgam of Chinese, Muslim, Vietnamese, and French overlays to local ingredients.

In Europe and the U.S., ground black pepper most often is sprinkled habitually, a table seasoning used sparingly and without expectations. It is relegated to salt's obligatory plus-one, the guest who never quite understands why he was invited.

In Cambodia, pepper — brought by the Chinese around the 12th century — is a cooking spice, added before, during, and after. Copiously. It has presence, floral and strong. It has texture, never ground finely, insisting on being seen, felt, and crunched as much as tasted and smelled.

And it shows up everywhere, adding bright warmth to cocktails, meat, seafood, and sauces. It is used in such volume — ­not just overall, but within each dish — it leaves your mouth with a boisterous, pleasant buzz. Unlike chili pepper heat, which lingers and burns, peppercorns offer transient pops of fiery, fleeting flavor.

To better understand Cambodia's relationship with pepper — and, in fact, peppercorns them­selves — I rent a scooter and head several miles inland, dusting along rutted and winding dirt roads in wet wool heat. Past flat valleys with palm tree punctuation. Past ramshackle villages where petrol is sold in old glass Pepsi and Johnnie Walker bottles. Past barbershops little more than a chair and a tub of water at the edge of the road.

As you round Tomnop Tek Krolar, or The Secret Lake — a dazzling man-made body of water whose secret is that it is a grave for the thousands of slaves the Khmer Rouge forced to build it — you find the fringe of Kampot country, a hilly and protected region that once provided all the peppercorns for France.

As recently as the 1960s, Kampot produced thousands of tons of peppercorns — green, black, red, and white — but by the 1980s Pol Pot's genocide had wiped out nearly all the plants — considered a sign of luxury best eliminated — as well as the knowledge of how to cultivate them. Only during the last 15 years have the plantations slowly rebounded.

Bo Tree Farm is one of just 440 or so plantations today, all of which must grow their peppercorns organically, using nothing — not water, soil, nor fertilizer — from outside Kampot. The farm itself is small, but the plants dwarf you, three or four vines clustered and climbing 10 feet or more up bamboo poles or towers of stacked bricks. Hundreds of these clusters — each covered in tight bundles of tiny green berries — huddle under mesh tarps and straw thatch that partly shade and protect the vines. The effect is maze-like as you wander between them.

The first revelation is that all peppercorns, no matter the color, come from the same berry. Most are picked when green, then sorted. Anything too small is consumed fresh or pickled with sea salt to sprinkle on salads or seafood. The rest — which must be 4 to 5 millimeters round — are briefly boiled, then spread on sheets on the ground to dry in the sun for up to seven days. Their skins shrivel, harden, and dull to black.

If allowed to remain on the vine, those same green peppercorns eventually turn bright red and can be harvested and processed in a similar manner to produce red peppercorns, which have a milder flavor typically paired with fruit and sweets. Remove the red skins — a tedious process done by hand — and you are left with white peppercorns, even milder and often used to season chicken and pork.

The second revelation is when Tim Mann Thoem, the farm's cook, introduces me to two dishes that exemplify Cambodia's penchant for peppercorns. Each uses them — one white, the other black — gratuitously, heaping tablespoon after heaping tablespoon, infusing the dish, the air, even our fingertips...
https://theweek.com/articles/935260/cam ... r-pedestal