I didn’t even have to squeeze anything out of a sock this time!

A lot of the time, my days in Cambodia feel very far away. Going through my old notebooks is like walking into a weird time portal, full of interviews with people I don’t remember (“Question: how long does it take you to paint a single tuk-tuk?”), odd to-do lists (“Find copy of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for Savuth”) and discarded lyrics for a comedic folk song entitled “All My Linga Wants Is Your Yoni” (funnier than it sounds, I swear).

But with the publication of this cool anthology, which includes some of my Cambodian musings, I was looking for a way to pay homage to and feel reconnected with the Kingdom of Wonder. That’s when I went hunting through my notes for the recipe for Tofu with Tamarind, Chili and Basil. I scored it while writing a weekly column for The Phnom Penh Post called The Learning Curve in which I would try to learn traditional Khmer pursuits and then make fun of myself while I bumbled my way through them. Looking back, I see that I must have irritated a lot of busy people while researching this column, but they tended to be unfailingly good-natured about it, and Oeurm Pav at Arun Restaurant was no exception.

But would I be able to remember enough about interviewing her to recreate my favorite Khmer dish? It was a long time ago, my notes were sketchy, and even in optimal conditions, I’m lazy about measurements. However, I was able to purchase tamarind paste in an Indian grocery store in Queens, whereas in Cambodia, I had to boil the tamarind and squeeze it through one of Jason’s socks for lack of a cheesecloth. Perhaps giving undue weight to this head start, I decided that I could just intuit my way through the rest of it. Continue reading →