By: Heather Van Hull- Booking Coordinator and Cambodian Tour Consultant
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The freshness, variety and complexity of Southeast Asian cuisine continue to amaze me. Balance, I have learned since first arriving in Asia, is key to good cooking-the zing of fresh ginger root and the fire of the tiny red chilies must be offset by the slight lemony flavor of lemongrass or just a touch of palm sugar.
Although I love food, cooking has never been one of my strong points- I am the sort of person that burns toast, and not on purpose. Despite my poor cooking record I decided, in order to even better appreciate Khmer cuisine, I should learn more about the process behind the presented plate and signed up for a cooking course at Le Tigre de Papier, one of Siem Reap’s more popular cooking schools.
The first thing that I immediately loved about Le Tigre’s cooking course was the flexibility. After checking in and meeting your instructor as well as your fellow classmates, you were handed their associated restaurant’s menu and told to pick any starter and any main course you wanted to learn to make. The only limitation was everyone in the course had to agree upon one dessert to make together. Our instructor even let a ten-year old boy in the class choose lasagna as his main course, despite it being a Khmer cooking course! She did manage, however, to convince him he would love the taste of Cambodian-style spring rolls as his starter.
After making the tough decision of choosing what to cook, we set off on our field trip to the local market, trailing behind our instructor like a string of ducklings through Siem Reap’s winding alleyways to Psar Chas- the Old Market. Here we collected the final ingredients for our course, which the cooking school did not have already, and had a brief introduction to some ingredients which are fundamental to Cambodian cuisine. Loaded down with fruits, vegetables and greens, we headed back to the cooking school to begin the meal preparations.
In comparison to the previous cooking courses I have tried over the past few months in Thailand and Laos, I found the teaching style at Le Tigre very relaxed. The instructor was flexible, basing the speed and content of the course on the makeup of the class and wandering around the kitchen helping each person with whatever they seemed to be having difficulty with, such as simply chopping for me. More experienced cooks may find the introduction to local ingredients and food presentation bits of the course interesting, but easily become frustrated with its slow pace and more laidback style. Beginner cooks, such as myself, would find the course very helpful and informative as you have someone else helping and keeping an eye on your cooking, literally, every step of the way, making certain you burn neither your food, yourself, or the kitchen down.
My only suggestion for improvement would be for Le Tigre to provide every participant with a simple Khmer cookbook after completion of the course. Although the instructor does offer to email you any recipes you desire, it would be nice to have a hard copy of the more popular recipes.
Interested in trying Le Tigre de Papier’s Cooking School for yourself? Visit their website for more details: http://www.letigredepapier.com/en/cooking.php
For a similar post on cooking around Southeast Asia, check out Vietnam Country Director Michelle Nguyen’s experience here: Saigon Culinary Art Center
My only suggestion for improvement would be for Le Tigre to provide every participant with a simple Khmer cookbook after completion of the course. As well the instructor will help you to prepare recipe after completion of course also…
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