It’s 11:49 p.m. Time enough to post my “daily” dish.

Today I picked up my CSA baskets. Of course my farmer, Jenny Svetec, loaded me down with way more than I could hope to consuming in my empty nester kitchen. Vine ripe yellow cherry tomatoes, beets, corn, peas, zucchini and peppery radishes, to name but a few of the items that overflowed this week’s green boxes. The star of the show, however, was Jenny’s incredible baby strawberries. I had no idea strawberries were still in season. They were succulent, super sweet. And barely made it home. YUM-O!

Here’s the first of seven Wednesday installments of “Tom’s Cambodian Street Eats” by Fridge Whisperer guest blogger, Tom Fakler. Enjoy.

Dear Deb,

As you know, I am volunteering in Cambodia and blogging about my time here on Tom’s Travels. Cambodia is the poorest country in Southeast Asia. Every home cook we met in our travels around Morocco served us a great feast — especially on “couscous Friday” — with plenty of other seasonal variety the rest of the week. In Cambodia, however, it’s rice for breakfast, rice for lunch, and rice for dinner (except when it’s noodles!). Suffice to say, rice is the staple diet of Cambodia. Right now rice planting season in underway with most of the back-breaking work done by hand.

In North America and Europe rice is an addition to a main course of beef, chicken or fish. Here things are reversed. Rice is the main part of the meal, served with a little beef, chicken or fish to simply add flavour. People here are quite poor and meat is relatively expensive.

I know you are a proponent of farm-to-table procurement. In Cambodia you would be right at home. Most of the vendors in the market grow what they sell and bring the produce and/or animals to market themselves. If you want poultry, you can pick it up from the local “poultry moto” [scooter].

Until recently, the main market here in Kampong Cham was along a street, with vendors on either side. When the market was going full blast, it took over the entire thoroughfare.

In the new market — as in the supermarkets — foodstuffs are arranged by category; meat and fish vendors in one section (which helps corral flies into one area), and the vegetables are sided right next to the hair supplies and clothing stalls.

One can see how fresh the fish are, still wriggling, trying to get back into the Mekong, which is only 100 meters away.

Greetings from Kampong Cham.

Best,

Tom.

I first came to know Tom Fakler (Tom Fakler Photography) — master of the camera lense and restorer of a 425-year-old medina home — through my friend and colleague, world renowned Berber chef Lahcen Beqqi (Fez Cooking). I was writing a travel piece about my time cooking with Lahcen at his atelier and about discovering the labyrinth that is Morocco’s Fez-al-Bali, one of the most ancient medinas in the world. The photos I took, said my editor, were crap; enter one Tom Fakler via introduction through Lahcen.

The following year Tom became a project manager (read as: accountant; driver; logistics coordinator; booking agent; fashion consultant; and myriad other tasks too numerous to mention) for myself and his partner Anita — a diehard foodie in her own right. Like me, Anita wanted to discover Morocco’s culinary scene through the eyes and hands of home cooks from different religious-cultural-economic backgrounds. Together, we three spent a fortnight eating our way from Fes in the north, to Morocco’s fertile Souss Valley and the rebuilt city of Agadir in the south. Our research found us making couscous with an Arab farming family in the High Atlas Mountains; procuring still-pulsing fish dockside in Essaouira and having it charbroiled to perfection at stall #4 before devouring it overlooking the Atlantic Ocean; and recording the exchange of 600-year-old family recipes with the all-male patrons at Fez’s Cremerie La Place Cafe. What a trip!

So now my pal Tom finds himself in Cambodia (Tom’s Travels Blogspot) volunteering for a NGO (Kape Development), helping them write a business plan, upgrade their information technology section and improve communications. All of which, says Tom, moves at Cambodian speed. I’m guessing that means slow and stop. Mostly stop.

Tom writes, I have a nice house with a very good kitchen by Cambodian standards. It has an industrial strength rice cooker, two burner gas cooktop with an electric hot plate, and a mini bar refrigerator.

For Khmer New Year (April 14), I had a New Year’s Day party for the volunteers who were in town for language school. When my landlord heard that I was not intending to serve a “Khmer-style” sit down dinner, he armed me with a two-foot-high stack of plates, a huge box of spoons and forks, and a box of glasses.

There are very few expats in Kampong Cham. Not speaking much Khmer, I spend my free time taking photos and writing.

So, why am I telling you all this?

Because we’re launching “Tom’s Cambodian Street Eats” guest blogger series here at fridgewhisperer.com tomorrow and will be continuing the series for the next seven Wednesdays. You can expect insightful musings about edible deep fried spiders; moto chickens; a mysterious bottle of dark sauce with a picture of a Mercedes on it that Tom says he can use on his rice or in his motor scooter. That and a whole lot more exotic food stories coming your way tomorrow.

Stay tuned!

Writing restaurant reviews for magazines these past five years, believe me, I get that a joint can have an off night. So for me to comment negatively on any restaurant, it’s gotta be THAT bad.

Such was the case last Friday night.

I’d had a horrendous work week, hadn’t eaten anything since lunch the previous day, and was totally in need of comfort food. I’ve had take out from Milos (formerly The Friendly Greek) in Pickering a few times over the past year. I knew the soggy rice would be bland and the supposedly roasted potatoes would be anything but. That’s why I ordered fries instead. But I did think they had great tzatziki sauce and could make a half decent pork souvlaki.

Wrong.

What they referred to as “accompanied by Greek salad” on the dinner menu was actually a handful of iceberg lettuce in a plastic clam shell container with a half piece of thinly sliced tomato on top. No feta. No kalamata olives. No dressing. The built up steam inside the metal take away container rendered the fries inedible. If one were to launch the small nuggets of dried-out pork via an elastic band, one could easily take out a squirrel at 20 paces. Maybe a cat.

To Milos’ credit the tzatziki sauce was as good as I’d remembered. But $14 is way too much to pay for a couple of tablespoons of it.

Hot off the press is my story highlighting Italy’s agriturismo movement as experienced this past July at the stately farmhouse of Mimmo and Donatella Mayone. The article also afforded me a great opportunity to talk about regional culinary terroir – a topic near and dear to my humble foodie heart — and to show off my amazing family; all 21 of us!

Read the full story online here