Khmer cuisine (Khmer: សិល្បៈខាងធ្វើម្ហូបខ្មែរ) is another name for the food widely consumed in Cambodia. The food of Cambodia includes tropical fruits, rice, noodles, drinks, dessert and various soups. The staple food for Cambodians is rice. Almost every meal includes a bowl of rice, although noodles are also popular. A wide range of curries, soups and stir fries are served with rice. Many rice varieties are available in Cambodia, including aromatic rice and glutinous or sticky rice. The latter is more commonly found in desserts with fruits like durian.
Khmer Cuisine shares much in common with the food of neighbouring Thailand, although it is generally not as spicy; and Vietnam, with whom it shares many common dishes and a colonial history, both being part of the French colonial empire in Southeast Asia. It has also drawn upon influences from the cuisines of China and France, both of whom are powerful players in Cambodian history. Curry dishes, known as kari (in Khmer, ការី) show a trace of cultural influence from India. The many variations of rice noodles show the influences from Chinese cuisine. Rice noodle soup, known simply as Kuyteav (គុយទាវ), is a popular dish brought to Cambodia by Chinese settlers from generations past. Also, Banh Chiao is the Khmer version of the Vietnamese Bánh xèo. A legacy of the French is the baguette, which the Cambodians often eat with pâté, tinned sardines or eggs. One of these with a cup of strong coffee, sweetened with condensed milk, is an example of a common Cambodian breakfast.
Typically, Cambodians eat their meals with at least three or four separate dishes. A meal will usually include a soup, or samlor, served alongside the main courses. Each individual dish will be either sweet, sour, salty or bitter. Chili is usually left up to individuals to add themselves. In this way Cambodians ensure that they get a bit of every flavour to satisfy their palates.
Several cooking courses are now run in popular tourist areas, giving visitors the chance to share the culinary secret of the Khmers.
Noodles
Many elements of Cambodian noodle dishes were inspired by Chinese and Vietnamese cooking[3] despite maintaining a unique Khmer variation. Prahok is never used with noodle dishes. Rice stick noodles are used in Mee Katang (មីកាតាំង), which is a Cambodian variation of chǎo fěn with gravy. Unlike the Chinese styled chǎo fěn, the noodles are plated under the stir fry beef and vegetables and topped off with scrambled eggs. Burmese style noodles (មីកុឡា - Mee Kola) is a vegetarian dish made from thin rice stick noodles, steamed and cooked with soy sauce and garlic chives. This is served with pickled vegetables Jroak (ជ្រក់), julienned eggs, and sweet garlic fish sauce garnished with crushed peanuts. Mi Cha (មីឆា) is stir fried egg noodles.
Spiders
Other delicacies include the Skuon spider, (a-ping) which is deep fried with lashings of salt and pepper until it turns a deep brown color and served piping hot. The spider as culinary haute cuisine. It was during the Khmer Rouge years that the Cambodians, starving slaves in the rice fields, burrowed into the fields for food and found sustenance in the form of bugs, water beetles and the Skuon spider, a palm sized tarantula, which turned out to have an excellent taste. Skuon is some 50 km north of Phnom Penh and on a good day, a spider vendor can sell between 100-200 spiders[citation needed].
The hairy black Skuon spider is part of Cambodia’s traditional pharmacy, especially when soaked in rice wine, and treats backache and children with the common cold.