- So when I heard that we were going to Oakland,
there was one spot that I wanted to go,
and this is the spot.
We'll be meeting Chef Nite Yun,
who is taking us back to the golden years of Cambodia,
cooking the food that she grew up eating
and sharing it with all of Oakland.
- So today, we're gonna make kuy teav Phnom Penh,
which is like a noodle soup dish,
a pork belly dish called prahok ktiss.
- You saying pork belly is straight to my heart already.
(acoustic guitar)
- So people like to ask if Cambodian food is similar
to Thai or Vietnamese.
There's an overlap in ingredients,
but the overall flavors and dishes are quite different.
We eat a lot of paste to go with the fresh ingredients,
and there's always a contrast in the texture
with funkiness and raw veggies.
But then it varies too, because you have the countryside
where they do a lot of stews and if you go to the city,
you'll find soups like this.
But most of the dishes here are food that
I grew up eating.
Nyum Bai translates to "eat rice",
but it's also a phrase that my mom would say,
forcing them to go eat, like "Come here! Nyum bai!"
- Yeah, yeah.
(Nite laughs)
- That's her way of making people feel comfortable
is through food,
so it's like, just come eat.
We're gonna make my favorite dish ever.
It's a classic Cambodian dish called prahok ktiss,
and it's essential that we use pork belly
because you want the fat to be cooked down,
and it creates this, I don't know, really delicious--
- Magical.
- Yeah.
So here's the prahok ktiss.
It has a very funky smell.
- So it's a fermented fish paste?
- It's fermented fish paste.
We use this in a lot of Cambodian cooking, the prahok.
And then, kroeung, what you see here.
It's a lemongrass paste.
It's two of the most important ingredients in cooking
Cambodian food.
We want to add the lemongrass, red chile, fish paste.
- [Sheldon] Oh, it's so fragrant.
- Yeah, this is the winning combination.
(brass instruments with beat)
I grew up in the kitchen with my mom.
We lived in a one bedroom apartment,
so I was always in the kitchen,
not necessarily wanting to learn how to cook,
but because I really didn't have anywhere else to go.
(both laugh)
Pork belly.
This is tamarind powder.
Gonna add some tamarind powder.
Sugar.
Yup, and then you add the coconut milk,
some bird eye chiles.
You like spicy food?
- Yeah.
- Okay, so I'm gonna add two more.
When you cook in Cambodia,
you have to go the store every morning
because most homes, like my cousins and grandma,
they didn't have refrigerators.
So every morning, we would wake up before six o'clock,
go to the market.
If we were to cook chicken in Cambodia,
we would kill it that same day so it's very fresh.
Some cucumbers, carrots, cabbage wedge.
Here you have it, prahok ktiss.
- Prahok ktiss.
What did mom think when you said you're gonna open up
a Cambodian restaurant?
- She didn't understand what a pop-up was either,
and so I tried to explain to her what it was.
"Well, mom, you had people come over,
"and sold food from our house,
"so essentially, it's kinda the same thing."
- Yeah, yeah.
Wait, wait, sell food from the house?
- Yeah, so my mom would actually turn our house
into a gambling house, like a saloon,
so she can collect tips.
She would call people that she knows that would make food
from the house to come sell food.
There's the fried chicken lady,
and then there's this lady, the papaya lady,
where she could basically converted her van
and turned it into a papaya salad station.
- I'd choose papaya salad over ice cream any day.
- Oh my gosh, so good.
So what we're making is called kuy teav phnom penh.
Kuy teav means noodle, and then Phnom Penh is
the capital in Cambodia.
It's traditionally eaten for breakfast,
so if you were to be in the capital,
you'll see it in all corners.
So just sit down, order one bowl,
they'll give you a bowl for 25 cents,
and it's the best meal ever.
- There must be a ton of different noodle dishes
in Cambodia.
Why did you choose this one?
- It's a dish that my mom would make for me and my friends,
and this is also the dish that inspired me to
start Nyum Bai, just because people know so much
about ramen, and Vietnamese pho,
but no one really knows anything about
the Cambodian soup kuy teav Phnom Penh.
Especially here in the Bay Area,
there's so many different types of cuisine,
but yet Cambodian food is underrepresented.
So the broth usually takes about six hours to make,
just because you need to extract all the flavors
from the bones and all the other ingredients.
So I prefer to use pork neck bones,
but sometimes at the butcher they don't have that available.
So it looks like this batch is the feet?
The leg?
Yeah, the knuckles?
You do wanna char the onion 'til it's completely black
and sticky like this.
Drop it in the broth, daikon.
And this is pickled radish.
And then this is dried calamari.
- Okay, nice.
Dried squid.
- Yup, dried squid.
We put fish sauce, sugar, and some salt.
(Cambodian rock and roll)
- A lot of people don't really know the history of Cambodia
or they have only certain things that they associate
Cambodia with.
- If people know anything about Cambodia,
it's the genocide or the Angkor Wat,
but Cambodia has such a beautiful history.
During the '50s and '60s was a prosperous time in Cambodia,
where the music was happening, artists were everywhere.
This was also the time where my parents grew up.
That time was taken away from them because of the war,
and so in essence, this is like a time capsule
of the golden era.
So it's an homage to their youth.
- This is a dish that kind of encompasses
what Nyum Bai is.
- Basically, yeah.
- First taste.
That's amazing.
That has all the best things of what a bowl
of soup and noodles you want.
Perfect salty to sweet,
even with all of those different flavors that's coming
it's just so warming.
How can you not want to share this with everybody?
(both laugh)
Tell me about the area that you visited
when you were up there.
- So I stayed in the countryside.
It was a village where everyone knows each other.
You would have to bathe outside
because there's no actual bathroom.
And then you start your day by going to the market.
My first visit to Cambodia, I stayed with my grandmother
in Battambang.
That's the countryside of Cambodia.
She's one badass lady.
She was definitely ahead of her time,
making trades, loaning people money, collecting interest.
Everyone was scared of her.
When I would go to the market,
and they would say, "Be careful,"
or "Give her the best price, or her grandma
"will come out and get you."
I knew that my mom had a really strict upbringing,
but I didn't know how strict.
I remember this one occasion,
probably two o'clock in the afternoon,
she literally locked up all the gates,
closed the windows, shut the blinds,
and locked me in a room so I couldn't go anywhere.
That's how strict she was.
- Get that hustle from grandma.
(upbeat jazz)
- So this right here is a good example of
a classic Cambodian dish.
Take a bite of your chile.
- Oh!
- Oh my gosh!
(Sheldon coughs)
(Nite laughs)
- You talk about that funk but it's carried on by
the fattiness of the pork and the coconut milk
kinda brings everything together.
- Right, uh-huh.
- Do you feel some type of responsibility
about Cambodian cuisine?
- I feel like I do,
because there's not a lot of Cambodian restaurants
or a lot of Cambodian chefs.
But slowly, like we have first generation,
second generation Cambodians, that are reconnecting
with their roots again through food.
- 'Cause in the '50s and '60s, Cambodia was popppin' right?
- Yeah, oh my gosh.
It was a cool time.
If I could go back in time,
I would live during that era.
- Right, and just because of that history that followed,
a lot of your parents' generation don't talk about
those golden years?
- It's forgotten, because it's just taken over
by something so traumatic.
My parents would always repress their stories
about the genocide.
My mom's eyes would already get watery every time
I bring up the subject.
And so a better way for the younger generations
to understand their history,
or to reconnect with their roots,
I feel like they need a safe place to express that.
Let's say they bring their parents in,
and they can bring up the topic over a meal.
"Mom, did you eat this when you were young?"
Hoping that the conversation of healing or reconnecting
would happen organically just over food,
because once we eat certain flavors,
it strikes a certain memory, right?
So it's a segue to start healing.
- You put your soul into this.
How do you say cheers?
- Chôl muŏy!
- Chôl muŏy! - Chôl muŏy!
(Nite laughs)
- Rock and roll, let's go right now.
(Cambodian rock and roll)
Oh, okay.
(noodle flops)
(Sheldon laughs)
Okay, maybe a couple more years.