Fried Fish with Roasted Peanut & Ma’om Sauce

This was my first discovery of this wonderful Cambodian herb, Ma’om last yer. It has such a strong and pleasant taste. So aromatic and adds an exciting new taste to the dish. The citrusy flavour with a hint of black pepper I thought. Nothing like any herb I’d tasted before. And even though this dish is full of  the lovely aromatic flavours of lime leaves, lemongrass and galangal, the ma’om compliments all of these whilst adding it’s own intriguing taste that I won’t forget and am drawn to since!!

Ma’om – Herb from Cambodia

Trey Chien Lamiet – Khmer Fried Fish with Turmeric

So I’ve finally gotten round to posting the recipes from my last two posts. Here’s the first. It’s actually from taste very similar to the Bengali fried fish recipes that I’ve already posted! Fish sauce and lemongrass is not used for cooking in Bangladesh.

For this dish I tried ‘Trey Saw’  (white fish) for the first time. I picked them up at the largest market here in Siem Reap – ‘Psar Leu’ which is an amazement in itself!! I’ll do a post or two on the markets here in the future. (Just to make you foodies mouth water at all the fantastic food and cooking ingredients available here!!) I also used trey krung (‘khoi maas’ in Bengali) which I’ve done a post about in the past.

Trey Saw (White Fish)

Trey Krung (Khmoi Maas in Bengali and I have no idea in English

Fried Cambodian Fish Bengali Style

At the moment I’m cooking faster than can I process the pictures and write it all up.  So I’ve got a backlog of recipes from the past week.

Here’s a classical Bengali fish dish that we often have at my mum’s. It’s called “mas biran”, which basically means fried fish. The dish is actually a starter in Bengali cuisine. I’ve made it here as a main dish though as it’s more than adequate to be one. The fish is one of my all time favourites. It’s a freshwater fish that has a very distinct flavour that I only know in this particular kind of fish. It’s called “Khoi or Koi” in Bengali. In Khmer it’s called “Trey Krung”. The downside of this fish is that it has a lot of bones. But that’s not a problem for us coming from Bangladesh as we eat with our right hand and can pick the bones individually with our fingers.

I’ve been scouring the internet for hours now looking for the English name but without success. Also when I bought the fish it looked like this: