Cannabis in Khmer cuisine
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In the cooking of Cambodia, as the ethnobotanist Marie Alexandrine Martin recorded it in a chapter published in 1975, leaves of cannabis went into soups and curries and were eaten as a vegetable. She wrote that hemp was good to cook with for the pleasant flavour it gave food as well as for its intoxicating power.[1]: 73 In the 1990s a market seller and a Khmer journalist told reporters that Khmers used cannabis to flavour soups. In the same decade restaurants in Phnom Penh served pizza with cannabis to foreign visitors.[2][3]
Dishes
| Preparation | Kind | Part of the plant | First recorded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samla kako | Dish | Leaf | |
| Sngao moan | Dish | Leaf |
Soups
"Hemp soup is common throughout Southeast Asia," Martin wrote. In Cambodia this was sngao, a word the Khmer dictionary gives as soup, or food cooked by boiling.[4] Its main example was sngao moan, flavoured with roasted leaves of male or female plants. The roasted leaves also went into other soups, among them samla kako.[1]: 73 Khmers smoked with friends, Martin wrote, "to experience a feeling of well-being", and "It is the same for enjoying the soup, which, moreover, acquires a pleasant taste."[1]: 74
The fresh leaf
Fresh leaves were used in three further ways. They were a seasoning (krwəng) for curry, and a fresh vegetable (bânlâê) served with num bânhcɔk, which Martin calls vermicelli soup. They were also eaten as ânlwək, in fritters with prâhok, the fermented fish paste.[1]: 73 The Khmer dictionary gives krɨəŋ sɑmlɑɑ as "spices for soup", bɑnlae as "vegetable" and ʔɑnlʊək as raw or steamed vegetables "eaten with sauces / dips". Num bɑɲcok is a noodle of rice flour "usually served in coiled masses with sauce and fresh vegetables", and prɑhok a "paste of fermented fish".[5][6][7][8][9]
Growers sold nearly all their harvest to intermediaries, who resold it on the open market or to restaurateurs and private buyers. These took male as well as female plants.[1]: 66
Across the region
Martin found hemp soups beyond Cambodia. In Thailand ground cannabis flowers were added to kaeng phet.[1]: 73 A Chinese soup sold throughout the region took hemp "in order to induce clients to return", in Laos the stems of male or female plants. Green tea later took its place.[1]: 73 In Laos a package of ten flowering stems for smoking cost ninety kips, and ten stems without flowers, from male and female plants, cost twenty kips "for making soup".[1]: 66
Later reports
In March 1995 the Phnom Penh Post reported that the police had warned a seller in the Toul Tom Poung (Russian) market to keep only a few kilograms, for sale to Khmers "who use it to flavor foods such as soups". The seller said Khmers occasionally bought it to flavour food, and that "Even cooks in restaurants come to buy it to add to their noodle soup."[2] In 1998 a Khmer journalist told Amit Gilboa of Cannabis Culture that "some people have the custom of eating it in chicken soup in the morning", in "a very small amount" that the Ministry of Health saw no problem with.[3] A 2018 article on the travel website Culture Trip said that rural households still added dried leaves and buds to chicken curry, chicken soups and other dishes, though less than before.[10]
Modern dishes
Cannabis pizza for foreign visitors is a later development. In 1998 Gilboa described a pizza restaurant in Phnom Penh, given a false name in his article at the request of foreign residents, as a city landmark that had "spawned a number of imitators". Cannabis was not on its menu, but a customer could ask for a pizza "mildly happy" or "extra happy". In the pizza he ate, "Finely chopped pieces of choice marijuana form a layer between the tomato sauce and the cheese."[3] In 2018 Culture Trip described "happy pizza joints" along the Phnom Penh riverfront, where customers could add cannabis as a topping.[10]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Martin, Marie Alexandrine (1975). "Ethnobotanical Aspects of Cannabis in Southeast Asia". In Rubin, Vera (ed.). Cannabis and Culture. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 63–76. doi:10.1515/9783110812060.63.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Sou Sophonnara (24 March 1995). "'Don't sell too much' ganja, police tell traders". Phnom Penh Post. Retrieved 29 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Gilboa, Amit (1 November 1998). "Cannabis Cambodia: Smoker's Paradise". Cannabis Culture.
- ↑ "ស្ងោរ". SEAlang Library Khmer Dictionary. Retrieved 29 October 2026.
- ↑ "គ្រឿងសម្ល". SEAlang Library Khmer Dictionary. Retrieved 29 October 2026.
- ↑ "បន្លែ". SEAlang Library Khmer Dictionary. Retrieved 29 October 2026.
- ↑ "អន្លក់". SEAlang Library Khmer Dictionary. Retrieved 29 October 2026.
- ↑ "នំបញ្ចុក". SEAlang Library Khmer Dictionary. Retrieved 29 October 2026.
- ↑ "ប្រហុក". SEAlang Library Khmer Dictionary. Retrieved 29 October 2026.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Marissa (3 March 2018). "Cooking with Cannabis in Rural Cambodia". Culture Trip. Retrieved 29 October 2026.