Combining Fertilized Eggs and Khmer Noodles: A New Food Experience
Sok Sotheary started making this Khmer noodles with fertilized duck eggs about five years ago. Photo Heng Sreylin
- By Heng Sreylin
- and Phat Dane
- March 16, 2024 2:00 PM
SIEM REAP — While Siem Reap Province is known for its rich cultural heritage going back more than a millennium, it is also renowned for its traditional cuisine prepared with great care. One woman, however, decided to take tradition further and combine Khmer noodles with Pong Tea Kon or baby duck eggs to create a new dish for her local and tourist clientele.
Every day, Sok Sotheary, who is originally from Kampuchea Krom in southern Vietnam, carries all she needs to make and serve the dish in containers attached to a pole she balances on her shoulder. Once at her usual location on the bank of the Siem Reap river, she sets things up and begins to cook.
Sotheary, who is in her 40s, started making this dish about five years ago, she said. “Some customers asked me why I had not tried putting baby duck eggs in Khmer noodles,” she said. “So, I decided to try, and I found that it tasted good.”
A few customers have mentioned seeing a similar dish in Phnom Penh. But not the same, she said, as she incorporated her touch.
Sotheary has been selling noodles in Siem Reap City for around 20 years. What makes her dish tasty, she said, is the chili pickled garlic sauce she makes based on her recipe. “If the chili pickled garlic sauce is tasty, the food will be tasty,” she said.
Sotheary sells around 100 eggs per day. Her customers tend to be Cambodians. “Not many foreign tourists dare to try this,” she said. “I've noticed that some Western tourists do try it, but Chinese tourists do not try it at all.”
With visitors returning to Siem Reap province as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to fade away, Sotheary has seen an increase in the number of customers, she said. She now makes around 100,000 riels ($25) per day, she added.
