• Society

Khmer Home Cooking Recipe for Australia’s Best Pie

• By Phoung Vantha
• June 16, 2023 3:30 PM

PHNOM PENH– Cambodian Ryan Khun has told of how his mother’s fish amok recipe led his family bakery to win top prize for Australia’s best pie.

The Country Cob Bakery, in Victoria state, beat 360 pie-makers with 1600 products to take the Baking Association of Australia gold award on June 3.

Association executive officer Tony Smith told the Broadsheet website that everyone expected a meat pie to win. “But everyone said the fish amok pies were very good.”



Cambodian Fish Amok Pie. Its FB

Ryan and his brother Chan have won honours four times, with a pepper beef pie in 2020, caramelised pork and pepper pie in 2019 and a seafood-satay pie in 2018. The caramelised pork and pepper pie took out the best pie award in 2019.

In this year’s competition the bakery, which has around 10 Cambodian staff and 20-plus local staff. also won class awards for flavoured beef pie, mushroom pie, traditional pastie and seafood pie.

Ryan, who was born near Orussey market in Phnom Penh, went to Australia in 2012 to pursuit his accounting degree and graduated in 2014. He completed a baking and patisserie class in 2018.

 “The fish amok pie came from a family dinner where mom cooked us a delicious fish amok, and I thought this would be a good idea to turn the dish into a pie filling,” he said.

“Then we asked mom what are the main ingredients to make this dish, also all the steps and preparation we have to do.

“We did lots of trials and taste testing but it was quite hard to find the proper herbs and spices to make the dish. 

“After a few months of trialing, we finally baked our first batch of fish amok pie in 2021.

“We had a mixed reaction from customers. Some said they didn't expect fish in a pie as they had never seen a fish pie before. 

“Some thought they would not go well in a pie but after they had this pie everyone said it was very delicious. Since then, we started making fish amok pie every 2-3 months.

“We twisted a few ingredients to suit local tastes and other Asian customers as we have more than 25% of customers from Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines but all the main ingredients to make amok are still the same as we make in Cambodia. 

“Since we won the best pie award two week ago, we have seen lots of our Cambodian people come to congratulate and support us. The pie cost $A9.90, which is around $US7.

“We always try to bring our Khmer dish into our pie cooking. We used to make beef sour soup recipe pies, Cambodian stir fried spicy and Cambodian braised beef pies.”