salt n pepper
by the chief cook
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
We have really been enjoying black pepper on our tomato rolls……not being gourmands, we had never come across the fact that there are different sorts of pepper in the world, but we have now been enlightened. Cambodian pepper, and in particular Kampot pepper, is the best. Unfortunately, when we were in Kampot we missed the pepper plantations….but we did get to the salt fields…..we think. We might have been ripped off.
We had been told it was a twenty minute trip each way and so we were willing to pay $5 for “go and come back”. But the trip took less than quarter of an hour – both ways. We also went the opposite way to what the map said – totally opposite away from the salt-water estuary. This raised a few questions in our minds…and even more niggled us when there was no salt. Not a skerrick anywhere. The drivers insisted it was due to the rain we had had, and indeed there had been an overnight downpour, but it all did seem a bit strange. Curiously, the fields looked just like the brochure – just there wasn’t any salt. So we are not convinced we saw the fields from which 800,000-900,000 tonnes of salt is harvested between December and March each year. For supposedly being the busy harvesting time, there was a surprising absence of workers (one to be exact, and according to the drivers “no workers, because no salt”). Neither were there any sacks or piles or anything in the storehouses. Nothing.
Just acres of what we would have thought were flooded rice paddies waiting to be planted out. So who knows if we saw the real salt fields? As we bounced along in our tuktuk, we decided that if we were enterprising tuktuk drivers ourselves we would offer a “Salt-n-Pepper Shaker” tour, taking in both the real salt fields and the pepper plantations together with ride that would shake every bone in your body. But maybe they make more money taking unsuspecting tourists to rice paddies and calling them salt fields??
Regardless, we are delighted to have become acquainted with Kampot pepper, a taste that will stretch my resolve to eat exclusively-locally when we return to NZ!
Tags: food, justice, money, postcard: Cambodia, price, transport
rayres
Hey! I Googled ‘Kampot salt’ and the saltmarsh they came up with looked nothing like your tidy rice paddies!. It seems the salt-producing ‘lagoons’ are in tidal areas (makes sense) and looked very natural in their shape, not neat little rectangles. Also the salt was accumulating in pyramids of salty deposits – added to by incoming tidal washes. Makes me think maybe you WERE ripped off!