Why are Khmers Turning Against Their Fish Paste Heritage?

The soul of Khmer cuisine resides in a murky barrel of a potent, fishy paste that graces every meal-prahok. It’s the odiferous spice of Cambodia, the protein-packed punch of grandma’s soup and auntie’s curry. Just a little dab will do, thanks to the olfactory power of fermentation. It takes the country’s blazing sun, it’s muddy waters and the sweat of its people to lug and crush, salt and dry, heaps and piles of tiny fish, which then rot into potent distinction. Prahok is indeed the heart of a nation; its juices, the blood that keeps Cambodia running.

Why, then, are some Khmers shunning this heritage?

“Now I don’t like prahok anymore,” says Keo Touch, who goes by the name of “Toot” and runs a Battambangcooking school with his wife, Nuon Nary.

His statement catches me off guard, so I start asking questions. The answers, I realize, I have heard many times before.

“Now I am a towner, I am no longer a farmer,” he says. “Some people look down on you if you eat prahok , because if you eat prahok , you are a farmer, you are poor.”

I understand his concern. Poverty is a pestilence that Cambodians everywhere aim to escape. This is a countrified state, with 13.3 million people scattered among some 14,000 villages housing more than 80 percent of the population. Read the other way: only 20 percent of Cambodians live in a city. Of those, many have ended up on the urban scene because they lost land, got sick, needed money or suffered some heinous tragedy that left them no recourse. The average Cambodian earns less than $2 a day. Marginally few are the people like Toot, who built a thriving business after years of destitution.

Toot says the scent of prahok reminds them of the farm. And the farm is a place that offers no easy life. Plus, it comes with the added baggage of memory-every Cambodian spent 1975-1979 as a farmer under the genocidal Khmer Roug. And every survivor harbors stories of slave-like labor, death and starvation. No surprise, people want to forget.

It’s as though Toot internalizes the acrid smell of prahok as a blemish on his character-untrue as that might be. “I am very ashamed if I tell about prahok to my students,” he says. “Because if I tell, and they smell, they run away.” Only if they ask do his recipes and market tours include prahok , that most fundamental of Cambodian ingredients. “Now I use shrimp paste. Shrimp paste is not very strong.”

Still, it’s Nary’s kitchen (she cooks while Toot peruses the market and chats up the students), so I ask her about prahok as she minces an almond butter-colored pad of the stuff. “Yeah,” she smiles, “I like.” No problem for her.

When I get to Phnom Penh-the throbbing capital of hustle, bustle and noise-I ask my longtime friend, Ke Monin, whether he can vouch for Toot’s ideas. “Yeah, sure,” he agrees. He is “100 percent sure,” if people have money, “they don’t want to eat prahok .” He says rich Khmers eat fish paste only once every few months. “When they don’t have money, they eat a lot.”

I ask one more source, the notable photographer Heng Sinith, a longtime friend and confidante. Sinith is the most knowledgeable Cambodian I know. He has Access with a capital A. He makes friends with everyone, singing karaoke with cops and shmoozing with bodyguards while taking his liver to the outer limits. Meanwhile, secrets emerge in the blur of inebriation.

Sinith doesn’t think Khmers willingly forgo the fish of their identity-least of all, he. “I really like real Khmer food,” he says. Nonetheless, he insists prahok will disappear as quickly as the fish in Cambodia’s ailing lakes and rivers (diminished fish stocks are a growing worry).”The people will never deny prahok ,” Sinith says, but ” prahok will be finished because there are no more fish.”

And that is a story for another time.

Photos by Jerry Redfern. Read more on Rambling Spoon.