Rachel's Ramblings: Stuffed Frog Anyone?

Bless him! HRH does take me to the nicest of places. Not sure tonight's supper would rank amongst the most salubrious of 'restaurants' but the fare was perhaps the most fascinating I've ever eaten.

We started our street market food tour at a different hotel where we were to join with others signed up to the same experience - only to find there weren't any! Just us - private tour again then.

New guide, 25 year old Dyuimchuk (Dynamic for short) showed us to a tuk tuk and we headed out of town. First stop - hop out, cross a semi-constructed road, dodging the Friday evening rush-hour, and head to what looked like a row of shacks. HRH had apparently posed a small problem to the tour guide being vegetarian, so this stop was especially for him.

Noodle cakes, flavoured with 'little bit sweet little bit chilli', wrapped in rice 'paper' and shallow fried - "but you can't eat it now. Too hot". Takeaway tucker for him then. Moving on ....

Palm sugar being squeezed from the cane. We declined a drink at this point. The flies seemed to be particularly partial though.

Various native fruits - including tamarind and jack fruit (can't remember the name of the first one). We bought some jack fruit to have as dessert 'later'.

I confess one or two of the available options most certainly didn't appeal, not least the boiled duck eggs - this being a fertilised egg, you understand. Boil, peel off the shell, eat small duck foetus inside with sticky rice! No thank you! We did however pick up some rice flour and coconut cream wafer biscuits to accompany our jack fruit, before hopping back into the tuk tuk and off to the Cambodian equivalent of Wellesbourne market!

First port of call here was the insect aisle where, before moving on to 'barbequeing', I tried cricket and silkworm but stopped short of water beetle. Stephen certainly enjoyed this bit - he was operating the video camera! - although to be fair they weren't bad, just different.

The darker ones in the background are fried crickets. Westerners apparently don't much like the heads, wings and legs so I got mine peeled! The pale silkworms taste like peanut paste with a crunchy outside. Didn't fancy a waterbeetle!

The barbecue section was next. Unbelievably hot, I have no idea how the vendors cope, many wearing long sleeves for protection presumably, against burns. I sampled a weird sausage on a stick and marvelled at the array of beautifully butterflied chicken, the numerous types and sizes of fish and some more exotic fare like whole splayed quail,

I chose stuffed frog!

Again this was set aside for later - at this point we still had no idea when, how or even if we were actually going to be dining on this gathered harvest. And in fact our final destination was not revealed for another half hour or so, during which we were 'treated' to the fun fair end of the market. This was not our idea of entertainment - loud music, bright lights and cheap Khmer versions of 'roll up roll up' type games - so HRH made appropriate noises about the time and we headed to 'supper'.

A short stroll later and we were installed on a pavement-side mat, shoes off of course, next to a vendor who was to prepare our traditional soup. I was given the choice of sticky rice or noodles and chicken or pork. At this stage it felt like there was nothing to lose so I told Dynamic to choose for me. Stephen got the same without the exciting bit!!! When it arrived it turned out my 'added extra' was soft, semi-solid chicken blood chunks. The slices of water lily stem garnish were nice though, and like the 'game bird' I try to be, whilst also not insulting our 'chef', down it all went. Not sure about the crunchy bits in the stuffed frog - otherwise it was ok.

Stephen, on our dinner mat