We used to go there when Pete was working as a projectionist at a City cinema. We went there when we were both working for a law firm. I went there with a colleague, fresh from excavating at the Old Melbourne Gaol and covered in filth. Nam Loong at one time fed our working lives and there were many delights to choose from which used to give you great change from 10 dollars. They make my favourite char sui bau and the best Singapore noodles. They can provide you with a plate of roast duck on rice for the kind of change you can find in your couch. But the dish that I find it almost impossible to go past is the Salted Chicken. This is a gently poached white cooked chicken with a spring onion and ginger sauce. Its a standard Chinese classic with many minor variations however I have cobbled together a recipe which replicates the Nam Loong Salted Chicken experience at home.

If you eat regularly at my house you will have had salted chicken. If you are invited for a meal at short notice there is a 50/50 chance it will be salted chicken. If you want to call me and invite yourself over for a salted chicken you can almost bet I’ll say yes. It is one of my kitchen standards. It is ridiculously simple to make but you must,must,must follow 2 rules:

1. DO NOT boil the chicken. Do not even think about boiling the chicken.If you do boil the chicken give yourself a good spanking and abandon the salted chicken and use the poor bird for something else. For those uninitiated in the process of poaching a whole chicken, do not let your fear of the method get the better of you. It wants to cook by basically sitting in a hot bath and you need to let it.
2. DO NOT use a blender to make the sauce. This gives it an unpleasantly mucousy texture. Use the method described below. If you do not have a mortar and pestle, you simply put the sauce ingredients in a jar and mix by shaking.

Salted Chicken

• 1 free range /good quality chicken
• 2 spring onions for the stock
• 4 slices of fresh ginger for the stock
• tsp salt for the stock
• sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons very finely chopped spring onions for the sauce
• 1.5 tbsp grated ginger for the sauce
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil for the sauce
• 1.5 teaspoons salt for the sauce

Rinse and dry the chicken and place in a stock pot with cold water to cover. Add the two spring onions, 4 slices of ginger and salt. Bring almost up to the boil but do not let the water get so hot that the bubbles do anything more than just barely break the surface of the water. Simmer very gently like this for 10 minutes then put a lid on the pot and turn off the heat. Leave for 45 minutes and then very gently put the chicken in a bath of iced water for a minute or so (until the water starts to warm up). This does nice things to the fat under the skin. Remove the chicken and gently brush with sesame oil. Put in the fridge while you make the sauce.

To make the sauce, pound the spring onions and the ginger together with the salt with a mortar and pestle and then add the oil and mix to a paste. To serve, chop the chicken chinese style and arrange on a plate with the sauce in a separate dish on the side for dipping. Eat with rice.

The big culinary revelation of Cambodia for me came about in an unexpected fashion. Pete and I had left Alex with our friend Andy (who was living in Cambodia at the time) and gone to ancient city of Angkor Thom. It started to pour with rain so we sheltered in a little food stall overlooking the surreal madness of the Bayon temple. Pete ordered a dish  described as “beef and potato” expecting it to be some sort of curry. It turned out to be good old steak and chips. The steak was from stringy Cambodian cows but had been marinated to soften and flavour it and the whole thing was served with a lime and black pepper sauce for dipping.

This sauce  is a sensation. I’ve made it a few ways but I like the method described by Wendy Hutton: you get an individual dipping dish for each person and  make a little pile of salt mixed with whole peppercorns pounded in a mortar and pestle and add a couple of wedges of lime. Each person can then squeeze the lime into the dish and  balance the sauce as they  please.  We did manage to get hold of some Cambodian pepper  which has a distinctively  mellow flavour that makes it much  more authentic but ordinary black pepper is fine. You could serve anything with it – fish cakes, tempeh, plain rice but this is how I like to eat it:

Cambodian steak and chips

The best thing about this is that you can make a perfectly ordinary steak and chips for the kids and serve the loc lac on the side for those who want it.

• Steak – whatever cut, and cooked however you like and sliced thinly to dip in the sauce
• Potatoes  for chips
• Oil for deep frying
• Finely  shredded iceberg lettuce
• Finely sliced tomato
• Finely  sliced cucumber
• Asian herbs (optional)
• Dollop of good quality mayonnaise
• Lime sauce (lime, salt and black  pepper)  as described  above

Basically all you are doing is assembling the salad ingredients  on  a plate with a nice dollop of mayonnaise and then serving with the steak and chips. If you are deep frying the chips yourself, make sure you do the double fry. That is, fry them on a medium heat until just cooked through. Remove from the oil and drain on a paper towel. Pump the oil up to extra hot and cook the chips in batches until golden. Oven cooked chips are of course easier and healthier but not nearly so much fun. Serve the chips and the sliced steak with the salad with the bowls of loc lac sauce on the side for  dipping.