Our food philosophy here at Song Saa Private Island revolves around five important elements – salt, scent, raw, heat and sweet.

These five qualities will define our menus and shape the food experiences we will offer our guests.

They also reflect what is available to us here in Cambodia – the seafood, spices, sweeteners and delicacies that make up Cambodian cuisine.

And they will inform the modern and innovative twists we intend to develop ourselves as we create unique and contemporary interpretations of this colourful food tradition.

Over the next few blogs I want to show you how we intend to achieve a balance of these five elements, and I will take you with me as we discover how these ingredients are produced, who makes them, and where the finest quality can be found in this remarkable country.

It was during a recent trip to the home of the famous Kampot Pepper – which we will look at in the next blog – that we also discovered a fantastic source of sea salt.

It was in a coastal area of the beautiful southern province of Kampot that we came across some striking fields that were used for drying sea salt.

This is a dry and windswept place, and very dramatic, which during the season is full of strong workers who can produce over a tonne of salt from a 10-metre square field every two or three days.

Unfortunately for us we’d arrived in the off-season and the fields were mostly empty. But the company was very accommodating, showing us the different grades of salt they produced and allowing us to tour the expansive salt fields. This really gave us a sense of the scale of production in this area.

The majority of farmers have between 20 and 30 salt fields, which yield between 800 and 1000 tonnes of sea salt for each farmer. There must be over 100 farmers here so you can see how much is being produced in this area on a yearly basis.

We were very fortunate during our tour to come across a local farmer and his crew loading some of the previous season’s salt on to the back of a truck to supply the numerous outlets in Cambodia.

The farmer explained to us that during these non-producing times they still have to maintain the fields, keeping them packed hard and ready for when they can start the whole production process again.

They wait until the dry season and then let sea water flood into the fields through a series of small canals, containing the water there until it reaches a temperature of 21 degrees.

When the sea water has reached the correct temperature, they open the gulleys and flood the hard surfaced fields to a depth of only 6cm and then let the sun do its work.

As the water warms in the sun the temperature can reach up to 30 degrees. As the water evaporates the first natural diamond shaped salt crystals start to appear. This first harvest is the most superior grade 1 salt. It is then stored in the big sheds where the final drying process takes place.

Looking at the storage sheds it became obvious these guys are producing a huge amount of sea salt not only for markets in South East Asia but all over the globe. The packaging here is exactly the same as the salt we used in the Seychelles when I was working there. I have also seen it in the Caribbean many years ago.

The natural salt has a distinctive grey colour, which I’ve seen when we’ve produced our own sea salt in the past. It is still slightly sweet even at this initial stage and can be used for numerous purposes. It’s exciting to think about how we can use this quality of salt, and makes me think of how different the flavour of this will be to our own product when we start producing salt on the island.

We intend to have a selection of salts and peppers available at Song Saa Private Island to showcase the different flavours and uses of these versatile ingredients.

Cambodia’s recent history is still very visual here, from a time when these areas were under a different regime. Now though it is truly peaceful in every way. Standing talking to the farmer as the wind whipped across the fields, it was hard to imagine that such terror and atrocities could have occurred.

The picture here doesn’t do the size of this salt production justice. This was a huge shed, probably over 30 metres in length, and you can see just how full it was, right to the door. Here they pack the salt into 50kg sacks and transport it away for use.

An amazing bi-product growing here (which nobody is using) is the humble saltplant. This sturdy specimen grows naturally all around the area, presenting another exciting opportunity to incorporate a unique ingredient into our cooking.

The taste of the saltplant is a little harsher than the sweeter sea salt but very similar to samphire, which is also known as sea asparagus. When poached, lightly grilled or even raw it is a beautiful accompaniment to the delicate flavour of fresh fish. It will definitely feature on our menu.

Of course sea salt and saltplant are not the only opportunities we have to bring this flavour into our menus. Other sources of this important element include fish sauce, which we were also lucky enough to source on this same trip, and soy sauce. In fact we’re busy all the time finding new ways to highlight this important food element.