The perfect vehicle to achieve the right quality of heat in our palette of five food elements – salt, heat, scent, raw, and sweet – is the famous Kampot pepper.
We are lucky to have such a prestigious ingredient right here on our doorstop. This important spice has been renowned for decades as one of the best peppers in the world and comes exclusively from the southern Cambodian province of Kampot and the neighbouring province of Kep, where we also sourced the sea salt detailed in the last blog.
It develops an enthralling aroma that is both strong and delicate and really jumps out at you when it is cracked. For this reason the spice has become known as the King of Peppers and has been highly sought after by chefs all over the world since the mid 20th century.
The flavour of these black and red peppercorns is truly unique and quite unlike other kinds of pepper – except perhaps the Tellicherry pepper from the Malabar Coast in India. It is hot with a slight eucalyptus quality.
While most Asian countries use chili as their source of their heat, in Cambodia this quality traditionally comes from the peppercorns themselves.
It was very fortunate that on our second day in Kampot, where we’d gone to search for the famous pepper, we also found our sources of salt – sea salt, fish sauce and soy sauce. Kampot is a culinary gold mine, full of artisan producers whose products can be found all over the world. We met with one of the bigger growers of Kampot pepper in the area to discuss the produce and he kindly invited us to see his farm.
The plantation was deep in the hills, and it was hot and humid as we walked through the pepper vines. Pepper has been grown here since at least the 13th century. It was the French who drew international attention to it, and at one time the spice was an essential component of every top European kitchen.
Cambodia used to export around 17.6 million pounds of Kampot pepper a year back at the start of the 20th century. But now that number is down to around 6,500 pounds. This massive decline in production was due to the Khmer Rouge, who all but destroyed the industry. Even on the day we were there, we saw only one guy tending to the vines.
The pepper plant is a perennial woody vine that grows up to four metres tall on trellises. The fruit of the vine is the peppercorn, which grows from the tiniest white flowers that appear on the spine of the plant.
I picked some berries straight off the vine to taste them. What struck me was the difference in flavours according to the size of the berries. The tiniest fruits were full of citrus notes and a flavour that just burst into your mouth, and I immediately decided we should feature these small green berries in our restaurant.
In 2010, the Cambodian government approved ‘geographical indication’ (G.I.) status for Kampot ground pepper. This provides a guarantee of quality and the assurance that a product comes from a particular region, similar to that in France with Champagne.
The poster below shows the production process in its various stages. Sometimes you never think of how ingredients get to your table and this was certainly an eye opener.
We spoke to another supplier there, Jerome Benezech, who is the director of Farmlink, a Cambodian-registered co-operative that brings together independent farmers and helps develop regional agro-busineses. He has been one of the driving forces in the rebirth of Kampot pepper, and says G.I. status will help stop traders selling pepper from other regions under the Kampot brand.
As you can see from these pictures the process is taken very seriously with painstaking care and attention to selecting only the best peppercorns. These peppercorns are all individually hand selected by local ladies who spend the day bent over dishes of peppercorns picking out the most desirable corns with tweezers.
Before the hand selection process, they are dried in the sun for a couple of days in individual trays placed on mesh platforms.
We will soon be looking at a selection of different peppers that we’ll be using at Song Saa Private Island. But as mentioned earlier, one idea that came from our trip to the beautiful Kampot province was to showcase the freshest green on-the-vine berries, along with the traditional red and black peppercorns.
I was also inspired by the traditional packaging – pictured below – which I believe could be beautifully incorporated into the restaurant. These would fit nicely with the sugar palm boxes we featured in a previous blog.
