In Khmer it is known as “thnoat”, its scientific name is “Borassus flabellifer”, while in English its common name is “sugar palm”.
The national tree of Cambodia is a constant presence in the Kingdom, defining the tropical skyline with its distinctive trunk and leaves, and we wanted to reflect this in the materials used at the resort.
It is used to create palm sugar, which is present in most Cambodian cooking, but also has a range of other uses from marking the boundaries of a farmer’s rice paddy to providing building materials for houses and common household items such as plates, bowls and spoons.
We’ll be looking at the role of palm sugar in our cooking over the next couple of blogs but for now I wanted to show you how we’re going to use the wood to create appealing objects that will enhance the island hideaway feel of our resort.
This will include a range of boxes that we’ll use to deliver our afternoon tea, fresh bread and cheeses to our guests.
The wood from the sugar palm is rough and dark in color, which comes up beautifully when cut and polished. The quality of the wood varies though, depending on the soils, and so we had to search for some time before we found the right product.
We finally found it in the rice paddies outside of the ancient city of Siem Reap, where a small wood working business was busily producing decorative plates and other items.
As you can see the methods used here for working the wood are simple but they are also very effective. They were churning out wood products on a daily basis with a casual style – and little regard for safety precautions – that made it all seem so easy.
The workers were very helpful and friendly and also very precise in helping us get the exact thickness we were after for our boxes.
They were quite surprised that I was looking for such a thin cut of wood but after using the chainsaw and band saw, we finally managed to get the result I was after.
They then used a hand sander to give the wood a nice finish. Sugar palm is really not the easiest wood to work with, as I found out later when I tried to handsaw it myself – with terrible results!
As we waited I struck up a conversation with one of the workers there, who took great pride in telling me all about the sugar palm. He explained how it was used for traditional medicine to cure malaria, and he also explained the process of producing palm sugar from the tree.
Palm sugar is made the same way that maple syrup is produced, by collecting and boiling the sap. A bamboo container is placed below cuts in the palm flower and left overnight. The sap flows into the container and is then collected before noon the next day. It must be collected quickly or the sap will turn into alcohol. Then the sap is boiled down to make the sugar. I’ll detail the process of making palm sugar in a later blog.
With the wood in hand I traveled back to Phnom Penh. And after a series of badly glued attempts at the boxes, and finally with the help of a very good carpenter, we had our first mock up.
We have since been through the process several times and we’re now closer to the end result I’m looking for. You can see here the first sample of what should be an exciting piece for the restaurant.
Using this local material is fantastic and brings a real sense of Cambodia to the restaurant. Needless to say, it’s also sparked a renewed enthusiasm to see what else we can find locally to bring to the island.