This is a great dish and one of the best communal meals I’ve ever had. Cambodians love eating - they graze all day - and are very passionate about food. And I love the arguments that develop about whether, or when, the noodles should go in, whether the thinly-sliced raw beef fillet should be mixed with beaten egg first. And how long should it poach for? Forty seconds? There are few finer things in life than friends sitting around a table squabbling about food while topping themselves up with endless jugs of beer.
It begins as a bubbling bowl of beef stock containing chunks of tougher cuts that have been cooked until they dissolve in your mouth in a pleasing squelch of fat and gristle. The bowl is put on a gas burner on the table and so many side plates appear that there is hardly room for the beer jugs.
There are plates of vegetables, fresh herbs like mint, holy basil, and culantro (saw-toothed coriander), a couple of raw eggs, beef fillet, yellow balls of egg noodles, white balls of rice noodles, chillies, prahok, lemongrass, salt and always Kampot pepper. So many in fact that you could probably order the dish 100 times and never have it the same way twice - depending on who’s doing the cooking that is.