All throughout a recent Sunday morning, Cambodians filed into the Uptown Kampuchean Buddhist temple Watt Khmer Metta, toting cylindrical tiffin tins filled with hot, home-cooked food. They climbed the stairs to the third floor, where they portioned their curries, salads, noodles, vegetables, soups, rice, and sweets into small dishes before prostrating themselves and placing the food on a dais before the temple’s two monks. It was more than the pair—who only eat once a day—could possibly make a dent in, but it wasn’t really intended for them anyway. The foods were meant as symbolic offerings to the dead ancestors of the supplicants.
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“We bring food, we offer it to the monks, and then we get a prayer,” said Kathy Reun, a community health organizer for the Cambodian Association of Illinois. “It’s like inviting the dead, the spirit, to come and look for the family.” Reun had brought samla kako, a chicken soup brimming with homegrown Thai eggplant, long beans, and pumpkin flowers and flavored with kroeung—an herb paste usually consisting of pounded lemongrass, garlic, shallot, galangal, turmeric, and another rhizome called krachai. The paste is an elemental seasoning in Khmer cuisine.
Saroeun also prepared an enormous freestyle salad (nhoam) with five different bright green herbs, including red basil, mint, and chi ma-hao, a triangular leaf with a small attached blossom. Reun translated its name as “fish cheek,” and in fact it smells like fresh fish with mint and lemongrass. These were tossed with shrimp, pork, “krab,” cucumbers, carrots, onions, white cloud fungus, and crushed peanuts. Dressed with a mild, citrusy fish sauce, it was a riot of crunchy textures and cool flavors. (Watch Saroeun prepare it at the Reader‘s Food Chain blog.)
Cambodians from across the region will travel here to attend, but outsiders are welcome—particularly if they follow the ceremony and bring offerings of their own. (These don’t have to be Khmer dishes; fruit and cash donations are also welcome.) Reun, as part of her community work, will have a table set up on both days, and she’s offered to guide befuddled newcomers through the protocol.v
Sat 9/27, 9 AM-2 PM, Truman College, 1145 W. Wilson, 773-878-8226. F
Sun 9/28, 8 AM-1 PM, Truman College, 1145 W. Wilson, 773-989-0969. F
