“So you can cook. What’s your specialty?” asked our Workaway hosts. My brain whirred into action to think about all the dishes I’ve made over the years, which I consider to be my specialty. Tough choice.
To some people, food is just fuel. But to me and my friends it’s a chance to create, share, and have your taste buds tickled. There’s nothing more satisfying that cooking something (anything) and seeing the look of pure pleasure on the face of the person consuming your food.
Over the years I’ve built a reputation amongst my friends as the chutney maker. My favorite is a spicy red pepper and chili chutney, which is perfect for posh cheese on toast (mix eggs with the cheese before you put it on the bread, and lay it on a bed of my chutney). My chutney was a party favor for a friend’s 50th birthday celebration, and fights nearly broke out at the end of the night at the last few guests edged towards the door and the guests outnumbered the jars available.
Since being in Turkey and growing Basil I’ve been supplying pesto to friends. It’s available in the high-end supermarkets with a high-end price. Rather than using pine nuts and parmesan, both of which are luxury items in Turkey, I’ve been using walnuts and Bergamot Tulum Turkish cheese. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
We have olive trees in our garden and have picked and salt-cured them. If you’ve seen the black olives with wrinkled skins, they’ve been salt-cured. We rehydrate them a little with local olive oil and my black olive and red chili tapenade never lasts long. In more recent years I’ve branched out into picked onions, and I’m currently on the hunt for an ideal chutney recipe to recreate Branston Pickle.
But as our workaday host was in Cambodia, and he was looking for a speciality he could sell at the weekly Otres Beach market, and on his mobile TukTuk down at the beach I knew we had to choose something a little more salable than chutneys, pickles, and tapenade. So I chose quiche.
Quiche is so versatile. It’s great warm but even better when it’s gone cold.
We figured it would be an ideal addition to their current offering of glazed donuts, because not everyone has a sweet tooth. But I wish I’d thought about the humidity implication before I agreed to make pastry from scratch.
When I’m in the States or the UK I buy frozen quiche crusts and only have to tackle the filling, which is easy enough to do without any weighing or measuring. I’ve made so many quiches the fillings can just be eyeballed. But in Cambodia there was no such thing as a frozen pastry section at the local market, so I spent a week trying to perfect my pastry recipe. Some days I won, and others I lost. The first batch I made by hand worked well, but when I switched to using the industrial mixer, the added heat tipped it over the edge, and I spent my spare time googling how to combat crumbly pastry.
It didn’t help that the quiche dishes were really spring-form cake tins with high sides, and it was a feat of engineering to get the pastry into position in order to get the tins filled. I spent numerous Saturday mornings patching together bits of pastry to ensure my sides didn’t cave. But I must have been doing something right because my quiches gathered a reputation and after the third week I was getting advanced orders, and requests to “..please can I reserve a slice.”
When the humidity rose and the pastry battles become too challenging to endure we invested in some cupcake tins and made small individual quiches instead. Much less stressful to make, easier to transport, and even more delicious to eat.
We did three stints at this Workaday gig. We had a break for Christmas, and a break to do a visa run to Vietnam. And when we returned for the third time our first job was to transform a tuk-tuk into a mobile food truck to sell baked goods at the beach.
I managed to get some blogging done while I was working on the “stall”, and it was perfectly positioned to watch the sunset.
For more Otres Beach sunsets … click here.
Humidity and making pastry from scratch, don't mix. Here's the battle I had with Quiche making in #Cambodia. During our @Workaway in Otres Beach. Click To TweetFind out more about volunteering through Workaway
Flashpacking through Cambodia
Flashpacking through Cambodia: For Baby Boomers on a Budget is my latest Roving Jay travel guide full of travel tips, advice, and sample itineraries for flash packers who want the back packing experience without foregoing some of life’s creature comforts – like a comfortable bed, a hot shower, free wi-fi, and somewhere to plug your electric toothbrush in.
I spent almost three months backpacking around Cambodia in 2017/2018 to research this travel guide, and I share insights and first hand knowledge of tourist traps and off-the-beaten-path discoveries. We ate street food, drank 50c beers, and travelled by train, bus, minivan and tuktuk to identify the best ways to get from A to B.
If you’d like to receive a free Review Copy ahead of the general public release, please click here.
Here’s my Cambodia posts on this blog:
- Cambodia Visa and Arrival at Siem Reap Airport
- Cambodia: How to Avoid the Crowds at Angkor Wat
- Filling up your scooter in Cambodia
- The Best Tasting Street Food in Siem Reap
- Angkor Wat at Dawn: Is it worth it?
- Come face to face with Angkor Thomâs Bayon
- Good vs. Evil at Angkor Thomâs Impressive Southern Gate
- The Baphuon Temple and the Terrace of the Elephants at Angkor Thom
- Visiting Siem Reapâs War Museum
- Where to Stay in Siem Reap
- Visiting Siem Reapâs Markets
- Give your taste buds a disco at Siem Reap Night Market
- Responsible Tourism at Joe to Go in Siem Reap
- What to See and Do in Siem Reap
- Which Siem Reap Floating Village should you visit?
- Memorable Boat Trip from Siem Reap to Battambang
- Libations and Bric-a-Brac tempt our purse strings in Battambang
- Vegetable Amok at About the World Restaurant in Battambang
- Cooking Classes at Naryâs Kitchen Battambang
- Pomme Bar, Restaurant and Hostel, at the Core of the new Battambang
- An educational trip around Battambangâs Central Market
- Sightseeing and things to do in Battambang Cambodia
- Bayon VIP Bus from Battambang to Phnom Penh Cambodia
- Exploring Phnom Penhâs 172nd Street in the dark
- The challenge of wandering Phnom Penhâs streets
- A visit to Phnom Penhâs Central Market
- Exploring Phnom Penhâs Markets
- Phnom Penh Photo Diary
- Tops sights to see in Phnom Penh
- Touring S-21 Security Prison (Tuol Sleng Museum Phnom Penh)
- A reflective visit to The Killing Fields
- Taking a train from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville
- The majesty of Otres Beach sunsets
- Our Workaway Gig at Otres Beach Market Cambodia
- Working Away to make Cambodian Bagels
- Cambodia Pastry Wars: The Battle of the Quiche
- Our Cambodia workaway gig renovating a market stall
- Unwind on Cambodia’s Koh Ta Kiev Island
- Cambodian Beach Massage and Grilled Seafood
- Building Community during our Cambodian Workaway
- Gecko Village in Kampot Cambodia â a Photo Essay
- Christmas Eve in Kampot
- more coming
Used to live in Cambodia. Would have loved to have tried some of your quiche, thereâs only so much rice you can eat LOL.
Yes I love eating local food, and visiting the local food markets when I’m traveling. But every now and then you need a bit of familiar food to give your taste buds a bit of variety.
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Wow, those quiches looks delicious! If I were in Cambodia I would also be putting in advanced orders. Since you did 3 stints at this Workaway, you must really have enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing.
This Otres Beach workaway was amazing, it was a little slice of heaven. The community feeling there was overwhelmingly warm. Unfortunately a big Chinese casino was being built while we were there, and it’s ruined the vibe in this corner of Cambodia.
What what an interesting experience. It would be amazing to be on the other side of the markets. And love the cake tin option!
The cake tin was the bane of my life … I can’t even look at one now!
Made me very hungry! Your quiches look delicious & Iâm already salivating at the idea of your tapenade. Also what a brilliant experience. Who knew there would be so many challenges involved along the way…shows what I know about baking đ
Not only did the humidity hinder my baking … it also caused my laptop to get affected and I had a few hours of panic while I tried to dry it out to get it to work.
Sure, food is fuel, but its also what bonds people. I mean, theres a reason you always have snacks on meatings, go for coffee or enjoy food on dates. Foods’s everything!
And that quiche looks amazing! đ
Yes no matter where you travel … you have to eat, and the experiences around food can definitely bond people. I love finding restaurants with family style seating so that you get a chance to interact with strangers.
Roving Jay recently posted..Day trip to Vathy on the Greek Island of Kalymnos
Workaway is really an experience and a great way to travel, I did it twice in Peru.
Your quiche looks fabulous, it must have been such a hit in a country where it’s not known. I’m somewhere in between: like food more than just to fuel me, but more often too lazy and occupied with something else to prioritize cooking delicious food.
Yes, we’re about to do three months in France working our way around Chateau’s – it’s going to be a little chilly, but fun.
Oh Jay, your quiches sound and look amazing. I have never considered doing a Workaway, though I suppose some of our housesitting gigs have ended up being working instead of relaxing!
We started off house sitting and pet sitting, but have found Workaway to be a more flexible way to travel. Most house sits are centered around people going away on holiday or traveling so you have to time you visits to their plans. But with Workaway, you’re joining them when they’re there, and so there’s a bigger window of opportunity to stay longer.
Iâm starving after reading this post. When I arrived in Cambodia, locals were offering me fried tarantula which I politely turned down. However, if you had turned up with quiche, thatâs would have been a different story. Your chutney sounds incredible too, I can understand why there was almost a riot lol
Thanks Sarah … yes I watched many a tourist in Siem Reap devour insects – I’m sure the locals don’t eat them, it must just be a tourist thing. Quiche for me every time!
My husband is French and I am a francophile so quiches are a solid part of our life. However, we have become low carb so we are working on making a low carb crust – I can totally relate to your battles! Once we master it, it will be so easy to have a wide variety of quiches, but right now that crust is giving us issues! Yours do look like they turned out pretty good!
One of my fave low carb crusts is grated carrot! Grate it and mix it with a little bit of egg yoke, and then shape it around your tin and bake it blind until it starts to go a little crispy, and then take it out and add your filling.
I love a good quiche! I personally love bacon, so any quiches with bacon is fine with me! đ I’ve never considered eating a cold quiche, but I’ll give it a try next chance I get!
I love hot quiche, but it seems to taste better when it’s been left in the fridge to go cold overnight. It makes it a little bit more solid and the flavor profiles are greater.
Wow — the quiche looks so yummy! I’m not a cook at all, so I really admire your talents and especially that you took time while traveling to learn to cook something new!
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I love to cook and miss it when I’m traveling. So this workaway experience was a great fit for me.
The broccoli + cheddar looks yummy! Didn’t they get too mushy with the humidity? The locals know their climate and their cuisine is adjusted to it. Foods from other places have to fight for life đ From the photos we can see that your creations won đ
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No, the humidity only affected the pastry making not the finished quiche – thank goodness!
Those quiches look delicious! As a vegetarian I’d love to come across your stall anywhere. Very industrious to turn to muffin tins when it got too hot! Have you sold quiches in other countries?
No just the one Catherine … but I’d love to have a little food cart to sell baked goods and coffee.
I bet I would have loved the quiche with the corgette and fig jam, sound like something I would make at home. Or rather, that my mom use to make at home when I was a kid. That almoste sounded like I was a good cook, didnt it? đ
It’s an easy thing to make and would make a cook out of anyone … give it a go!!
Hey, Do you know there was a actual battle for “Pastry” between Mexico and France. This war known as Pastry war.
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I didn’t know that … but thanks for sharing.