Everyday Cambodian household objects. Not antiques, not museum pieces. The things that sit in an ordinary kitchen or under a stilt house and get used daily without anyone thinking about them.
Collected by Saifudine Lim in Phnom penh.
Browse objects8 objects found
Khteah · Carbon-steel wok
One curved pan that stir-fries, boils, steams and deep-fries depending on how much oil or water goes into it. Over a charcoal fire it is often the only pan a house needs: light enough to lift one-handed, thin enough to get hot fast, shaped so the food keeps sliding back into the heat.
Chhnang dei · Clay cooking pot
The earthenware pot kept for kho — pork or fish braised down slowly in caramel and fish sauce. Porous clay is slow to heat and holds that heat evenly, which is exactly what a braise wants, and the pot comes off the charcoal onto the table still bubbling.
Krolor · Condensed milk can rice cup
The empty condensed-milk tin that becomes the house's rice measure. It lives in the rice sack rather than a drawer, and nobody remembers buying it. Two cans for a family dinner, three if someone is staying — rice here is measured in cans, never in grams.
Kambit · Kitchen cleaver
One broad blade instead of a drawer of knives. It slices lemongrass, flattens garlic under its flat, joints a chicken, and scoops the prep off the board on the way to the pan. A Khmer kitchen keeps one knife, keeps it sharp, and keeps it in the same place.
Chhnang bay · Rice cooker
The rice pot, and the one thing in the kitchen that is never put away. Rice is measured in with the milk tin, water judged by a finger above it, and the lid stays down until the meal. Nothing else in the house gets opened as many times a day.
Tbal · Stone mortar and pestle
The heaviest thing in the kitchen and the one nobody bothers to move. Kroeung — lemongrass, galangal, turmeric, kaffir lime, garlic — is pounded in it rather than blended, because stone bruises the fibre and drives the oil out where a blade only chops.
Chhnang chomhuy · Tiered steamer
Stacked tiers over one pot of water, so a single fire cooks three things at once. Amok in banana-leaf cups, steamed cakes, a whole fish — the heat is gentle enough to set a custard without breaking it.
Kanhchoe · Woven bamboo basket
An open-weave bamboo basket that hangs on a nail until it is needed and then carries everything — rice from the sack, greens from market, fish still wet. The gaps are the design: water drains through, air moves, and nothing sweats or sours inside it.