Lok lak, or Bò lúc lắc is a sauteed beef dish popular in both Cambodia, and Vietnam, and it is freaking amazing!
Lok Lak – Frecnh fusion food
Colonialism is a funny old beast, generally, it tends to get a fairly bad rap, but from a culinary point of view it has thrown up some rather fabulous food. When it came to the British we stole the food form our colonies, whilst the French went out, and did some hybrid stuff, particularly in South-East Asia.
I’ve written previously about fusion food in Hanoi, but lok lak is by far my favorite (accidental) discovery so far.
What is Lok Lak?
The dish consists of beef sauteed with cucumber, lettuce, tomatoes, red onion, pepper, and soy sauce. The beef is then cut into small dice-like cubes, before being served with vegetables, and at least where I was beef fried-rice, with a fried egg on the top!
In the old days as the meat was scarce in this part of the world, it was reserved for special events but nowadays is popular with the masses.
Bò lúc lắc
It is officially a French-inspired Vietnamese dish, where it is known as bo luc lac, which literally translates to “shaking beef”, but is extremely popular in Cambodia, where they call it lok lak.
Now, what makes this dish so fabulous? Its the pure fusion of it, essentially you get stunningly great beef, cook it quite rare (a rarity in Asia no pun intended), and then serve it with fried rice. The beef I personally had could have melted in your mouth and combined with pepper sauce, egg, and the previously mentioned fried rice was like a wet dream to me. And all this washed down with $0.75 glasses of Angkor Beer! I was a happy chappy.
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I’m yet to compare lok lak with bò lúc lắc, but is a definite for when I am back in Vietnam.
Oh, and I finished with blueberry cheesecake for dessert, not a bad way to spend $20 eh…….