I've been living in Cambodia for the last couple years and have heard a number of things regarding Cambodian cuisine that I was hoping for some more information about.
Most tourists will know two dishes: Lok Lak and Amok.
Lok Lak, I've been told, is actually a dish invented by the Vietnamese for the French colonists in Indochina. Cambodians revived the dish in the 1990s when the UN arrived to help them rebuild, knowing it's something foreigners ate. It's not a dish that Cambodian would generally make for themselves.
The second thing I've heard is that, before the 1960s, Cambodia had a much more complex and diverse cuisine, including Amok but, after the horrors they went through, the knowledge about these dishes were lost as many common ingredients were considered 'luxuries' under Pol Pot's regime and weren't available. A generation didn't get the chance to pass on all of their cuisine to the next as they had to learn to make use of whatever was easily available and that had a big influence on what they eat today. For example, Amok (so I've heard) is a dish that refugees kept alive while living abroad and it was only re-imported back to Cambodia recently. Again, it's not something Cambodians would typically make at home.
I was just hoping someone might expand on how Cambodian cuisine has changed over the last 60 years and how (or if) the era of the Khmer Rouge affected their cuisine.
There are some truth to it but it clearly misinformation. The Khmer Rouge era did not have much impact. The economic boom from capitalism after the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement changed more by bringing it global western food. Cambodian Cuisine remained complex but they do not served them in restaurant to tourists.
Look at more at crowded "delis" outside tourist locations, and nearer to traditional marketplaces or streetfood. In places where they are no air-cons, and almost no one can speak English, you see the complex Cambodian Cusine. And there are more that were made at home. Restaurants prefered to sell what is sold not what is unique.
But the restaurants that targeted foreigners' money generally served what foreigners liked. Similarly, if you to a Pizza Restaurant in Cambodia, the most popular pizza are Seafood because Cambodians prefered them. KFC in Thailand are way spicier than the ones in US.
Dried mudfish, prahok, sweetened radish and other Khmer daily cuisine can look disturbing to foreigners. I' m sure you' ve seen insects. (Fried crickets are amongst the most delicious food/snacks I' ve eaten and most foreigners tend to be disgusted by them. ) All these cuisines are found in books at least 500 years old. If the stone inscriptions actually talked of daily commoner food, I'm sure you' ll find them. Iirc, they were in Zhou DaQuan' s records of Angkor.
Lok Lak is more Chinese-influence rather than Vietnamese. It is some meat served with some vegetable. Nothing uncommon but Lok Lak sound like the action when making it. It served with beer and Chinese immigrants prior to 1950 used to make a living serving tofu and arcohol. It was made for drinking or special occasions. So beer gardens had it.
If the 1950s changed anything, it is the more prevalent Chinese influence on the cuisines due to more merchants families leaving China to escape from the Communists. But that also impact Southeast Asia cuisine and that already happened during the French Colonial era. Overall, Cambodian food had more influences from the French, as well as the Chinese since the 19th century.
"Amok" is a food that are eaten from the Northeastern part of the country rather than the capital or most of country. When talk of national cuisine, many of the daily food can be attested and asscociated with other countries. "Amok" is what Cambodian government cannot find on other countries and foreigners tend to like. That is how it became sold to tourists.
Try look at rice noodle. It is generally considered a Vietnamese cuisine and sold as "Phò". Yet the name in Khmer is pronounced " Kuy Tiev" which sounded more as Chinese. "Kuy Tiev" and "Phò" is also different but shared similarities. However, "Amok" is only really eaten in a two provinces of Cambodia but it can be promoted as Khmer without attestation.
The Khmer Rouge removed a lot of knowledge but there are more women survived and so they able to pass most of the traditional cooking. As I said before, many food names are found in books written 500 years ago. However, the histories or origins of some the cuisines or traditions may lost forever because of the destruction of records and intelligensia. Here is an example: a popular household soup in Cambodia is translated from Khmer as "Vietnamese Sour Soup". It is however, not a Vietnamese cuisine. It is used to be made from a fish which resides in Kampuchea Krom that had become Southern Vietnam. The fish name is forgotten and the soup name were changed to location instead. There are books from researchers that track where the cusines originally came from but they tend to be written only in Khmer.