Dish
Cha Traop Dot
Char-grilled Cambodian eggplant topped with pork minced and stir-fried with fermented soybeans.
Cha Traop Dot is char-grilled Cambodian eggplant topped with minced pork stir-fried with fermented soybeans.[1][2] Cambodians usually call it chha trob.[2]
Cultural context
The dish is usually found at Cambodian restaurants that serve traditional food, or at home as one of several dishes in a meal. It is not street food.[2] Olive's Blog, writing from Siem Reap, pairs it with white rice at lunch.[3]
Grantourismo Travels learned the dish in 2013, soon after moving to Siem Reap, in a private cooking class with Kethana Dunnet. She owns Sugar Palm, a Siem Reap restaurant that serves traditional Cambodian food.[2] The same class taught green mango salad, pomelo and prawn salad and fish amok.[2] At Sugar Palm the writers often ordered it with prahok k'tis, Cambodian chicken curry and fish amok.[2]
Together Women Rise published the dish as a Cambodian eggplant and pork stir-fry among recipes adapted from The Elephant Walk Cookbook, for its April 2011 program on Cambodia.[1][4]
Ingredients and preparation
The eggplant is grilled or barbecued until the skin is black, which makes the flesh soft and smoky.[2] In the Grantourismo method, the eggplants are pierced, brushed with oil and softened in a 180 °C (about 350 °F) oven, turned every ten minutes. They are then finished on a barbecue until the outside is charred.[2] Minced pork is cooked in a wok with fermented soybeans, oyster sauce, garlic, oil, salt and pepper.[2] Once cool, the eggplants are peeled, split lengthwise, opened flat and covered with the cooked mince, then garnished with sliced spring onions.[2]
The dish can be cooked outdoors on a barbecue, a Korean grill or a traditional Cambodian clay brazier, or indoors on a stovetop.[2] In another common method, the purple eggplant is grilled until the skin is black and then peeled, and the soft flesh is stir-fried with meat, usually pork, and seasoned with garlic and fish sauce.[3]
Name
Chha trob is a short name that means fried eggplant, even though the eggplant is grilled and only the pork is stir-fried.[2] The more exact Khmer name for grilled eggplant is dot trob. The full name for the dish with pork is trob dot chha sach chrouk chenh chram.[2]
Regional and household variations
In Cambodia the eggplants would be charred over a flame. The Together Women Rise version bakes them at 350 °F (about 175 °C) instead and adds a pinch of smoked salt to stand in for the smoke.[1] Its baked eggplant is peeled, drained and pureed, which gives the dish a creamy texture, and it is served hot with jasmine rice.[1] The original recipe used half shrimp and half ground pork. The contributor used only pork because of a shrimp allergy, and the recipe allows pork mixed with finely chopped chicken or shrimp, with chili and full-fat coconut milk as options.[1][4]
Some home cooks roast the eggplant instead of grilling it, and the Yummy Calories cook found the result less smoky.[5] That version browns the pork in a wok without oil, adds garlic, brown sugar, chili, soy sauce and oyster sauce, and stirs in the chopped eggplant.[5]
The IBIS Rice cookbook gives the traditional dish as roasted eggplant stir-fried with minced pork or prawn and palm sugar, with a sweet, savory and smoky taste.[6] Its vegan version replaces the meat with minced tofu and keeps the roasted eggplant, soy sauce and palm or brown sugar. The filling goes back into the eggplant skins to serve.[6]
Another version uses pork and prawns together. The aubergine is charred whole, shredded and stir-fried with the meat, then finished with spring onion, chili, coriander and crushed roasted peanuts.[7]
Preparations and recipes
- Grantourismo, from a class with Kethana Dunnet of Sugar Palm
- Whole eggplants softened in the oven and charred on the grill, split and topped with pork fried with fermented soybeans.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Together Women Rise, Cha Traop Dot (Eggplant and Pork Stir-fry) (2014-01-21)
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 Grantourismo Travels, Cambodian Grilled Eggplant with Minced Pork Recipe (2025-09-23)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Olive's Blog, Mencoba Makanan Khas Kamboja di Siem Riep (2018-08-14)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Together Women Rise, Food and Recipes: Cambodia April 2011 Featured Program
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Yummy Calories, Cambodian eggplant and minced pork (Cha traop dot) (2015-05-23)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 IBIS Rice, Stir Fries cookbook
- ↑ Sunflower Recipes, Cha Traop Dot: Cambodian aubergine with pork and prawn