When asked what her idea of comfort food is, American chef Leah Cohen has a ready answer: Sinigang, particularly shrimp or fish soured by real tamarind.

“And, oh, yes, I love patis,” said Cohen. “I’m obsessed by it. I season almost everything with it or use it either with chili or garlic for dipping.”

It’s easy to understand why. As a child growing up in America, Cohen, owner and executive chef of New York-based pan-Asian restaurant Pig and Khao, was exposed early on to her Filipino mother’s home cooking.

The restaurant on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, which can seat 72 people, opened almost four years ago to rave reviews.

Cohen is one of 20 international and local chefs featured in the ongoing Madrid Fusion Manila (MFM) at SMX Convention Center. Now on its second year, the three-day global event promoting cultural exchanges through food is organized by the Department of Tourism.

“Instead of chicken soup, my mom would cook sinigang for me, especially when I was sick,” said Cohen, whose mother hails from Romblon. “I learned from her and my aunts and my mom’s friends all about lumpia, pancit bihon, and adobo.”

It also helped that Cohen’s Caucasian father “thinks he’s more Filipino than anyone else.” He came to the Philippines years ago to study dentistry at the University of the East where he met his future wife. They lived in the country for five years before deciding to settle in the US.

Apart from sinigang, Pig and Khao offers pancit palabok, another of Cohen’s personal favorites, and perhaps one of the “best” sisig dishes in the world. Half of the dishes in the restaurant’s menu are composed of Filipino food.

“I could honestly say that our sisig is the best,” she said with a laugh. “We used to break down our pigs’ heads, but we couldn’t keep up with the demand that we now work with a farmer in the States to get enough supplies.”

She didn’t realize that her early introduction to Filipino food was already broadening her palate, which made her appreciate later on different flavors the typical American living in the United States isn’t normally exposed to.

But her love affair with Southeast Asian food happened after a detour early in her career. After studying at the Culinary Institute of America, Cohen chose the traditional route not a few aspiring American chefs take by training in fine dining restaurants specializing in Italian cuisine.

She even lived in Italy for a year to immerse herself in the culture. Upon her return to the US, it didn’t take her long to realize she wasn’t as passionate about Italian and European cooking as she was with Southeast Asian cuisine.

Her stint at “Top Chef,” a reality TV show where she won sixth place, precipitated her realization. Because of her TV exposure, she also lost her anonymity. Suddenly, total strangers began stopping her in the street asking for her autograph.

“It was like something clicked in me a year after joining ‘Top Chef,’” she said. “I travelled to Southeast Asia, first to Hong Kong, because I knew this was the food that I enjoyedeating and doing.”

She also lived in Thailand for a while, and retraced her Filipino roots by talking to family and friends about their special Pinoy dishes.

Cohen also channeled memories of childhood spent vacationing in the Philippines. She considers Romblon’s Carabao Island, where the family has a house, her “happy place.”

“I got a taste of travel at a young age. The entire menu at Pig and Khao is inspired by my childhood travels to Southeast Asia. On our way here from the States, my family and I would usually stop somewhere else since we had come this far,” she said.

Because of her restaurant’s distance to Asia, finding the right ingredients remains one of Cohen’s biggest challenges. Asian ingredients, including calamansi and lemon grass, are much easier to source in the West Coast than in New York.

“It’s not even the cost that’s the issue,” she said. “You can also get Asian ingredients in New York, but the quality is not always good.”

Going into fusion food isn’t something she relishes at the moment, but “you’ll never know.”

“I try to make the flavor of each dish as authentic as possible,” she said. “There are times when I take one ingredient and put it in another dish, but I still try to keep the taste as authentic as possible.”

Source:
courtesy of MANILA BULLETIN

by Alex Y. Vergara

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