Mayordoma Ep. 03 - Bryan Koh

Hey listeners, 

I don’t know about you but doesn’t this supposed home stretch of the pandemmy make you want to stretch your social limbs a bit?

Check in with your amigas? Even some living across the ocean? 

For me, Singaporean cookbook author Bryan Koh is one of those people.

Exactly a year ago, I published an article on CNN about how Bryan’s book, Milkier Pigs & Violet Gold, reintroduced me to Filipino food like she was my long-lost mother. One who now happens to be a billionaire and is besties with Kylie Minogue. Needless to say, I was dying to know more. 

Published in 2012, Milkier Pigs & Violet Gold was the first of its kind—a feast of information on regional Philippine cuisine, from pili nut tinola in Bicol to Carabao’s milk pudding in Pampanga; from the ubiquitous ube in its title to the little-known cooking techniques of the Lumad down south, all written by a foreigner at that.

Bryan’s book taught me that there isn’t just one way to cook adobo; that even the sourness in sinigang exists on a spectrum; that our paths to learning about Filipino food are also many-splendored. 

Just as Bryan’s Pinay nannies gave him a constant craving for Filipino fare, a Singaporean boy like him could show me just how epic my own country’s cuisine is. 

Of course, if there was a mayordoma that began Bryan’s fascination with Filipino food, leading to his award-winning cookbook and the two editions that followed, I had to know more about her. 

So recently, I rang Bryan over Zoom call. It was the day after he held one of his elaborate pop-up dinners in Singapore—an ode to Burmese flavors. Thankfully, Bryan had just enough energy to talk about the first cookbook he published a decade ago; the Pinoy places that still have to make it into a future edition; and the iconic yayas of his youth.

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