CURRENT HOMETOWN: New York City
RESTAURANT THAT MADE HER NAME: Dirt Candy, New York City
SIGNATURE STYLE: Vegetarian haute cuisine
BEST KNOWN FOR: First vegetarian chef to compete on Iron Chef; her graphic novel–like cookbook, Dirt Candy: A Cookbook; and Dispatches from Dirt Candy, her column on Eater
FRIDGE: Ikea
By the time Amanda Cohen was born, her mother had taken what Cohen considered a well-deserved break from cooking; growing up in Canada, Cohen was essentially raised on “lots of pasta salad, that most 1980s of foods.” Perhaps it was this emphasis on white food that led to Cohen’s craving for vegetables in all their multihued varieties by the time she was a teenager.
A year in Hong Kong after her graduation from New York University really opened her eyes to the potential in produce. “The fact you could have a massive, delicious dim sum feast on Sunday that was entirely vegetarian blew my mind,” she recalls. Vegetables were so inexpensive and there were so many types she had never tried before that every trip to the market became an adventure.
After living there, Cohen knew she wanted to cook—at the time though she thought it would be the career move that would give her the most freedom, especially to travel. She then went to culinary school in New York and began working in mostly vegetarian restaurants.
After years of working for others, Cohen realized that if she wanted to cook vegetables her own way, it would have to be in her own place. Dirt Candy opened in 2008 with nine tables—such a tight space!—in order to minimize any risk of failure. “What we weren’t prepared for was that it would succeed,” says Cohen. But how could it not? Dirt Candy’s slogan is “Anyone can cook meat, leave the vegetables to the professionals,” and she’s certainly a pro, whipping up such delectable dishes as roasted cucumber broth, rosemary cotton candy, and onion tartare. These whimsical plates were a hit.
Although Cohen has spent her most of her life in the United States, she is a familiar face on Iron Chef Canada. She was apprehensive about cooking on TV at first, but then realized the platform was too good to turn down. The first experience was “deeply, deeply stressful, especially because you can’t look stressed. That camera sees right into your soul,” she recalls.
Even though Cohen eventually lost that first season, the gain in notoriety was worth it, and in 2019 she came back as an Iron Chef. Prior to filming, she and her staff did “tight-knit team practices and drills.” They were already a fine-tuned machine, but “we rehearsed to make sure we didn’t panic and choke under the lights with the time limit and cameras bearing down on us,” she says. “I took it very seriously, which made it even more fun.”
Cohen doesn’t cook much when she’s at home—space is so tight in her spartan, galley-style kitchen that her oven and under-the-counter fridge face each other and cannot be opened simultaneously. Ditto for her dishwasher and freezer. When she does cook, she sticks to vegetarian meals. But often it’s takeout on her days off, although she is not above sprucing up or rescuing leftover rice, which is what we ended up having for lunch on the day we met to talk about the contents of her tiny refrigerator, filled with the essentials picked up at a small spice shop downstairs.
- BEAN PASTE
- PECORINO
- HARISSA
- TOFU—“Dirt Candy is right on the border of Chinatown, so my husband usually picks up groceries on his way home. I get my tofu wherever I can, but there are more varieties in Chinatown.”
- MISO
- KALE
- FOUR LOKO—“I’ve never opened it and it’s been in there forever.”
- CHILI PEPPERS IN OIL—“They’re arbol chilis and it’s an oil I made one Sunday when I was feeling particularly ambitious. It will probably live in our fridge for the rest of our lives.”
- LEFTOVER RICE—“We always order too much.”
- LABNEH, BABA GHANOUSH, AND GIGANTE BEAN DIPS, from Kalustyan’s spice shop—“I buy as much as I can from them as often as I can. Part of the reason I can never move is I don’t ever want to be too far away from them.”
- MUSHROOMS, from Chinatown
- HUMMUS—“I end a lot of my nights squatting in front of the fridge dipping something—anything—in hummus because it’s been a long service and I’m starved.”
- OLIVES
- COLD BREW COFFEE—“The cold brew is my husband’s. I live on coffee.”
- VEUVE CLICQUOT CHAMPAGNE—“I’m big on spicy food and nothing goes better with it than Champagne, or anything sparkling. I don’t keep Champagne in my fridge to celebrate; I keep it in there for the next time I order Sichuan takeout.”
- CHILI PASTE
Q & A
What are those big green cubes in your freezer? I take whatever greens are about to go bad in the fridge. I blanch and puree them to always have something green on hand. It’s a trick I brought home from the restaurant. We are always trying to figure out how to not throw things out if we have too much. I think the basis for this started with a spinach or green risotto. It totally works.
You have a small fridge for someone living in the U.S. Is it because you are Canadian? I have a small fridge because I live in a small apartment and I didn’t want a big giant fridge blocking the tiny sliver of a view I have through my kitchen window.
What do you always have in your fridge? Wine. It goes with everything. Nothing to eat but that hard cheese rind? Have it with a glass of wine. Having takeout from that only slightly okay Chinese place on the corner because they’re the only place open? Wine will smooth out all those rough edges. Nothing to eat in the house because you’ve been working late all week and haven’t had time to go shopping? What do you care if you’ve got wine?
Do people ask you often if you are a vegetarian? I get asked all the time if I am vegetarian and I answer honestly that I am not. I’m too competitive. I want to taste what other chefs are cooking and most of them really only cook seafood or meat well. But tasting what they do is a good way to keep my technique sharp. I think all my customers expect from me is that I am a good chef.
Is cooking vegetables a much freer or more expressive way of cooking in comparison to meat? I don’t know because I’ve never cooked meat!
Who is cooking at home? My husband cooks or we get takeaway nights when I’m not at work.
What foods do you hate? Or what foods would you never eat? I’m not sure a chef who hates any type of food has any place being a chef.
What is your favorite junk food? I love Canadian potato chips—All Dressed, Dill Pickle, Ketchup. Whenever I go back to Canada I come home with a suitcase full.
How is it food shopping in New York City? I don’t do it.
Why do you refrigerate your tomatoes? My kitchen gets a lot of sunlight. I can’t keep them on the counter. They are winter tomatoes. They have been in a cold room already, likely ripened there. It’s perfectly fine to keep them in the fridge.
If you could move anywhere else just for the produce where would it be? South Africa. I was there recently for work and the quality of the produce blew me away. Where else can you get bananas, oranges, apples, butternut squash, and avocados all in season, all growing in the same places, all being sold at the same market?