Filipino food reigns supreme in soy sauce cooking showdown in Japan

Filipino cuisine reigns supreme in Tokyo as 2 Filipinos bagged top honors at the 8^th Soy Sauce Recipe & Story Contest held on Sept. 30, a day before Japan celebrated Soy Sauce Day.

FILIPINO PRIDE! Clair Ocampo (center, seated) wins gold at the 8^th Soy Sauce Recipe & Story Contest. Justin de Jesus (left, seated) took home silver while Canadian Florence Zappia (right, seated) took home bronze. Photo grabbed from The Japan Times

Chef and entrepreneur Clair Ocampo lead the way with her pork back ribs adobo and banana with burned brown sugar, winning gold at the contest held at the Hattori Nutrition College in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward. Justin de Jesus, a food photographer and stylist, took silver for his “Philippine beef steak, with yuzu citrus and soy sauce flavor”.

“I used soy sauce and brown sugar to better bring out the pork’s flavor. Also, to give it an interesting taste, I used hakkaku spice and laurel leaves,” she said in an interview with The Japan Times.

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In an interview with Inquirer.net, Ocampo called adobo as the country’s representative dish. “While Filipino cuisine is struggling to be recognized as at par with the world’s most famous cuisine, this small victory gives us hope that we can truly adapt to different food cultures while maintaining the essence of our own.”

Ocampo and De Jesus come from the Saitama Prefecture in Japan, and have known each other even before the competition. These food buddies have teamed up to conduct food experimenting sessions and photo shoots for their food-blogging adventures. They hope to publish a cookbook or a coffee-table book in the near future.

The 8^th Soy Sauce Recipe & Story Contest is one of the many activities that the Japan Soy Sauce Association had lined up Soy Sauce Day, held every October 1. 75 contestants joined the contest in August, all of whom were non-Japanese.

10 made it to final at Hattori Nutrition College in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, where Ocampo and De Jesus bagged top honors. Florence Zappia, a Canadian living in Tokyo, took home third prize honors for her “deep-fried, stewed eggplant with Italian sauce.”

 

Source: Inquirer.net, The Japan Times