Hope Cohen Pens First Cookbook

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

A fresh take: Hope Cohen at her home in Bryn Mawr.

When local chef Hope Cohen first came up with the concept for her recently debuted cookbook Fast Fresh + Simple: Over 100 Delicious Recipes for Entertaining and Every Day, she didn’t have to go too far to research her intended audience. “This was written for women just like me—a single working mom who has two kids and who wants to cook for them things that taste great, but still are healthy,” says the chef, TV personality, and food consultant who has been a high-profile staple on the Philly food (and social) scene since the early ’90s. “This cookbook is personal,” she says. “It’s truly a collection of recipes that I love and that I know can fit into a busy person’s lifestyle.”

A self-taught chef, she first started honing her culinary craft at age nine when she began cooking weekly meals for her family. But it wasn’t until her 20s, after her kids were born, that she began to follow her gastronomic passion professionally. She began working with renowned chef Guillermo Pernot (of Vega Grill and ¡Pasión! fame) and went on to do stints at restaurants overseas. She became a consultant to Philly’s pioneering restaurateur Neil Stein, taught other Main Line moms to cook via classes and private lessons, and even pawned kitchen-related wares on QVC. But it was her hosting gig on the cooking show The Chef’s Kitchen (formerly The Fretz Kitchen) that really cemented her place as a food personality to the masses.

“It was like a dream come true for me to be cooking with nationally and internationally recognized chefs,” she says of her time on air with chefs like Georges Perrier, Jose Garces, and Eric Ripert. “I was like, wow, I’m getting paid for this. I’m meeting amazing chefs, I’m pretty much getting private cooking lessons, and I’m on TV. It was pretty awesome.”

But it was years after that show ended that Cohen found herself on a cooking program again—yet this time she was the one cooking up the delectable fare. The show Fast, Fresh and Simple with Hope Cohen aired last year for an 18-week run on The Comcast Network, but all the while she was on air showing the world how to create her dishes, she was finishing up her ultimate labor of love: her cookbook. “I had a large collection of recipes I’ve gathered over the years and just decided it was time to write a book,” she says. And the end result is a cookbook replete with more than a hundred of her all-time favorite recipes, ranging from cocktails and appetizers to salads and entrées.

“I think people are really shocked when they see how simple it can be to put together a really great-tasting and simple dinner,” says Cohen of her recipes such as roasted tomato and fennel soup, spaghetti with piquant broccoli, and braised Moroccan chicken. “You can go to the market, pick up your ingredients, come home—and be sitting down and eating something within an hour. It doesn’t require a whole lot of effort. People just have to fight their fear—they [can be] afraid of the kitchen—but you have to relax, and my recipes are just an example of how quickly you can put something together that’s delicious and healthy.”

Philadelphia Style Magazine

Hope Cohen Pens First Cookbook