On a quiet Sunday afternoon, a little head poked around the doorway and watched artist Dany Pen stir a pot of soup. Six-year-old Aries Mosley-Lee sniffed appreciatively. A tiny voice came from behind him: “Oh I love that”, and his three-year-old sister, SoKeira, appeared. She climbed up into a chair, held up her spoon and waited expectantly for her mother's pork riblet soup to be ready. If a toddler's reaction was anything to go by, what was coming was going to be good.The Royal Gazette visited Dany Pen and husband Tristin Mosley-Lee, to see what was cooking. The couple recently moved to Bermuda after several years in Canada, and Ms Pen had her first art show a few months ago at the Bermuda Society of Arts (BSoA) gallery. She was raised in Canada, but is of Cambodian heritage. Her husband is Bermudian.Ms Pen is now one of a very small community of Cambodians in Bermuda. In fact, she only knows of one other Cambodian here. To help keep her children stay culturally grounded, she tries to cook Cambodian food as much as possible.“This is the only type of cooking I know how to cook, really,” said Ms Pen stirring the pot. Among the items inside was a clear looking broth, small pork ribs called riblets, white radish and some mushrooms cut in half. “This soup is one of the simpler dishes to make, and my husband likes it,” she said. “My mother, Yean Chhan, taught me how to cook at a very young age.”Ms Pen's mother was from Battanbong, near the border with Thailand. She emigrated to Canada in the 1980s, fleeing from the violence of the Khmer Rouge throughout the 1970s. Ms Pen's mother escaped by making her way, over a period of three months, to an internment camp over the border in Thailand. Ms Pen, 24, was born in Canada, and as a small child, began helping her mother in the kitchen, learning basic tasks.“At five years old, I started helping with cleaning the vegetables and peeling,” said Ms Pen. “I was in charge of grinding up all the herbs. For example, we never had black pepper straight from the shaker. We always crushed peppercorns fresh. I was raised to find as much fresh ingredients as possible. My mother never cooked with measurements. When I was learning to cook from her, I would get frustrated and say ‘how do you know how much to put in?' But she would just say ‘grab a pinch'. The recipes are just passed down. They are family tradition.”Ms Pen said Cambodians tend to eat a lot of seafood and a lot of soup broth served with rice. Because of the proximity to Thailand, there are similarities in the cuisine.“In Cambodian cooking we use a lot of fish sauce and fish paste,” she said. “We use a lot of cuts of meat that Bermudians don't normally use such as pigs' feet. Pigs' feet are an Asian delicacy.”Ms Pen said finding the ingredients needed for Cambodian cooking is sometimes a challenge in Bermuda. Her mother-in-law, Evelou Mosley is of Filipino heritage, and people in the Filipino community often bring back much sought-after Asian food ingredients when they return from abroad. “They then disperse the ingredients in the Asian community,” said Ms Pen. “One of the ingredients they often bring back is dried fish. That is a big thing in many Asian cultures.”She has also had some success finding ingredients closer to home.“One day I searched all over the Island for lemongrass,” she said. “Sometimes the stores have it, but often they don't. When I got home, someone said to me, ‘you went to the store for that? We have it growing outside in the yard'. Sure enough, there it was, outside. Fresh bay leaves were also hard to find, until my husband told me to use leaves from the spice tree in the backyard. It's very similar.”She said sometimes it is a little lonely being one of possibly two Cambodians on the Island, but she is enjoying getting to know people from other Asian communities.On this Sunday afternoon, after about an hour, the soup was ready and it was accompanied by white rice. This reporter, a fussy eater, can vouch that it was delicious, and indeed, the reporter had a hard time not slurping the soup. Ms Pen said a dessert for Cambodians might be green mangoes, bananas or lychees, which are common in that part of the world. They also enjoy eating rice pudding dishes.Her husband, Tristin, is a mixologist. He suggested that those looking to have wine with their soup, try a white wine. He recommended Kuehn Gewurztraminer; because it is floral with fruit aromas of mango and lychee, or Caymus Conundrum, a California blend.“This has a bit of sweetness to it that should complement the bitter sour flavours of the soup,” he said.