Growing Up in Nonya kitchen

During her lifetime, my mother had filed away
hundreds of recipes. She had our family heirloom
recipes, orally passed down for generations,
transcribed many times by daughters and
maids. When I was growing up, I was tasked with
reading aloud my mother’s recipes just before
she cooked those dishes, so I knew the favourite
versions that she referred to most often.

Like my mother, I enjoy food and love to entertain.
I was often motivated enough to wake up at 3 am to
cook for family and friends and soon realised that
perhaps, I should compile her recipes for posterity.

During Chinese New Year in 2001, I came up with a
simple idea of a spiral bound compilation for my nieces,
consisting of my mother’s most popular recipes. I vividly
remember that we sifted through stacks of paper, I then
scanned the ‘trusted’ copies with a vintage machine.
Armed with the bulging plastic folder of documents, I
flew back to New York, back to my MBA classes for the
next few months, putting aside this personal project for
when I had the time.

I delayed returning to Singapore that summer, assuming
that I could pick up my mother’s techniques a few
months later over Christmas. Perhaps then, I could also
combine the baking lessons as she geared up for Chinese
New Year. Nonetheless, I enrolled in the first of many
cooking classes at the end of August 2001 because I
wanted to sharpen my basic skills, like how to make
the perfect French omelette! It was during that fateful
period that I had to rush home to Singapore because my
mother had become seriously ill. She passed away three
months later. I was never to learn alongside her.

Like many Nonyas of her generation, my mother took
many of her best-kept cooking secrets to her grave. And
like many Nonyas of my generation, I was more fixated

on studies and a career than tapping those tips from my
mother. I could not boast that I had learnt to cook under
my mother’s tutelage.

Still shocked by her passing, my sisters and I rummaged
through her belongings and documented all her cake
moulds, pots and pans and collection of cookbooks. I
hurried through her decades-old recipes, stripping them
out of their plastic files and lumping them into storage
boxes. Then I hand-carried them all back to New York,
with the plan that someday I would study them more
closely.

By the time I graduated from business school in 2003,
the option of going back to work full-time became a
dilemma in light of some medical reasons that my baby
had. Moreover, I had grown up with a mother who stayed
at home all the time. I did not know any different and
wanted to do the same for my children. But my education
would have been wasted so I decided that perhaps, the
little spiral book should become more ambitious. Her
passing meant that I was left to fill in many gaps before
I could complete this book. More problematic was the
fact that I had put all her recipes into a box and now
needed to catalogue them once again. The project took a
backseat many times during those years, as we welcomed
another baby, moved to a new home and fulfilled
commitments associated with raising a young family.
Yet, the drive to publish this book never went away as
more friends and family egged and encouraged me on.