With Chinese New Year approaching, my year of cooking was rapidly coming to an end.
As I entered my auntie Khar Imm’s family’s kitchen once again, I could feel it. The wheel had come full circle. A year ago, I had entered this kitchen fearful and uncertain, with little sense of my family and whether I still fit in it. Now, just a year later, I knew the pineapple tart–making drill the moment I stepped into the room. No one had to explain anything to me. I simply jumped in wherever I could, rolling out dough, filling holes in the cookies, rolling out balls of pineapple jam, and hoisting trays of pineapple tarts over to Auntie Khar Imm, who once again was manning the stove.
Still, of course, there were new things to be learned.
“Lu-Lien ah,” Auntie Khar Imm called to me when I arrived. “Try this,” she said, pushing a jar of deep-fried green and beige strips in my face. I took one and chewed on it. It was crispy, salty, delicious. It would have been fantastic with beer or a cold soda. “Mmm, what is it?” I asked. It turned out it was sheets of seaweed attached with a mix of flour and water to summer roll skins, cut into bite-size strips, and deep-fried. My aunties had sampled them somewhere and decided to experiment with making them at home as a Chinese New Year snack this year.
And instead of pig’s trotter stew as a lunch snack, my aunties were sweating over a different set of ingredients on the stove this time, methodically deep-frying ikan bilis (anchovies) in hot oil and setting that out on the dining table with a platter of fried eggs, a large bowl of chili, and coconut rice. “Nasi lemak,” Jessie explained. I was surprised. This dish of rice and fried anchovies that I sometimes trekked to a hawker center to buy for breakfast was Malay—not a recipe that would have been passed down from my grandmother. “Wah, so good ah! Know how to make nasi lemak all!” I said.
“Aiyah, just try lor—see how it tastes,” Jessie said. A few seconds later, after Jessie tasted the rice, she bundled it all up and put it back in the rice cooker, adding more coconut milk. “Not enough,” she said. “Must cook longer.” I realized I was witnessing the process of agak-agak at its best.
As involved as I was in the Chinese New Year tart-making process, I was most nervous about the dinner I had been planning for the third day of the new year. “What are you going to cook?” Auntie Khar Imm had asked. “Well, some of this and some of that,” I’d said, as mysteriously as I could. “You’ll just have to come and eat!”
I’d been planning this meal for months—a dinner for my father’s side of the family in my parents’ home. I knew how much my aunties had put into teaching me to cook over the past year. I wanted to thank them properly. I also wanted to bring them all together.
While I was planning to make a medley of “greatest hits” from both sides of my family, I wanted to surprise my aunties with a few additions that they hadn’t taught me. As a child, I’d grown up having bak kut teh, a peppery pork rib soup, as an occasional Sunday treat. “This is Teochew, you know,” was a refrain I’d always hear just before my father slurped up his soup. In the past year, I had asked all my relatives if they knew how to make this soup my father so loved. None of them did. This was when Uncle Willin came to the rescue. “Hmm,” he said a few days before Chinese New Year began. “I’ve made it in my restaurant. I don’t know how ‘traditional’ it is, but I like it.” Although we had eaten our way through much of Singapore, I hadn’t cooked with Willin in all my months there. With my year of cooking coming to a close, I begged him to teach me.
“Aiyoh, I’m not even Teochew, and this is a Teochew dish! You should learn from a real Teochew!” he protested.
“Aiyah, can lah. You’re a chef!” I said. “I want to learn something from you!” And that settled it.
On a clear, hot day, just after his lunch shift, I met Willin in a swanky Cold Storage supermarket on downtown Orchard Road to pick up pork ribs, garlic, peppercorns, and a bag to hold the peppercorns in the pot of soup. I wondered what my Tanglin ah-ma would have thought of us buying these ingredients at this gleaming, pristine store, where prices were surely far higher than in the wet markets where most Singaporeans bought their meat and produce. A short drive later, we were at the stove in the kitchen of Relish, one of Willin’s restaurants. He didn’t have much time, so we worked quickly. Bringing a large pot of water to boil on his industrial stove was a cinch. Then he quickly blanched the ribs under hot water before tossing them into the pot along with the little bag of peppercorns and a whole head of garlic. Then we let the soup boil for forty-five minutes, until the broth turned pale brown.
As Willin worked, he told me how he had come upon the recipe. “Just from tasting and thinking and experimenting in the kitchen,” he said. “It’s very easy.” And it was true—the soup was simple yet delicious.
“I’m going to make this for my family,” I said, after having several large sips.
“Don’t!” he said. “I’m not Teochew! Your family is going to hate me for trying to teach you something Teochew if they don’t like it!”
I thought about my auntie Leng Eng, my uncle Soo Kiat, the formidable Auntie Khar Imm trying Willin’s bak kut teh and thought perhaps he had a point. To be safe, I decided to try it out on my mother’s Hockchew family and see how it went.
The plan was to make the traditional reunion dinner—which gathers the family together on the eve of Chinese New Year—for my mother’s family, then cap the New Year festivities with a dinner for my father’s relatives on the third day of the year. I began several days before the meal, making a giant shopping list for my mother and starting with the otak. With my notebook in hand, I went through Auntie Khar Imm’s steps, blending together the lemongrass, the shallots, and the chilies to create the sauce mix, adding in the chopped-up mackerel I now was unafraid to touch. On the list were braised duck, gambling rice, my grandmother’s ngoh hiang, my auntie Khar Imm’s salted vegetable and duck soup, and my mother-in-law’s mandoo.
For the first meal, I thought I had everything under control. The ngoh hiang looked lovely; the braised duck was just the right color. The otak, though a little spicy, was a beautiful shade of orange and tasted just like versions you’d buy in a store. I was proud of how well everything was going—until I hit Willin’s bak kut teh.
When we were in Willin’s kitchen, I had watched him pour salt by the tablespoon into his own broth, dutifully writing down “about two tablespoons of salt” in my notebook. In my own home, however, as the dinner hour approached, I began to get more panicked, especially when my mother started bounding in every ten minutes or so, asking, “How’s everything going?” As the minutes ticked by, the soup wasn’t taking on enough flavor, I thought. I didn’t have extra ribs or extra peppercorns. So instead, I grabbed my mother’s box of salt and shook it like a madwoman into the broth, tasting as I went along.
When my ah-ma and my kuku and his family arrived, we were ready. Before dinner began, there was the traditional “lo hei,” in which the family gathers in a circle around a large platter of raw fish salad, each person holding a pair of chopsticks in hand, picking up bits of the salad and tossing it high up in the air. The salad, called yu sheng, is made up of ingredients that have lucky-sounding names or symbolic meanings—the word for fish, for example, sounds like abundance or prosperity; sesame seeds indicate a year of flourishing business. Kuku had ordered our yu sheng from the Four Seasons Hotel—not being traditionalists, we had always gathered to toss the salad without knowing what we were doing exactly, besides tossing the ingredients as high as we could to ensure that our abundance, flourishing business, and good health would reach soaring pinnacles in the coming year.
This year, however, Daphne had printed out instructions off the Internet, guiding us along as each dish was added. As the slivers of salmon sashimi went onto the platter, she announced “Nian nian you yu!” prompting us to follow along in chanting the Mandarin words implying “This year, you’ll have abundance.” As chopped peanuts were scattered about the platter, she called out “Jin yin man wu,” wishing all of us precious gold and eternal youth in abundance. After julienned daikon, carrots, oil, pomelo, and several other ingredients were added, the plum sauce went in. Most of us knew what accompanied this. “Tian tian mi mi!” we called out, wishing a sweet year ahead to everyone at the table. With loud cries, we dug our chopsticks in, tossing bits of fish and vegetables as high as we could into the air, hoping fervently for a good year ahead. Once the reunion dinner dishes started coming out, my family ate ravenously, pausing to marvel that I’d actually made these dishes.
“Wah, quite good ah!” Auntie Donna said, smiling. I was starting to feel good about everything—until they dipped into the soup. All around the table, eyes were squinting. If they hadn’t been so intent on not hurting my feelings, I’m sure they would have spit out the soup. It was far, far too salty. Daphne helpfully tried to move my grandmother’s bowl of soup away from her so she wouldn’t sample it. But it was too late. “Jin giam ah!” she shouted, wincing and sticking out her tongue as she frantically looked around for some water to wash away the intense taste of salt.
I decided to take it off the menu for my father’s family dinner. (I also decided not to tell Willin, chirpily texting him “Dinner went great! Thanks for the BKT recipe!” the moment it ended.)
Before the big dinner for my father’s family, however, there was one more family event: the traditional lunch on the second day of the new year at my auntie Khar Imm’s home. I was growing increasingly stressed over how my dinner would fare, my father’s family being rather fussy about food in general, not to mention the food that I was trying to make using my sainted grandmother’s recipes. Sitting at Auntie Khar Imm’s dining table, I started to feel a gnawing pain in my abdomen. She had made Teochew braised duck, together with lovely chocolate brown eggs and tofu steeped in the salty gravy—it was perfectly done and amazing over rice. We could not stop eating it.
Surveying the lunch table, my dad made a pronouncement. “Tomorrow, you all better eat before you come. Stop at McDonald’s or something,” he said. “Your dinner is not going to be as good as this, for sure!”
I felt my face start to redden, but he was right. How could I possibly outdo the teacher? Perhaps this had been madness all along. Amid the laughter, Auntie Khar Imm leapt to my defense. “Aiyah, don’t listen to your daddy!” she said, smiling. “I’m sure it’ll be very tasty!”
The next morning Willin texted me. “How are you doing? Everything OK?”
The outpouring of my insecurity began. How would I ever compare? My aunties were phenomenal cooks. My grandmother had been a goddess in the kitchen. Why did I think I could do this?
“That’s the thing about being measured” against others, he immediately replied. “Since everyone knows they are great cooks, you have nothing to lose if you don’t cook as well. Everyone knows you don’t cook like that daily unlike them but if you do, everyone will be amazed. Either way, you win, so no sweat!”
Willin’s words would ring through my head for the rest of the day, as I chopped, steamed, stirred, and boiled. I was so frazzled that at one point I peeked out to the dining room and noticed that not only was my sister sitting at the table wrapping mandoo but my father and Mike had joined in the process as well. I had never seen my father cook in my life. Just as I started to tear up, my dad showed me one of his dumplings; it was a mandoo wrapper filled with spicy orange otah filling instead of pork and cabbage. “I’m calling it jiao-tah,” he said, referring to the Mandarin word for dumplings—jiaozi—and combining that with otah. “I think it’s going to be a hit!”
As the afternoon raced by, I felt like I had everything under control. Then, at 5:00 P.M., with guests arriving just two hours later, I suddenly noticed that my massive pot of salted vegetable and duck soup wasn’t boiling. This would be because I had completely forgotten to start the process—the duck wasn’t even in the pot. The salted plum and tamarind leaves were still on the counter. I could not believe it. This was a process that should take at least two hours, more if you wanted your soup to be flavorful. I started to feel shooting pains in my head. I couldn’t believe I had screwed up one of the compulsories. Ignoring my second braised duck, I turned my attention to the soup. How could I get it to be more flavorful in this shorter period of boiling? In a panic, I tossed in extra chunks of smashed ginger, extra tamarind leaves, an extra sour plum. It would just have to do. By the time this was done, I checked back in on my duck to find that its skin had burned through and was firmly stuck to the wok. This was turning out to be nothing short of a disaster.
Right about then, I noticed the piles of softened clear vermicelli and sliced cabbage, carrots, bean curd, and shiitake mushrooms that I had scattered about the kitchen counter in little bowls. The chap chye! Just a few weeks earlier, I had begged my Auntie Alice for some time in her busy schedule before she flew to Dongguan to spend Chinese New Year with her second son. I’d wanted to learn to make my mother’s family’s chap chye, a dish of mixed vegetables and tofu with clear noodles that’s eaten for luck during the New Year festivities, but my mother, crazed with school homework, had been too busy to teach me. The dish is easy enough to make—the prep is what takes the most time. But with my soup catastrophe, a slightly burned duck, and the trauma of hard-boiled eggs that weren’t peeling right since I hadn’t boiled them long enough, I was in no frame of mind to set all that aside and whip together chap chye. I considered skipping it altogether—we did have an awful lot of food on the table. What was one dish less?
“Chap chye must eat one!” my mother clucked. She was right—it was a good luck dish. In fact, during Chinese New Year, my mother often adds fu chook, a black fungus that looks exactly like clumps of human hair, to her chap chye for added luck. (The name of the fungus sounds like the Chinese word for prosperity.)
Even so, I simply could not muster the energy to pull together a dish of chap chye. Standing in the kitchen, I began to understand how it must feel to be on the precipice of a meltdown. My head was pounding. A film of sweat coated my entire body. My T-shirt had glued itself to my skin. My hair was a tangled mess bundled up into a raggedy ponytail. From the way my mum was looking at me, I could tell I had a manic look in my eyes. “Go up and change,” she said, waving me out of the kitchen. So I took a break, putting on a cheery pink floral Tracy Reese blouse and a comfortable black skirt. I washed my face, combed my hair, and spritzed on a few pumps of Paris by Yves Saint Laurent, the perfume I’ve worn for years to job interviews and major meetings—situations in which I aim to walk in feeling as if I own the world. With a dash of lip gloss, I was looking halfway normal, so back down to the kitchen I went.
My mother was at the stove this time, whizzing about quickly and surely, grabbing bits of cabbage, carrots, and vermicelli, and flinging them into the wok with the confidence of Rachael Ray. Despite her many protestations over not really knowing how to cook, of course, she did all along. And it was lovely to watch. I was stunned—and very grateful. With her stepping in, the chap chye would be made, after all. She even tossed in bits of the good luck fungus, which I’ve loathed and avoided for years but certainly didn’t mind in the least this Chinese New Year.
Biting my lip and feeling completely terrified, I began setting dishes out on the table. There were my two braised ducks—one looking okay, the other looking charred and a little too caramelized. The gravy for the duck was peppered with tofu and chunks of mushy yellow bits from several disintegrated hard-boiled eggs. I’d not boiled them long enough, making them impossible to peel cleanly. My grandmother’s chicken curry had turned out to be a bit of a disaster. I had used canned coconut milk instead of fresh to save the step of squeezing the milk out in cheesecloth. This meant that the much more concentrated canned milk made the gravy incredibly thick; instead of it being like a thick soup, it was a little like ectoplasm. And the salted vegetable and duck soup—I had no idea how it tasted. I was just hoping for the best.
I did, however, stand by my otah, my mandoo, my gambling rice, and the pork adobo, a dish that I love to make in my Brooklyn home, which I’d added to the mix.
The moment my family arrived, I hid in the kitchen, peeking out periodically.
First Uncle Soo Kiat circled the dining table, then Uncle Ah Tuang, who enthusiastically pointed at the salted vegetable and duck soup, saying, “Good, good—you made this. This one is a must.” Auntie Khar Imm’s eyes widened when she saw the spread. “Ma ah, these are all your dishes!” my cousin Jessie exclaimed.
Among all the guests, however, there was a face I wasn’t familiar with. It was a woman my family called Niajeh, a cousin of my Tanglin ah-ma’s who had grown up with her and cooked with her. The moment I saw her, I grew even more terrified. Niajeh was a legendary cook, and she had known my grandmother. How could I possibly measure up?
Willin’s words, however, piped through my mind. There was nothing more I could do. The dishes had been made. I went out to watch everyone eat.
“This one, only okay,” Uncle Soo Kiat said, pointing at the gambling rice. “But this one,” he added, gesturing to the otah, “very good!” I started to feel relieved. I was so afraid that I could barely eat, but as I sat at the long table in my family’s garden, watching my aunties and uncles—even Niajeh—wolfing down my otah, my duck, going back for seconds, I started to feel like perhaps I hadn’t screwed up. More important, I realized that the point hadn’t truly ever been the food.
There was my family, several branches that had been fractured over time, rarely spending time with one another, sitting around a dinner table, everyone thoughtfully chewing and picking apart each dish. I watched as my father held court, my sister flitted about, seeing if anyone needed refills of wine or water, and Mike could not stop eating. Even my mother, who had been adamant about not seeing my father’s family ever again in the wake of the divorce, was smiling.
I realized that I was glad—no, I was thankful that I had come home.
As the meal wound down, Uncle Soo Kiat started telling me about Niajeh and her amazing mee siam, the Malay noodle dish that’s spicy and sour all at once. “It’s the Indian kind of mee siam,” he said. “You really cannot find it anywhere else now.”
“I’d love to learn,” I said.
“Well, she lives in Australia. Maybe you should go there next!”
I wasn’t sure what the future held, if a mee siam adventure in Australia was in the cards. All I knew was that, for one night, we were there, together, eating a meal culled from the women who had made me—my mother-in-law, my auntie Alice, my auntie Khar Imm, my mother, my ah-ma, my Tanglin ah-ma.
As my aunties left that night, I gave them long hugs good-bye. And when Niajeh asked for Tupperware to bring leftovers home, I almost teared up once again.
“When will you come back?” my aunties asked.
I said I wasn’t sure.
“Thank you,” I finally told Auntie Khar Imm. “Thank you for everything.”
“No need lah,” she said. “You passed already.”