All hobbies

Cooking

Mostly hawker dishes, for my family.

Food is one of the few things you can enjoy from another culture without knowing anything else about it. Growing up in Singapore, that’s exactly why Western food appealed to me. It was different from what I ate every day, so it’s what I learned to cook first.

Linguine in a pot, clams in another, and garlic softening in a pan.
The Western food era. I stand by the clams.

Getting older did the opposite. I started appreciating the food I grew up with, and these days I cook a lot of it for my family: char kway teow, Hokkien mee, prawn mee, chicken rice.

A kitchen counter covered in bowls of prepared prawns, pork and chicken beside sauces and a knife block.
The part nobody photographs.
A wok tilted over a gas flame in a home kitchen.

Chicken rice is my favourite because it looks simple and isn’t. The rice needs aromatics and chicken fat, so first you render the fat. The stock has to carry the whole plate. The chicken has to cook through while the skin stays soft and gelatinous, and then you have to cut it cleanly enough that it still looks like food when it reaches the table. That’s a lot of decisions for a plate that disappears in ten minutes.

Cooking local food is different from trying something new. I’m not inventing anything. I’m trying to get a taste I already know exactly right, and when I do, there’s something very comforting about it. It tastes like home.