Home Cooking
Kelly Wong
If you look up #homecooking on Instagram, you’ll find over 21 million posts. It’s a hashtag I add to my posts whenever I present a gallery of dishes I’ve cooked up at home that look good enough for the ’gram. But honestly, home cooking is ubiquitous and banal. It’s just a way of life.
From a young age, I remember school friends and work colleagues telling me how lucky I am to have parents who are such good home cooks. This always struck me as odd, particularly as a child – doesn’t everyone cook at home?
But this leads me to another question; what defines a good home cook anyway?
Certainly, the rise of cooking reality TV shows such as Masterchef and My Kitchen Rules have set stupendous standards for home cooking. But let’s talk outside of that context. Why is preparing a meal with side dishes plated lovingly on delicate servingware made specifically for this ritual? Isn’t cooking for sustenance just as much a legitimate form of home cooking? Instant noodles eaten straight from the pot is a completely acceptable meal and the hill I will die on.
In my case, the food I ate at home growing up (and eat now, when I visit as an adult) was certainly varied and unlike anything I’ve ever eaten at a friend’s house. There were no regular Sunday roasts, or spag bol on Thursday. That kind of meal repetition frightens me still. At home, there was a complex, deep variety of dishes that my parents brought over to Australia from Singapore – a nation obsessed with food influenced by many different cultures, where eating is regarded as a national pastime. When they immigrated in the late 80s, these dishes moved along with them, and onto our plates.
There are many reasons why my Chinese Singaporean parents cooked so much at home. One of them was out of pure frugality (we were a single income household for about the first 15 years of my life). There were other reasons too: a certain disappointment with the food choices in our working-to-middle-class, white-dominated suburb, and a creative outlet for my stay-at-home mother before she re-entered the workforce. More so, it was a sense of recreating comfort and home for themselves while living away from their homeland, and especially as they try to pass their culture and traditions down to my sister and I.
My parents have lived in Australia for over 35 years now, cooking countless meals in their modest suburban kitchen. This space is the heart of our household, as mum and dad shout over the roaring range hood while they cook. For my dad, this span of time is exactly half his lifetime, and over half for my mother.
Both of my parents are competent cooks. But it’s my dad who usually takes over for the more complicated traditional hawker foods – think chicken satay, curry chicken, char kway teow, beef rendang, and Hainanese chicken rice with homemade chilli sauce – but also the special occasion top-tier dish; Singaporean chilli crab. My mother takes the wheel when it comes to the more homestyle, everyday dishes (such as steamed minced pork, mapo tofu, and fried rice), that keep the household going throughout the week.
Watch and learn (and fail)
In a modest-sized kitchen with a centre island, it’s difficult to stand next to my dad lest I get in the way. Most of the time, and since childhood, I find myself hovering over the laminate kitchen bench, half sitting on a bamboo stool as my elbows support my weight, leaving red dents on my skin as I lean forward to get a better look.
Even now as an adult, I relish the chance to be an observer in the kitchen. I’m often disappointed if I arrive late for dinner and I’ve missed the chance to watch. You never know when you might learn something. A trick or cooking hack he mentions, off –the cuff. Information I have to store in my head, hoping I don’t forget them at a later point. Asian fathers are notoriously known for being non-communicative, so this chance for conversation, as well as a delicious meal at the end, seems like an opportunity too good to miss.
As he makes his yee mee, I ask: how do I get the perfect ratio for the starchy slurry that creates the sauce which later coats the fresh, thick-cut yellow noodles? Dad doesn't even use a spoon to mix the starch and water together. A weathered, stubby index finger does the trick. I have my dad’s hands – well-padded palms and short, sturdy fingers. Like the Simpsons, but with five digits instead. You just need to mix it to look like this, he replies, tilting the small blue-and-white porcelain rice bowl in my direction for all of three seconds before he tips it into the hot cast-iron wok as a finishing touch to the dish before serving. Quick. Quick! Yee mee is a dish best served hot, whilst the gravy hasn’t had the opportunity to fully soak into the noodles. I have tried to make this same dish myself, at home on my own, but I have yet to get the gravy to arrive at the same consistency as my dad’s. It still feels like the hardest balance to capture, albeit it only requiring two simple ingredients. Perhaps having my dad’s hands means nothing without experience and skill.
What u cooking?
With my parents’ quick adoption of WhatsApp, our family group chat is approximately 90 per cent centred around food. ‘What u cooking?’ sends mum, almost daily. The chat history is filled with hundreds of photos of meals eaten when dining out, but it is mostly made up of conversations and pictures around home cooking. My mum has become the unofficial official documenter, regularly sending a photo of a dish – often apropos of nothing, sometimes jokingly captioned ‘Chef Wong creation’ (i.e. something my dad has cooked). Even after so many years together, my mum is still proud of his home cooking.
His repertoire of dishes is a mix of dishes you don’t see very often at a typical Singaporean restaurant in Australia. It is probably difficult to justify the cost of some of these dishes in a commercial business – they’re either too time-consuming, or simply not costly enough to make the labour behind them worthwhile. I think of a less common (even the hawkers who make this in Singapore are dwindling) but still popular breakfast dish called chwee kueh – steamed rice flour cake served with fried, finely chopped preserved radish with a dab of fermented chilli sauce. It’s simple and vegan. But it’s hard to convince people living in a Western society to pay for what is essentially a rice pudding, without adding something less traditional or extravagant. Another variation on this dish is called carrot cake, which includes grated lobok (radish, or ‘carrot’) in the batter, which after steaming is diced and fried with eggs and lashings of kecap manis to make black carrot cake, chai tow kway. There’s the ‘white’ version too, without kecap manis. Whilst these hawker dishes don’t necessary belong under the category of ‘home cooking’ in Singapore, they’re certainly dishes that require learning how to cook at home if living abroad.
While there are many Malaysian restaurants across Australia, it’s harder to find a Singaporean restaurant. Part of this is probably because there are so many more Malaysian migrants in Australia – nearly 178,000 according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’s most recent data from 2020[1]. Malaysia takes up the ninth spot in Australia’s top population by overseas country of birth; Singapore-born residents are just shy of 65,000 people. At the same time, it’s likely that Singaporean migrants aren’t interested in opening up restaurants in Australia, as they move away from working-class origins, or come from well-off backgrounds already. In any case, I feel like many Singaporean migrants are happy to spend their money dining out, keeping their homeland's national pastime of eating out alive regardless of their country of residence. My suspicion is that a new wave of younger, business-savvy, second-gen migrants (Singaporean or otherwise) will step up to open restaurants in Australia in years to come, not only as a way to make money but to meet the growing demand from increasing migrant populations yearning for traditional dishes. For now, I just return home to my parents.
Coming back home
In a short-turned-extended stint back at my parents’ home over Christmas (just your regular COVID-related interruption), I had eaten the following within a month, although certainly not limited to:
● Bak kut teh
● Pork ball congee
● Kaya toast + soft boiled egg
● Beehoon
● Rojak
● Tau suan with youtiao
● Satay with rice
● Har mee
● Nasi lemak
● Radish cake/carrot cake
● Yee mee
● Taro cake
My parents, who have long lost their hybrid Singlish after decades in Australia, refer to dishes in a mix of English and Cantonese, which they use to speak amongst themselves. I’m unable to speak any Cantonese, so that is what I go by as well. Maybe this is just the Singaporean way – an ever-evolving mishmash of words from different languages that would throw off even the most seasoned linguist. Without growing up in Singapore, the litany of cross-cultural words from Malay, Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew (and more) languages that find their way into regular ‘Singapore speak’ – such as makan, shiok, tabao, kopitiam – seem so exciting to me. Unsurprisingly, many Singlish words revolve around food and eating.
When I was still a teenager living at home, it was a treat for my mum to make complex noodle dishes like laksa (complete with finely sliced slivers of homegrown curry leaf), or the sour-sweet balance of mee siam (with a squeeze of homegrown calamansi lime). Between my parents cooking dishes from their home country in our Australian home, I developed a strange sense of authenticity. The constant and sometimes constructive criticisms of dishes – not sweet enough, not salty enough, not soft enough (chicken for Hainanese chicken rice), not firm enough – helped develop my own sense of authenticity. Authentic to my parents, but ask someone else and they might have a different opinion.
Dishes cooked by my dad are always ‘not-quite-perfect’ (at least compared to the traditional hawker dishes I’ve tried when visiting Singapore). But it lives in a state of constant evolution, thanks to his insatiable appetite for improvement. Is it okay? What do you think? It wasn’t fried long enough. Is there enough salt? A critiquing comment from them is a mark of thoughtfulness, gratitude, praise, and approval. I think when people say their parent makes the best [insert dish here], it’s a real expression of love. But the evolution of my dad’s cooking, and the process he has undertaken throughout his life in Australia, excites me too. Something can always be improved or tweaked; it allows for adaptation, so the culinary journey never ends. And the food becomes just that much tastier.
Buying authenticity with convenience
My parents are still working full-time in their late 60s. If you’re any sort of working middle-class family, you grow up with meals that are just as much about convenience as it is nutrition. And I dare you to try and tell me that convenience isn’t tasty. My parents have to drive 20 to 25 minutes to the nearest majority-Asian suburb to be able to source imported food items like anchovy sambal, kaya spread, and frozen fishballs, as well as fresh items like tofu, locally made youtiao, and joong (sticky rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaf). But this all means a taste of home at home, with so much more convenience.
But whatever your version of authenticity is, this convenient level of consumerism for me means that I can essentially buy my version of authenticity for my home cooking experiments at home. Cross-generational, nostalgic dishes from a shelf; I see myself through my parents’ nostalgia for their homeland. When I want a taste of home, I simply have to go to my nearest Asian supermarket and buy the ingredients.
Of course, when it comes to buying sauces and spice mixes, there are certain brands that make all the difference – it is knowledge passed down from my parents, and gained through a process of trial and error.
Our family’s go-to for hoisin sauce is Lee Kum Kee, which is a Cantonese brand imported from China. There is also Glory, for their sambal variations, and a product of Singapore. Ayam brand is a must when it comes to satay sauce and satay seasoning; you can only find the hot version of the sauce in Asian supermarkets. I’ve never seen the hot version elsewhere; Coles and Woolworths only stock the mild version.
That said, following the tradition of trial and error and personalisation, my dad likes to add a dash of coconut cream or even just dairy milk to add a touch of creaminess whilst thinning down his Ayam satay sauce before serving it. The satay sauce you find in a sea of smoke and sweat on the streets of Singaporean hawkers are much runnier than what white Australians seem to think satay sauce should be, the consistency of concrete sludge.
For a millennial like myself, the call of convenience after a day at work, searching for a taste of comfort means I’ve also adapted and taken my learnings from my dad’s simple home cooked dishes. Bonus points if it’s cheap and fast to cook.
One of my favourite dishes that ticks all these boxes combines pantry and fridge condiments to create a complex, no-cook and failproof sauce for dry noodles. In Singapore (and many other southeast Asian countries), ‘dry noodles’ are noodles tossed in sauce, the opposite being ‘soup noodles’. These noodles are the perfect base for slippery boiled pork wontons, bouncy fishballs, generous slices of sticky-sweet char siu, or succulent roast duck permeating with fragrant Chinese five spice. Even better with pickled green chilli on the side. Add some bok choy on the side if you want to go all out. It’s perfect for slurping and is a joyful balance of spicy, salty, and sweet.
While your egg noodles (fresh, preferred but dry will suffice in a pinch) are boiling, prepare your sauce base. As I’ve learned from my dad it never really matters about the ratios, it’s good in any ratio, and you can always adjust to taste.
Here’s what you need – complete with notes and learnings from my dad:
● Tomato sauce – for that sticky, slightly sweet, acidic base – get the bottled stuff, it has things like thickener which help the sauce hold body (one time, in desperation I even used passata here)
● Anchovy sambal chilli – Glory brand (made in Singapore) preferred, a solidified oil mix of chilli, salty umami-laden anchovy (you were always lucky if you got a piece of anchovy), and prawn paste – it’s chunky but the oil quickly softens to a paste once rested at room temperature – there is a version without anchovy but really, why would you??
● Light soy sauce – in case you’re unaware, light doesn’t refer to a diet version, it refers to the saltier, clearer, watery version of soy sauce (this is your salt seasoning in this situation, so adjust to taste).
● Toasted sesame oil – usually a blend of sesame oil and a neutral oil like rice bran is best because you want these noodles to be slurpable and well-coated without being too heavy on the concentrated flavour of sesame.
● Optional: dark soy sauce – this helps to add colour and a little more caramelised flavour without adding saltiness
Simply add equal parts of everything into a plate, about a teaspoon of everything for a single portion. You can always tweak the ratios the next time you make this.
By the time you’ve dashed, sploshed, squirted the various condiments in each plate, the sambal should’ve softened. From here, you just want to smoosh it all together into a smooth paste.
Once the noodles are cooked, toss the noodles in the sauce. Add your bonus ingredients of choice. I went for fishballs, which I boiled alongside the noodles. Eat immediately, to avoid the noodles sitting too long in the sauce and clumping up.
It may not look like much, but dry noodles is one of those ‘ugly delicious’ dishes. Home cooking is not always about the aesthetic despite what the #homecooking hashtag on Instagram looks like. It’s humble and comforting and means something different to everyone, even this second-gen migrant looking for a taste of home trying to connect with her Singaporean roots.
Just like my version of home cooking, passed on from my dad, I encourage you to create your own home cooked version of authenticity with a side of convenience.
Kelly Wong is a social media producer/digital journalist based in Meanjin/Brisbane, Queensland. She previously worked in science communication, and this is her first foray outside of science and news media. You can find her on social media which is mostly photos of food she eats: @kellyyyllek
References
[1] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/migration-australia/latest-release