The author of ‘The Eurasian Table: Second Helpings’ on how she worked with her grandmother to preserve her Eurasian recipes
Eurasian food is one of the most flavourful and diverse cuisines in Singapore, but you can count on one hand the number of Eurasian restaurants there are here. True blue Eurasian food is best enjoyed in an Eurasian household—bonus points if prepared by an elderly matriarch with a formidable memory for unwritten recipes and a talent for eyeballing ingredients. In their minds lie great reservoirs of culinary memory, heritage and legacy, so when Cheryl Noronha, the 36-year-old granddaughter of such a matriarch, set out to write a cookbook detailing her grandmother’s recipes, she knew she was doing more than putting pen to paper.
“I have long felt that Nan’s dishes needed to be catalogued, so that her creations could be enjoyed by future generations of our family and shared with others longing for authentic, hearty and delicious Eurasian cuisine,” Noronha writes in her cookbook, The Eurasian Table: Second Helpings. She is talking about her 91-year-old grandmother, Theresa Noronha, who has lived through many of Singapore’s social and political upheavals, including the Japanese occupation and her childhood in kampongs. At the heart of it all, Noronha writes, is that “all her stories started, ended, or revolved around, a meal”.
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Theresa Noronha, of course, is a masterful cook. Her food is cherished among both her extended family and her Whampoa neighbourhood, where she has stayed since 1962. The genesis of the cookbook can be dated back to about twenty years ago at a family gathering where the elderly Noronha had prepared, as usual, an Eurasian feast. “I thought to myself, Nan is already in her 70s. I would love to get these recipes from her,” Noronha tells us. “Nan never had the opportunity of traditional education so every recipe resides in her head. Because she is unable to write them down, her 91-year-old memory is incredible.” As such, the only way Noronha could record her recipes was by watching her cook “like a hawk”. This itself was challenging. “Her style of cooking is very ‘taste as you go’ and agak agak,” Noronha says, referring to the Malay word for estimating. “As with most older cooks, it’s never about any precise measurements.”
For the purposes of capturing recipes, Noronha “insisted” that her grandmother use measuring tools. “She often got upset by it, but I really did need estimates somehow,” she says. After watching her cook a recipe many times, Noronha would attempt it herself to “ensure that a good result can be achieved by anyone”. “I adored these cooking sessions with Nan even though I knew she was not all pleased with my constant questions, but when she explained and shared, I knew she was happy that I was interested to ensure her legacy remains.” What started as a small project to document her grandmother’s recipes became insatiably in-demand among her friends and family. “Before I knew it I was writing a cookbook,” she says.