In my 30 years living in Singapore, we had live-in maids, hawker centres open till early hours, and the best “Nasi Padang”, biryani and chicken rice to eat-out on. With those fabulous Iraqi dishes Granny Azizah made every Friday night, why learn to cook? I could eat whatever and whenever I liked, without raising any sweat in my prep!
Whatever “health food” we had was courtesy of Dad. He’d happily be at “Tekka Market” weekly with Zaiton, our star-cook, to get fresh fruit and vegetables – which he’d proudly boast cost half the price of supermarket produce. Unfortunately, the veg would end up being cooked soft with the protein, and the “cooling” fruit hastily swallowed at the end of “heaty” meals.
Coming to Australia and newly married, I didn’t know a bulb of garlic from a spring onion. But the huge array of fruit and veg markets in Sydney made me realise how unprepared I was – even if it meant sharing the cooking with my husband Lionel. He told me about a book he’d read about the benefits of raw food. Yes – you guessed it – Dr Walker’s Diet and Salads. And so we had to start with a good serving of salad every night before dinner; “rabbit food” my Dad used to call it. But it had now appealed to me – so simple to do, which didn’t need cooking. I was left off the hook for now …
But ah … doing dinner had to come sooner or later. Armed with recipes from Aunt Gertie and Granny Azizah, and Ellen Sinclair’s Cooking for all Occasions from cousin Joyce, I attempted two or three of them, of what I hoped would be “dishes”.
The bravery didn’t last: I got bored following recipes halfway through. But I did end up with something … something I was too embarrassed to even serve up!
Plan B was easier: make the rice at home, have Lionel’s roast chicken in soya sauce on weekends, and buy Chinese/Thai/Indian or pizza on the way home from work. Craving sweets after dinner was still the go then; those vanilla “Cornettos” were irresistible. We took simple comfort – weren’t our salads enough?
Much later on, I started looking more closely at the food we were buying. Those doughy, reheated pizzas gave me indigestion, saturated fats in our Chinese and Thai meals coagulated in the fridge, and tasted worse with reheating. Worse still, energy drained from me afterwards. I remained slouched in the armchair for quite a while before any motivation picked up.
I didn’t know the cause then, but most of what I was eating was entirely ultra-processed and wrecking my health. I learned that dinner salads and morning citrus were simply and not enough to clean out the colon and make us truly healthy.
Now enter Jamie Oliver. I saw him on TV one night, and was amazed how he made cooking look so easy and fun. Okay – I’d try a Chinese stir-fry using fresh ingredients I already had.
I heated extra virgin olive oil in a wok, and threw in chopped onions, garlic and ginger. I waited for them to sizzle, then whacked in chicken or meat, and added bok choy. A drizzle of soy or teriyaki sauce, coriander to garnish, and steaming hot rice completed my very first home-cooked meal. And it actually stayed fresh in the fridge even after two days. The armchair and I had parted company.
Forty years on, the kitchen has become my favourite place. I love cooking and buying all my fresh ingredients from Sydney’s fruit and veg markets. It’s liberating to rustle up a dish without relying on recipes or Uber Eats. I’ve learned to use just my imagination, taste, and smell. Making something fancy like a spicy Malay rendang for example, I’d choose the right paste from a good brand, and add a couple of teaspoons to fresh ingredients. I avoid anything canned or packaged. There’s simply no stress at all.
