I COME FROM a family of cooks. My grandparents on my father’s side, as well as my aunts, were hawkers. They sold char hor fun from a stall at Swee Kong kopitiam in Pulau Tikus, now rebranded as Keat Hoe. By the time I was born, most of them had retired from hawking, but one of my aunts remained a prolific homecook. Every Sunday for more than two decades, more than 10 of us would gather at her tiny apartment for dinner without fail. If I had friends over, they would come with me to my aunt’s house; likewise, my cousins had brought romantic partners, colleagues and even bosses to dine there, cramped together around two—sometimes three—tables.
As a child, I spent a lot of time in this aunt’s house, and most of that time, in her kitchen. While my other aunts and cousins played mahjong in the background, I would sit at the kitchen table, annoying her with requests to help her cook. To pacify me, she would set me to task on removing bean sprout husks or breaking the ends off green beans and removing the stringy veins that run down the sides.
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