Born in 1931 to a father who sailed the high seas for a living and a mother who commandeered her little children in her Nonya kitchen, my mother had a life full of stories belonging only to the days of Singapore’s long-lost Straits Settlements.

Orphaned at 11, she was pulled out of school and sent, along with her five siblings, to live with her aunt and cousins in a house built on concrete stilts. There, in a huge garden she found rambutan trees bearing fruits of several colours: not just red, but also white and yellow. Mum spent her teenage years climbing coconut trees to harvest the coconuts for her aunt’s santan dishes, and learning how to outsmart the soldiers who occupied Singapore during the Japanese occupation. 

Feisty, resilient and open-hearted, Mum was loved by our friends and everyone who knew her. They also loved her food. Her poh piah, laksa and mee siam were staples at every dinner party. A lucky few got to savor her nasi ulam. No Chinese New Year party passed without guests trying to figure out how she made her nonya achar, hee pioh soup or babi pongteh. She did not record a single recipe, yet knew every rempah permutation. She never measured ingredients by weight, volume or count, yet every time she made the same dish, it tasted the same.

Mum – Anita was her name – left us with so much more than her love and skills for cooking up a storm. She was as inimitable as the intans on her kerosang, and left us with precious glimpses of a glorious legacy we can only hope to revive and re-create at Nonyanita.