From left: Sharon Wee, Audra Ang and Aziza Ali. (JG Photo)
Singaporean chef, food consultant and entrepreneur Aziza Ali who is widely credited for introducing fine Malay dining to the Singaporean public, was practically born in a kitchen.
“I learned about food since I was 4 years old,” she said. “My mother basically told me that if I want to be a lady, I need to learn how to cook, how to clean, how to do flower arrangements — and so I learned everything from scratch.”
Aziza’s mother actually didn’t learn how to cook herself until she got married at the age of 15, yet she believed that a woman should know her way around in the kitchen at some point in their lives — sooner rather than later.
“I was trained at a very young age,” Aziza explained, “and so I have become very responsible.”
Earlier this year, she launched her food memoir “Sambal Days, Kampong Cuisine,” and last week she was invited to the Singapore Writers Festival together with Sharon Wee and Audra Ang, where the three of them were the speakers for the panel discussion “Spicy Tales and Sweet Endings.”
Sharon, who has been living in the United States for 17 years, published the cookbook memoir “Growing up in a Nyonya Kitchen” last year.
“It celebrates the life of my mom,” she explained. “We are peranakan [Straights] Chinese, so this is a book that talks about her growing up, her family, how she learned to cook, and the stories behind the food that we ate. It was a really interesting journey, to learn about my family, my culture and I’m glad I did it.”
As with Aziza, Sharon’s mother also learned how to cook when she married.
“She came from a well-to-do family and when she was married off at the age of 17, it was actually my father’s grandmother who taught her to cook,” she said, adding that growing up, she liked to watch her mother in the kitchen, but was more interested in studying instead of learning how to cook herself.
It was only later that she became interested in learning — but when she was finally ready to go through the recipes, it was too late as her mother passed away.
“That was the impetus to create my book,” Sharon said. “It started off as a collection of recipes, but in order to do these recipes, I had to learn how to cook. Later, I experimented with [my mother’s] recipes, and then I interviewed all my great aunts and my sisters.”
Audra Ang, who was born in Singapore but left in 1990 and worked for Associated Press for 15 years, published “To the People, Food is Heaven” in October last year. Her approach, however, was quite different.
“It’s basically a way to use food to get into the harder issues of China,” she explained. “I’m Singaporean so I live to eat, it’s in my DNA. China was such a great place to eat, I tried to use that to talk about issues like urban migration and human rights,” she said.
“For example, in the chapter about human rights, I talk about a lunch that I had with dissidents, and I [wrote] about the food and the conversation, and that was my way to get into the situation,” she added.
Unlike Aziza and Sharon, Audra says she is not really great at cooking.
“I am more of an eater, and people call me foodie, but I hate that term, because to me it sounds kind of snotty,” she said. “I always say I’m just greedy. For me, it’s more about trying food instead of cooking food, and then writing about it — like food porn.”
In most Asian countries, food is very much linked with family and culture, and to many, certain dishes can evoke nostalgic feelings.
“It’s so different from America where people eat for nutrition,” Audra said. “It’s not so much a bonding thing. It’s always a sandwich or a salad on the go, something quick.”
When Sharon read Aziza’s book, she soon realized that there were quite a lot of commonalities, in terms of people’s ideas and philosophies about food and dining.
“Both our fathers had the same mentality, which is that a house always has to have food. You always invite your friends to come and eat, and you cannot have no food in the house,” Sharon said, adding that her favorite comfort food to this day remains her mother’s chicken curry.
Aziza shared the same notion.
“I grew up in a kampong ,” she said. “People drop by, and even if you only have little food, you share it with them. My mother always used to say that when you serve food, you must serve it with sincerity. You cook with love.
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