Yes, I’m a foodie. I’m a huge foodie. I love to cook. Which is good because my OH doesn’t know how to boil an egg properly, let alone do toast without burning it. Luckily for both of us I paid attention and watched my mother diligently (though I didn’t know this is what I was doing) and learnt all her tricks. My dad less so, as he mostly did the roasts and specialty breads in our house, and I never got the knack of doing bread.

As a result of watching them I knew I had the basics. And, like them both, I’ve never been scared at changing up a recipe, which I see as a basic template from which to create something else, something that will suit my palate more. And yes, I know, some recipes you just don’t mess with. Others, though, just beg to be personalised to taste. That’s how they were first created to begin with, right?

And so, where a recipe might include chilli peppers, something I cannot eat, I will experiment with other heat giving spices coming up with my own combo to recreate a dish to my liking.

Sometimes this works, sometimes the dish is inedible to the point it ends up in the bin. Although it’s true to say, the OH who has a cast iron stomach, will probably do their best to eat it regardless. I have no idea how they’re able to eat what they eat half the time. But that’s a whole other post for another day.

The upshot from all this experimentation is that I have a fairly good idea at what works together and what doesn’t and, just recently, dazzled my sister in law and husband at a dinner I cooked by seemingly haphazardly just throwing stuff into pan and having it taste edible. So much so, my sister in law wants cooking lessons to up their own game.

Thing is, what I’ve learnt has taken me not just years but possibly decades of trial and error and practise to do. It doesn’t easily translate into a couple of lessons on a weekend.

That isn’t to say, I can’t write up what I do in a recipe. I’ve done that for her and hope she gets it when I say a dash, or a dribble, or a pinch and that she needs to work out what works for her, and her taste buds. The important thing is to taste at every step of the process and make sure that what you’re doing tastes right for you.

And you, are you competent in the kitchen, or do you just get by?

I have a very, and I mean, very long history with Chinese food. From the age of 3,when my father was posted to Hong Kong for deployment, I was eating noodle and rice dishes with the best of them. My parents ate out a lot with a gaggle of kids in tow. I think it was because they got better service with all these angelic looking blond-haired kids. Like the Family Von Trapp.

My parents had their favourite spots so much so, they were known by name, and ate at street stalls and little hole in the wall with the locals. As kids, this was great because we were given an endless supply of sodas and ice lollies throughout any lengthy meal. Like I said, my parents like to eat. And as such. My first memories of food were not of English food, fish and chips, or roast dinners. But of spicy piquant noodles and rice dishes whose names I have long since forgotten.

And while we were only in Hong Kong for 3 years, Chinese street food became the go to taste for my palate. Everything else was, well, just bland.

We moved for a few years back to the UK but it wasn’t long before my father was posted abroad again, this time to Singapore. It was like coming home for all of us to a place, culture, and especially food that we were comfortable with, and loved.

By the time I was 12 that was it. Other food while enticing at times, and enjoyable enough as a diversion, paled in comparison to the food I love and crave. And while I’m no great cook, a lot of my weekly meals even now decades later, always default to spicy noodles and rice as my base, loaded up with a ton of veggies, and topped off with a small amount of meat or seafood.

My only sadness is living in Canada, the food served here as Chinese is most definitely not the Chinese of my childhood. And oh, how I long to go back there, into my past, to enjoy those roadside meals just one more time.

Malay Satay anyone?