THE TASTE OF

While the extended stay home period has driven diners to turn to gourmet takeout, Mum’s home cooking is still sustenance for the masses. And Destin Tay is living for it.

Iget it. It’s been a month at this point, and there’s certainly no foul in your validated cravings for multicourse meals, Sunday brunch staples, and perhaps, even a cold cup of bubble tea. Before the current outbreak, home-cooked meals were a routine, something to come home to after a day at the office. But now, especially when home is the office, it can feel inescapable. But is that really that bad of a thing?

Granted, it’s entirely possible to go through the Circuit Breaker period on deliveries only, and we are certainly spoiled for choice. (Even catering companies are joining in on the home takeout movement, as covered in our epicure news on pg10.) But for most, myself included, it wouldn’t be the most fiscally responsible decision. And so, like many of the millennials without a house to call their own, I look to Mum for most of my meals.

A little context to start; as much as I love my mother, admittedly she’s amateur at best when it comes to cooking. This is by no means a case of me looking down on her with my professional credentials; she literally has only been cooking regularly for two years. Before her retirement, much of the cooking was relegated to our helper. She’s cooked before, but only on special occasions. Like many others out there, she’s got some hand-me-down recipes that I will always cherish, like her Chinesestyled fried meatballs.

To go from that, to preparing two meals a day for two entire months, is no easy feat. There’s only so much you can do with so little knowledge and ingredients. And yet, mothers are known for their resilience. While she initially stuck to bare basic staples like fried rice or porridge, she has since expanded her repertoire of recipes, for fear of bored taste buds and unsatisfied tummies. I’ve now seen a side of my mother that was entirely foreign to me; frantic calls to grandma on the steps to turn rempah into assam fish, poring over recipes on home cook Facebook groups, and sweating over hours at the stove.

Gradually, I’ve seen and felt her improve. She has since gone on from over-seasoned vegetables and undercooked fish to being able to improvise and create on the fly. One of my new favourites is her ‘braised pork’; using leftover braised duck sauce from a weekend takeaway (while some may say that’s cheating, she is only human after all), she slow cooks minced pork, onions and taupok to form a gravy that goes perfectly with sticky brown rice porridge. She’s even gone out of her comfort zone and tried her hand at oven-baked salmon, Korean pancakes and beef tataki. Occasionally, she’ll come to me for help, but it’s mostly a onewoman-show. It’s certainly not restaurant-quality fare, but I must commend her for trying.