How I got here

My mum, Cora

Growing up as a young girl in Malaysia, I was exposed to a wonderful melting pot of cooking styles and I was lucky enough to have a mother who was an adventurous and enthusiastic cook, who instilled in me the love of good food and good cooking.

I was born in the Kuala Lumpur to Eurasian parents and a very large and close-knit extended family that celebrated every occasion with raucous get togethers centered around good food.  At an early age we moved to Malacca to live with my maternal grandparents as my father’s job in the armed forces took him away on postings every two years and he wanted us to have a more stable school life rather than keep moving from school to school.  It was this move that was instrumental in my mum honing her culinary skills and blossoming into the fantastic cook that she will always be remembered as.

A “Eurasian” in Malaysia, is usually someone with ancestors who were Portuguese, Dutch or English who had married the local Indians, Chinese or Malays…….. or all of the above…… a veritable Heinz 57 Varieties.  As a result the cuisine cooked in most of our homes stole a little bit from each of these cultures and gave us a wonderful array of dishes that where traditionally considered “Eurasian”.

As a young girl, we travelled to Australia for a year whilst my father was at an Officer’s Training Course and lived in Point Lonsdale, an idyllic coastal town in Victoria.  It was that trip that would plant a seed in my father’s mind that would end up with my two brothers and I returning to Melbourne years later to take up our tertiary education.

My family:  Olivia, Andrew, Euan and me

It was during this time that I met my husband Andrew, an Australian of Scottish, English, German and French ancestry.  After a long distance courtship I moved back to Melbourne, we married and then had our two beautiful children, Olivia and Euan who are truly “Eurasian” in every sense of the word being born from one parent who was predominantly European and one who was predominantly Asian.

I was extremely lucky to marry into a family who appreciated food as much as my own and through my mother in law, Deidre I was able to master new cooking styles that I had not previously tried.  She was renowned for her soups and desserts which will hopefully appear in the blog.

Unfortunately for my children, both their grandmothers were taken from us too early and part of this blog is to document the style of food that we enjoy in our household and also to pay homage to the memory of two wonderful women who brought great joy to us all with the food that came out of their kitchens.

The title of the blog “Just add a pinch of…..” is something that I would hear them both saying to me when I was trying out a dish and it didn’t seem to be tasting right.  When I look back on it, just adding a pinch of salt, pepper, spice, love or effort could have been one of many ingredients that would turn the dish around.

The blog will also highlight events in our lives, the way we celebrate them, the places we celebrate at and any thoughts that might cross my mind.

This is my first blog so I hope you will stick around and watch it, and me, evolve.

Cheers