Starting a new life in Melbourne

Why I cook

Early in my life I realised that cooking was a way to make people happy.   I think I was about nine when I made my first jam cookies for my brothers from a recipe out of a children’s magazine.  The joy I received from their compliments and the rest of the family was indescribable at the time.  It would be many, many years later that I would realise that my language of love would be “Words of Affirmation” and cooking  and entertaining was one of the ways for me to receive the pleasure and feeling of love that I appreciated.

Young students in love

Through the years I experimented in the family kitchen but it was as a poor student in Melbourne that I learned how to create good meals out of nothing.  It’s amazing how creative you can be with a can of SPAM.  And regardless of how little we had, we still managed to put together a good party and feed everyone.   

On the AFL Grand Final day in 1981, my flat mate and I decided to host a house warming party for our friends.  It was our first home outside living with our parents so we were feeling very “grown up” about it all.  I spent the whole day in the kitchen cooking and it was that night, through a haze of catch up drinking, that I met a young engineering student that I would end up marrying years later.  Andrew will always say that I wooed him through his stomach as I cooked for him whenever the budget allowed and introduced him to the family recipes which are still favourites in our household today.

Taking the big leap

One of the difficult decisions about moving to Australia to be married at the tender age of 23 was the fact that I would be leaving behind my family, in particular my mum.  This was in the early 80’s when snail mail was our main way of keeping in touch and you only really called long distance when you had an emergency.  Needless to say I made sure that before I left I got as many recipes as I could from my mum so I could survive and not miss the comfort of home cooking.  And through the years, memories of my mother’s graciousness as a hostess, drove me to try and emulate her hospitality and open my kitchen to friends and family.

I may not always love the work that goes into getting ready for a party, but I love the whole enjoyment that the sharing of time, food and company that a party provides.  It’s an opportunity to share in so many ways and keep traditions alive for the next generation.  

Having come from a big extended family who are very wide spread around the world, Facebook has become a wonderful way for us to keep in touch with the ever changing landscape that our family is.  We are only half way through 2012 and we have already had two new additions and are expecting two more within the next couple of months.

My cousins from around the world congregating in Malacca in 1993

Over my 27 years in Melbourne, many of my cousins have migrated to Australia as well so we have created our own little “kampong” (village) in the North Eastern suburbs of Melbourne, meeting often over a spread of delicious home cooked meals.  It is heart warming to see our children growing up together and having that same feeling we used to have when we congregated as a family in my youth.

15 years later in Melbourne and the cousins now have children of their own
(Family vs In-Laws rounders/cricket match Dec 2008)

At the end of the day we love, we argue, we eat, we play, we give, we are loud, we are opinionated, we are strong, we are judgemental, we are fun and MOST of all we are FAMILY.

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