Home cooking? Who's cooking?

Singapore is known for its good food. Singaporeans love to eat. But how many of us can still cook?

We can go to cooking school to learn western gourmet cooking, but few of us have bothered to learn from our mothers and grandmothers the dishes we have eaten all our lives. A few younger ladies have compiled their mother's/grandmother's recipes into cookbooks for sale. The older ladies are well-known personalities in their own right, also known for their cooking skills.

But what about the food eaten in our own home? Does it need to be "gourmet" in order to stir up fond memories of our childhood? My northern Vietnamese friends studying here, miss home cooking too. So, they go to the supermarket, buy some green, leafy vegetables and boil them in water. That's home cooking for them. You and I may find it bland, but to them, it reminds them of home.

Perhaps a good question to ask now is not "can you cook?" but rather "do you cook?" I can cook, but I find myself pressed for time to prepare anything other than the simplest of dishes. I'm happy to eat anything simple, just because I lack the time, or I am plain lazy. After all, the traditional dishes eaten in my childhood take weeks of preparation. Housewives are a prized commodity today. If they are stay-at-home moms, they are more likely to be taxi-driver for the children, rather than churning out sumptuous, wholesome meals for the family.

As our society turns more and more towards hiring foreign domestic help for cooking and cleaning, home cooking could end up being a completely different set of dishes. We may no longer yearn for "mum's cooking" but rather "Auntie's cooking" or however you address your domestic help. When her contract is over, there ends the yummy dishes she used to prepare; enter a new maid with different tastes.

The world is increasingly global. People movement is the norm now. Do we still hold fiercely to our traditions, or allow the winds of change to sweep over our culture and norms, home cooking included? Certainly some food for thought (pun fully intended).

Learn a language, learn to cook, don't neglect your own language and cooking!

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