‘The Eurasian Table’ cookbook preserves one grandmother’s recipes

The author of ‘The Eurasian Table: Second Helpings’ on how she worked with her grandmother to preserve her Eurasian recipes

Eurasian food is one of the most flavourful and diverse cuisines in Singapore, but you can count on one hand the number of Eurasian restaurants there are here. True blue Eurasian food is best enjoyed in an Eurasian household—bonus points if prepared by an elderly matriarch with a formidable memory for unwritten recipes and a talent for eyeballing ingredients. In their minds lie great reservoirs of culinary memory, heritage and legacy, so when Cheryl Noronha, the 36-year-old granddaughter of such a matriarch, set out to write a cookbook detailing her grandmother’s recipes, she knew she was doing more than putting pen to paper.

“I have long felt that Nan’s dishes needed to be catalogued, so that her creations could be enjoyed by future generations of our family and shared with others longing for authentic, hearty and delicious Eurasian cuisine,” Noronha writes in her cookbook, The Eurasian Table: Second Helpings. She is talking about her 91-year-old grandmother, Theresa Noronha, who has lived through many of Singapore’s social and political upheavals, including the Japanese occupation and her childhood in kampongs. At the heart of it all, Noronha writes, is that “all her stories started, ended, or revolved around, a meal”.

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Above From left: Theresa and Cheryl Noronha

Theresa Noronha, of course, is a masterful cook. Her food is cherished among both her extended family and her Whampoa neighbourhood, where she has stayed since 1962. The genesis of the cookbook can be dated back to about twenty years ago at a family gathering where the elderly Noronha had prepared, as usual, an Eurasian feast. “I thought to myself, Nan is already in her 70s. I would love to get these recipes from her,” Noronha tells us. “Nan never had the opportunity of traditional education so every recipe resides in her head. Because she is unable to write them down, her 91-year-old memory is incredible.” As such, the only way Noronha could record her recipes was by watching her cook “like a hawk”. This itself was challenging. “Her style of cooking is very ‘taste as you go’ and agak agak,” Noronha says, referring to the Malay word for estimating. “As with most older cooks, it’s never about any precise measurements.”

For the purposes of capturing recipes, Noronha “insisted” that her grandmother use measuring tools. “She often got upset by it, but I really did need estimates somehow,” she says. After watching her cook a recipe many times, Noronha would attempt it herself to “ensure that a good result can be achieved by anyone”. “I adored these cooking sessions with Nan even though I knew she was not all pleased with my constant questions, but when she explained and shared, I knew she was happy that I was interested to ensure her legacy remains.” What started as a small project to document her grandmother’s recipes became insatiably in-demand among her friends and family. “Before I knew it I was writing a cookbook,” she says.

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It’s not just recipes that you’re getting with The Eurasian Table; you also get personal anecdotes, histories, and the occasional unexpected twist on a traditional dish. Take the cabbage soup, a dish that was prepared for Noronha’s grandmother’s wedding reception. Or the chicken vindaloo, which benefits from the addition of ketchup, an unconventional ingredient that has added an additional depth to the dish for 70 years.

Writing a Eurasian cookbook necessarily needs an explainer of the cuisine, and when people ask Noronha what Eurasian food is all about, she says simply that it is a “mix of techniques and ingredients from both Europe and Asia”. “Most other Singaporean cuisines have identifiable, ancient roots and so there is a golden master to judge authenticity against,” she adds. In contrast, the arrival of Portuguese, Dutch and British communities in Southeast Asia in the 16th century searching for spices made for a Eurasian population that is necessarily diverse—a diversity that is also reflected in its cuisine, which borrows from a vast plethora of influences.

“I love that the opaque past of most Eurasians means that they only know how a dish was one or maybe two generations ago,” Noronha says. What about authenticity? “The way I create a dish is as authentic as how my Nan did it, which is as authentic as how another family across Singapore makes it,” she says. Take curry debal, also known as “devil’s curry”, the most recognisable Eurasian dish in Singapore, made on Boxing Day to make use of all the leftover Christmas turkey, bacon, bones, pork belly, and roast chicken. “Each Eurasian family has their own sacred recipe passed down for generations,” she says, noting in her cookbook that some families will include carrots and cabbages in their curry debal, while others will add cocktail sausages. “I find that beautiful and it removes the pretentiousness from the cooking, leaving just incredible food.”

Above Curry debal, or devil’s curry

Above Mango and salted fish pickle

A dish doesn’t have to remain the same throughout the generations to be “authentic”. “The recipes are also organic and ephemeral,” Noronha tells us. “They change over the years as fashions, palates and ingredients evolve.” In fact, there are a couple of Noronha’s own recipes in the cookbook, such as chilli crab parpadelle and coconut panna cotta, that adapt traditional preparations into modern dishes. “There is a playful element to recreating dishes slightly differently each time.”

In spite of her meticulous documentation of measurements, Noronha insists that one should not follow the recipes exactly. “Cookbooks are just a guide, you need to find your own style and what tastes good to you,” she says. It is exactly the spirit of her grandmother’s agak agak cooking, with eyeballed ingredients to taste. “[The cookbook] is a fantastic guide to Kristang cooking, but after making it Nan’s way, you can always make a few changes to suit your own palate. The most important part of cooking is having fun in the kitchen and using your creativity to create amazing dishes.”

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Topics

The Eurasian Table Cheryl Noronha Theresa Noronha Eurasian food Eurasian cuisine Curry debal Curry Devil

Tatler Asia

How Cheryl Noronha’s Eurasian cookbook is keeping her grandmother’s recipes alive