There is a kitchen in Perak that no longer exists — at least not in the way I remember it. The wood-fire stove has been replaced, the zinc roof patched over with something modern. But in my mind, it is exactly as it was in 1990: smoky, warm, and full of life.
That was the kitchen where I learned to cook. Not from a book or a class, but from my mother-in-law, Mak, who could transform a handful of ingredients into something extraordinary without ever once consulting a recipe.
The first lesson
My first lesson wasn't a dish — it was a principle. "You must taste as you go," Mak told me, pressing a wooden spoon into my hand. "The recipe is just a starting point. Your tongue tells you when it's right."
I was terrified. I had married into a family of exceptional cooks, and I could barely make rice without burning it. But Mak was patient. She showed me how to bruise lemongrass with the back of a knife, how to tell when rempah was ready by its smell rather than a timer, how to coax flavour from the simplest vegetables.
Learning by watching
In that kitchen, there were no measuring cups. Mak cooked with her hands — a pinch of this, a handful of that. I learned to estimate by watching her palms. A "pinch" of salt was always the same. A "splash" of coconut milk had a specific sound when it hit the wok.
These were the measurements of a generation that cooked by instinct, and I was desperate to capture them before they disappeared. That urgency — the fear of losing something precious — is what drove me to write my first cookbook.
Why it still matters
Thirty years later, I still cook the way Mak taught me. I still taste as I go. I still listen to the sound of oil in the pan. The tools have changed — I have a proper kitchen now, with gas burners and a stand mixer — but the principles haven't.
Every recipe in every one of my cookbooks carries a trace of that kampung kitchen. It's where I learned that cooking is not about perfection. It's about presence, attention, and love.
And sometimes, when the light is right and the kitchen is warm, I can still smell that wood smoke.