As a child, I spent many happy times in the kitchen with my mother, Nya Keow, watching her cook up a storm with a breeze. I was her little assistant helping to cut vegetables, even pounding chilli with a stone pounder. Her food was always delicious, but there isn’t any written recipe. All the measurements and methods are in her memory.

After many years, I asked my mother how to cook char siew, she told me she had forgotten the measurement but luckily she could still remember the ingredients. I quickly wrote down the ingredients and tested a few rounds until finally my mother and I found the right measurements to her traditional char siew recipe.

During my mother’s time, there was no oven at home. She used a wok to cook char siew, so this recipe also uses a wok and not an oven.

My family loved to eat my home-cooked char siew. Every time when I start preparing and cooking, there will be memories brought back to my younger days in the kitchen together with my mother and every piece of char siew I ate, memories of my mother flooded back to me.