‘The Eurasian Table’ cookbook preserves one grandmother’s recipes - Tatler Taiwan

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.” 

Read more: How do you write convincingly about food? Cooking doyenne Violet Oon answers

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