I learnt to cook for my grandmother when she forgot how to make my favourite childhood soup

But untimely deaths aren’t the only way we lose out on family recipes. What was supposed to be a five-minute call between a Singaporean-South Indian restaurateur named Chindi and me—set up by a mutual friend who thought we’d find a connection between our love of food and the hyphens in our heritage—turned into an hour-long chat about food and memory. Chindi was, and I am, a caretaker for a loved one with memory loss: she for her mother with dementia, and I for my grandmother, who suffered a stroke after my grandfather passed.

Chindi told me about the day her mother forgot her name, spurring her to make Chee Cheong Fun, a Singaporean dish her mum made for her as a child. Her mother perked up, and even if just for the span of a snack, better remembered who she was. I told Chindi my grandmother forgot how to make my childhood soup—a dish with no written recipe, named after her only grandchild. Chindi ended the call with, “Go give your grandma a hug… and cook her her favourite food”, a sweet thought that made me feel bitter, given my grandma no longer remembers a dish that comforts her. Yet, reinvigorated, I kept trying to cook something that hit home.

The Chee Cheong Fun at Zhouyu.

While attempting to make tea cakes like she used to, my gran decided to clean a bird feeder where they were cooling. Fearing they would give her avian flu rather than childhood memories, I shooed her out of the kitchen and distractedly powdered them with spare flour instead of sugar, realising my mistake when she exclaimed, “I love these disaster cookies,” her now-chalky lips adding shame by giving them a name. Strangely, I declared the tea cakes a success, for seeing some of her frazzled mother in her grandson made her giggle to no end, reminding her how her mom would chuck her out of the kitchen for being naughty.