SUDDENLY, people are digging into their roots to find Peranakan culture in their family tree.

PICTURE: MAKANSUTRA

It took The Little Nyonya on Channel 8 to make them do that, though the fascinating world of the Peranakans had been evolving right under their noses all this while.

Well, not me. I am as Cantonese as they come. I tried speaking Mandarin to the cabbies in Shanghai and they could tell my heritage.

Palate-wise, I can't complain. The Cantonese have some of the wildest and weirdest tastes.

My late dad (bless his soul and his devotion to good food) jumped onto a sampan out of Kai Ping in Guangzhou and made his way to Singapore in the 1950s. My mum is a local-bred umpteenth generation Cantonese.

Which brings me to the makan I grew up with. Comfort food to me was not the heady stuff we find in hawker centres or with street vendors, although I have always adored that.

Regimented

As a kid, meals at home were regimented Cantonese-style. We always had a soup (I cannot count the ways it came). One would think, 'Alamak, Cantonese, sure got soup like watercress, red date and ribs, lotus root with dried cuttlefish and lean pork or some bittergourd concoction.'

Yes, all that plus the double-boiled anything my dear mummy believed would make our bodies 'cooler', like pears, apples, papaya or even aloe vera, with some meat like chicken or pork, or all together with some light herbs.

Fish was usually steamed, as a way of telling us that we were getting it fresh, as, according to my dad, 'only the silly will ask for fried fish in a seafood restaurant, as that's what chefs do when they want to get rid of older stuff in the freezer'.

It usually came with steamed water eggs that had bits of minced meat or century egg and a plate of fresh wok tossed greens (my fave then and now was kangkong, yaumak or romaine lettuce tossed in fu ru, a fermented tofu paste).

These days, it is easier and cheaper to eat out and every zi cha stall is selling whatever anyone likes to eat. It's not Cantonese nor Teochew or Hokkien, and they even throw in chilli crabs into the menu for good measure.

Classic soul food

So it was a nice surprise when a former colleague at The Straits Times decided to record all the iconic classic Cantonese soul food her mother served up all her life.

Ms Lulin Reutens is known to wield the pen better than a pan, but she took the trouble to diligently archive those recipes and test them out.

She is from that generation, not too distant from mine, which laments how food quality has gone to the mutts: 'Terrible lah, the cooks these days don't even know how to fry vegetables properly. Don't even understand the dynamics of wok hei.'

So she wrote Madam Choy's Cantonese Recipes, a handy-sized tome of honest recipes, dedicated to her mum. There are no pictures and it is well laid out, with lots of breathing space. I can taste the recipes, many of which are comfort makan to me.

Some were created to maximise the integrity of the ingredient, like Salt Baked Chicken.

It uses only ginger, a bit of oil and 2.5kg of rock salt, which you bake and heat the grease paper sealed chicken in. Very old-fashioned, and it is gorgeous with a bowl of rice.

Even simpler is the 'Cheng Jeng Hie' (steamed crabs), done with just strips of ginger to contain the smell. I always slurp the juices that collect at the base of the platter or splash it over my nasi.

I, too, have this hobby of collecting and testing many of the Cantonese dishes that have cropped up in our local menus over the years.

Here's one, well-loved and slightly modified from Ms Reutens' version.

Har Cheong Kai (deep fried prawn paste chicken)

Ingredients (for 5 wings)

Serve with rice or beer!

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