Putting Together a Family Recipe of Abacus Seeds

Jimmy
Was it hard to find that recipe and put it together and all that?

Sarah
I got kind of lucky. When I’m looking for local recipes, the place that I go to find cookbooks is Popular Bookstore because they have this range of bilingual cookbooks.

Jimmy
Oh, yes, that’s right. Yes.

Sarah
A4 size, very thin.

Jimmy
Yeah, yeah.

Sarah
Every book is quite niche. It’ll be like Northern Malaysian Delights or, Steamed Fish, like, just steamed fish.

Jimmy
Yeah.

Sarah
So, since I was a kid, I always liked buying those ’cause you can’t find those kinds of recipes in Western cookbooks or international publications. So, I came across an abacus [seed] recipe in one of those, and I think that’s where I started. I’ve made a lot of changes to it now, so it’s quite different. But it was a good starting point because I tried to start from my own relatives, when asking them for tips. 

[Music playing]

Jimmy
You’re listening to BiblioAsia+, a podcast produced by the National Library of Singapore. At BiblioAsia, we tell stories about Singapore’s past, some familiar, others forgotten, all fascinating. 

Salt Baked Chicken, yong tau foo, thunder tea rice. That’s what many people think about when you mention Hakka food. But of course, Hakka cuisine is much more than this. Take, for example, abacus seeds. These are chewy dough balls which have a savory mix of pork, mushrooms, and shrimp, which are then stir-fried. Sounds delicious. Here to tell us all about abacus seeds and Hakka cuisine is Sarah Huang Benjamin. A chef, content creator, recipe developer, filmmaker, and writer, Sarah was a guest on the NLB cooking show From Book to Cook. And in the show, she made abacus seeds and talked about what makes Hakka cuisine unique. Welcome to the BiblioAsia+ podcast, Sarah. How have you been?

Sarah
Good, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Jimmy
It’s a pleasure to have you. And thank you for being a guest on From Book to Cook. I hope you had fun at the show.

Sarah
It was actually really fun. I was very impressed with Patty’s abacus-making skills. I was genuinely shocked.

Jimmy
Maybe for the people, and, those people, I have to say, including me, for the people who don’t know, what are abacus seeds? Because I talked about it, I sort of gave a very short description, but honestly, I’ve never eaten abacus seed. Sorry.

Sarah
Yeah, you didn’t come for the shoot that day. Abacus seeds are a direct translation of a dish. In Mandarin, you call it suan pan zi [算盘子], which literally means the abacus that you make calculations on, and the little beads that are on them. 

So this is a dish made from yam and tapioca starch. You form really kind of chewy dough balls, like you said, and you squish them a little bit to make them look like the beads on the abacus. And it’s supposed to bring in fortune because, of course, you use the abacus to count your money. So ideally, by eating that, you bring in a lot of money, and it’s a very important dish for Hakka people at Chinese New Year.

Jimmy
But it’s not just eaten at Chinese New Year though, right?

Sarah
It’s not just eaten at Chinese New Year. It can be eaten year-round. But for my family, it’s a must-have at Chinese New Year, and frankly, because of the work that goes into it, I think it’s also the only time of the year that I put that much effort into making the dish.

Jimmy
Okay. So, this is very interesting. You chose to make abacus seeds for From Book to Cook because obviously we didn’t twist your arm and say, “Make us abacus seeds”, and you suggested it. So why did you pick abacus seeds?

Sarah
Well, when you invited me on the show, you asked me what was a dish that was really important to my family in terms of heritage, and honestly, I don’t come from a family of cooks. I’m probably the first very serious cook in my family, including, you know, my grandma and everything. So, this is the one dish that I could think of that we really care a lot about. It’s one dish that I have within my family. I have a lot of memories tied to the making of it at Chinese New Year, and I think when people ask me what’s one important dish in my family, it’s the first thing that comes to mind.

Jimmy
Okay, and this is something that you’ve eaten ever since you were a kid, I guess.

Sarah
Mhm.

Jimmy
But presumably you didn’t make it when you were a kid.

Sarah
I did help to make it, and I think that’s why I have very strong memories about it. So the person in my family who was sort of the boss of making the abacus, was my yi po. So yi po is like grandaunt, my grandmother’s younger sister. She kind of brought me up. We lived together from the time I was born until she passed away.

Jimmy
How old were you when she passed?

Sarah
She passed away in 2018, so I was 29 years old.

Jimmy
So you lived with her for, wow.

Sarah
Yeah, we were super close. She was like a…

Jimmy
That’s really sad.

Sarah
My grandmother lived with us, too, but I was much closer to my yi po. And my yi po…

Jimmy
Who was the one who did all the cooking?

Sarah
She didn’t do much cooking by the time I was born, but she taught my jie jie, who was our helper, how to cook. But when I was growing up, she was sort of the manager of Chinese New Year. She was the one who told my mom what to buy, who was coming. She would arrange the visiting, everything. And my yi po was actually blind since a very young age. But she was a very good cook, based on her senses, her sense of touch, sense of smell, and so she was in charge of making this abacus dish, and I have very fond memories of the week leading up to Chinese New Year. When I came home from school, she and my jie jie, our helper, would be making the abacus beads in the kitchen, and I would join them. So, the three of us would be, you know, kind of like working together and chatting. Yeah. The three of us were very close. So those were some of my fondest memories, and I love Chinese New Year so it got me really excited for it. So yeah, that’s one dish that reminds me of her, definitely, but it’s something that is very important in my family.

Jimmy
But at the same time, I think you mentioned it to us, previously, when you try to make it yourself it wasn’t as easy. I mean, there was no recipe that you could just follow from your aunt, grandma.

Sarah
There was a bit of a transition period. So as my yi po, my grandaunt, got older, and she wasn’t taking an active role in Chinese New Year prep, and my jie jie, who was our helper, she went to work in Hong Kong when I was in my 20s. So we had a new helper who was not familiar with the dish. My yi po wasn’t really able to move around that much anymore. My grandmother thought she knew how to make it. She gave me a completely wrong recipe.

Jimmy
Oh, no.

Sarah
Which I mean, I’ve never seen her make it in my life, but, you know. That kind of thing. So I just tried. I researched recipes online, I looked in cookbooks and stuff as much as I could find, and I just tried recreating what I read on the page.

Jimmy
Using your own food memories though?

Sarah
No, I just followed recipes to start with.

Jimmy
But the taste, I mean. Did you try to replicate the taste or the food?

Sarah
That came later. I think at the start, all I could do was follow a recipe.

Jimmy
Okay.

Sarah
And, when I presented it to them, it was not right. It didn’t taste like how it was supposed to taste. It didn’t taste like our family’s abacus, which was very discouraging. I’m also a perfectionist, so I really dislike negative feedback.

I was very discouraged. And I made it a couple times. I got some feedback. I made some adjustments, and then one Chinese New Year I was brave enough to serve it to the extended Hakka family when they visited our house. And the older generation, my mom’s cousins and my grandmother’s other sister, they were kind of nitpicking, saying, “This doesn’t taste quite right. What brand of fish sauce did you use?”

Jimmy
Right.

Sarah
I said, “I used Vietnamese fish sauce.” They said, “You cannot.” Because for me, Vietnamese fish sauce is the best in the world. The Vietnamese make the best fish sauce. They were like, “You cannot. You must use the China fish sauce.” I said, “Where do I buy it?” “In China.” I’m like, “What do you want me to do about this?” You know, I got some funny feedback from my grandmother, “Doesn’t taste like my mother’s.” I’m like, “I’ve never met your mother. How do I know what her abacus [seeds] tastes like?” 

So I was really discouraged. But then I went over to the side of feeling kind of sorry for myself, and all my cousins, first and second cousins, my generation, they were like, “It’s really good. We really like it.” And I guess there’s also a difference in generation tastes? Mine is a little bit more bouncy than what I think I grew up with, which was heavy, very filling. So, I think younger people, maybe that’s more to our taste. So, although what I cook is trying to kind of recapture the memories of my childhood, I’m very aware that it’s not exactly the same dish anymore, and I’m okay with that. This is my version of it.

Jimmy
Okay. Was it hard to find a recipe though? I mean, can you just type “abacus seed recipe” into Google and get a response?

Sarah
I’ve tried that, but now those are my recipes.

Jimmy
Oh.

Sarah
Cause I’ve made this so many times in public now.

Jimmy
Oh, you are like the first response on Google! That’s amazing.

Sarah
Yes. I tried to Google it, in preparation for this. I was like, “history of Hakka abacus seeds”, and two videos I had made with other people came up. I’m like, “Oh, I guess I’m now the spokesperson for Hakka abacus seeds”, which is hilarious.

Jimmy
Of abacus seeds.

Sarah
It took a long time to get here, but yeah, I’m very proud of the dish that I make now.

Jimmy
Was it hard to find a recipe and put it together and all that?

Sarah
I got kind of lucky. When I’m looking for local recipes, the place that I go to find cookbooks is Popular Bookstore because they have this range of bilingual cookbooks.

Jimmy
Oh, you know that’s right. Yes.

Sarah
A4 size, very thin.

Jimmy
Yeah, yeah.

Sarah
Every book is quite niche. It’ll be like Northern Malaysian Delights or Steamed Fish, like just steamed fish. So, since I was a kid, I’ve always liked buying those ’cause you can’t find those kinds of recipes in Western cookbooks or international publications. So, I came across an abacus [seed] recipe in one of those, and I think that’s where I started. I’ve made a lot of changes to it now, so it’s quite different. But it was a good starting point because I tried to start from my own relatives, when asking them for tips. I have one grandaunt, a not-so-close one, who is a very, very good Hakka cook. So she was probably the strongest point of guidance because I could actually see her do the whole thing. So I actually incorporated her techniques and stuff, but again, never any quantity. They never give any quantities.

Jimmy
Never. No.

Sarah
Asking them for how many grams is like asking them to speak a different language. They’ll be, “What are you talking about, grams?” They don’t even have a weighing scale at home, right?

Jimmy
Right.

Sarah
So, it was a different style of cooking than I’m used to. I’m trying to measure stuff as much as possible. So, that recipe was a good starting point. That and then my other distant grandaunt’s recipe. I blended that together and then made a lot of my own modifications, and so the recipe that I have is kind of an amalgamation of all these sources.

Jimmy
Does it have Chinese fish sauce? That’s really the important question that everybody wants.

Sarah
I still use Vietnamese fish sauce.

Jimmy
It is great.

Sarah
Okay, I’m kind of a fish sauce collector.

Jimmy
Yeah.

Sarah
So I’ve tried a few different fish. Every time I make it, I try a new fish sauce.

Jimmy
Okay.

Sarah
I’ve tried Thai fish sauce, very expensive fish sauce, cheap fish sauce.

Jimmy
Your own fish sauce.

Sarah
I haven’t tried that. I’m quite keen to try. So fish sauce is actually my favourite condiment, and I’m a huge condiment person. My condiment collection is very big. Fish sauce is my favourite, so usually ’cause it’s Chinese New Year, I break out my top fish sauce, which is the Vietnamese top of the line, the most umami fish sauce. ’Cause in Vietnam they have number grading for–

Jimmy
I didn’t know that.

Sarah
You can see it on Vietnamese fish sauce bottles, they’ll have a number that says, like, N40 or N60, and that’s the number of nitrogen? I can’t remember. Nitrites? Nitrogen? Something like that. I actually forget now, but–

Jimmy
The number of days it was sitting in the sun.

Sarah
No, it’s how umami it is on your tongue. It’s the amount of protein that is in each 100 mL or something.

Jimmy
Oh.

Sarah
And so that makes it more umami.

Jimmy
The higher the better?

Sarah
The higher the better.

Jimmy
Yeah

Sarah
Yeah. So when it’s Chinese New Year, I break out my top N60, which is the highest you can get, the most umami fish sauce, yeah, I mean, use the good stuff for my family.

Jimmy
Okay. Tell us about Hakka food. I mean, I don’t know very many Hakkas. Actually, you’re probably the first Hakka I’ve met.

Sarah
Really? No. You probably just consciously, but in Singapore, you’ve definitely met Hakkas.

Jimmy
I’m sure, I’ve met Lee Kuan Yew. No, I haven’t. But, you know, ’cause there are not that many Hakkas in Singapore.

Sarah
So Hakkas are the fourth largest dialect group among Chinese in Singapore. I Googled it on the way here. They’re about 8 percent –

Jimmy
Oh, cool.

Sarah
– of the Chinese population in Singapore, so it’s not huge, but also not insignificant. I think that Hakkas have played quite big parts in some parts of the history of Singapore. They were very involved in the Chinese medicine trade, for example. So Tiger Balm, the Aw family, they were Hakkas. My family was involved in pawnbroking, so they had a chain of pawn shops across Malaya. And a lot of Hakkas were involved in pawnbroking when they first arrived in Singapore, so I think they found themselves a few little cottage industries. But Hakka food, I feel it reflects an older history of Hakka culture. You know, in Singapore, Hakkas, like we said, they find trades because Singapore is Singapore. But in China, a lot of the Hakkas are centered in hilly regions. They had to do a lot of farming to grow their own food, and I’ve always felt that Hakka food is very sustaining. It’s very, very heavy. If you eat a traditional Hakka meal, you can probably keep going all the way until evening.

Jimmy
So food for farmers, really.

Sarah
Food for farmers. It really, you know, it sticks to your ribs, you know? It’s not the sort of restaurant-based fine Cantonese cuisine, steamed fish, that sort of thing. Very hearty. A lot of sticky textures, a lot of chewy textures, stuff that really makes you feel full. And Hakka cuisine, I think, is very shaped by history. So, the kind of creation myth of Hakka people is that they are from the north. So unlike the other southern Chinese that they’re surrounded by, they feel that they are actually northern Chinese who have been displaced.

Jimmy
What does DNA say?

Sarah
Actually, that’s a good question. I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s been enough DNA differentiation between northern and southern Chinese.

And the idea is that they came very long ago. When my family has told the story, it’s not a particular disaster that caused them to migrate, it’s just nameless disasters, nameless famines, and nameless wars that they were escaping in the north, so who knows how long ago that was. And then they found themselves in regions like Fujian Province, Guangdong Province, where, of course, the Hokkien, the Teochew, and the Cantonese were already established. So the coastal regions were taken up. That’s why a lot of those dialect groups are involved in trading. And where the Hakkas could settle were in the hilly regions that were not already settled. So they ended up becoming kind of separated. That’s why when you meet Hakka people, you tend to ask, “What kind of Hakka are you?” So you have Hakkas from Dapu, which is my family.

Jimmy
Dapu means, is it…?

Sarah
It’s a place.

Jimmy
It’s a place.

Sarah
Dapu in Guangdong Province. Or some of them are Hepo, which is another area. And then you have, like, Meixian. There’s quite a few, actually. I don’t even know all of them.

Jimmy
Sure.

Sarah
So they become almost like little islands, so the cuisine for each of these groups is different. So Hakka abacus seeds, they’re called Hakka abacus seeds, but they’re actually only unique to Dapu Hakka, which is what my family is.

Jimmy
Oh, that’s so interesting. So not every Hakka subgroup would have abacus seeds.

Sarah
In fact, Thunder Tea Rice, lei cha, which is probably to many Singaporeans one of the most familiar Hakka dinners, it’s not something anyone in my older generations grew up eating.

Jimmy
Really?

Sarah
Because of that, I think it’s Hepo or Meixian. I could be wrong. But it’s definitely not Dapu. It’s a different, complete different region of Hakka cuisine.

Jimmy
But are these regions, like, close by?

Sarah
Close by, but because they’re on hills or mountains, it’s not easy to get from one to the other. It would be quite a trek. So they almost become little islands of their own subcultures of Hakka.

Jimmy
That is interesting.

Sarah
So when we talk about Hakka food, it’s quite shaped by what region you come from.

Jimmy
Let’s talk a little bit more about abacus seeds. I haven’t eaten them. You haven’t invited me to your home. I don’t know when I’ll eat yours.

Sarah
Chinese New Year is the only time. I told you, I only make it once a year.

Jimmy
Okay, but you can’t get it in Singapore, right? You can’t go to, like –

Sarah
You can.

Jimmy
Hawker centres or restaurants or something?

Sarah
If you find a Hakka hawker stall, some of them do have abacus.

Jimmy
What do you mean by a Hakka hawker stall?

Sarah
I think there’s one at Syed Alwi Road that makes beef noodles?

Jimmy
Like –

Sarah
Hakka beef noodles.

Jimmy
Noodles. Okay. Right.

Sarah
I think they have abacus [seeds]. I’ve come across it very randomly at times in hawker centres. I’ll see a shop with a little kind of stick-on sign saying, “Hakka abacus seeds available,” or something like that. But personally, I don’t have a list of them just ’cause I guess, I don’t know if this is a Hakka thing or just a general thing, but my family, when we went to try Hakka food elsewhere, my grandmother would always say, “This is not up to scratch. This is not as good as our family’s.” So we’ve never found a Hakka restaurant my family is happy to keep going to. So I don’t keep a running list of where it’s available.

Jimmy
How are they different from the ones that you make?

Sarah
I think that the ones I’ve tried elsewhere tend to be a bit more heavy on the starch and lighter on the yam. I think that’s also probably [because of] cost reasons. Like I said, if you’re cooking for your family, you’re going to use the good stuff.

Jimmy
Yeah.

Sarah
So when I make it, I try to make the yam-to-starch ratio as high as possible while still retaining the texture.

Jimmy
So what does the yam do?

Sarah
The yam gives the texture for sure, but it also gives a lot of flavour. So when you eat it, you can get that light fragrance of yam. When it’s cooking, you can smell it, too. Whereas with some of the ones I’ve had elsewhere, they tend to be much heavier on the starch, so they look kind of gluier, almost translucent. Mine are definitely not translucent. They’re completely opaque because of the presence of the yam. So the ones I’ve had outside, they look quite different from what I make.

Jimmy
Right.

Sarah
Yeah, and I think, I think that’s very understandable. It’s because of cost reasons. The yam, of course, takes a long time to process because you have to steam it, you have to mash it. So the less of it you use, the faster you can make abacus [seeds]. Because starch just needs to be mixed with the water. So yeah. I totally understand that. I’ve even seen, in the frozen section at supermarkets, frozen abacus seeds.

Jimmy
Oh, have you?

Sarah
The same brands that make frozen tangyuan, the glutinous rice balls, I’ve seen them make frozen abacus seeds. I must admit I’ve never tried them, but I should actually.

Jimmy
You should.

Sarah
Yeah.

Jimmy
But, you’re a Hakka and Peranakan.

Sarah
Yeah, on two different sides.

Jimmy
How does that work? But you’re not Hakka Peranakan.

Sarah
No.

Jimmy
You’re Hakka and Peranakan. So what is the difference?

Sarah
Well, I think a Hakka Peranakan is someone who descends from Hakkas who married local women and then became Peranakan. I’m not that because – these are my maternal grandparents – my grandmother was a Hakka. She was born in China. My grandfather is a Hokkien Peranakan, and they got married. So Hakka and Peranakan, but not Hakka Peranakan.

Jimmy
I see. Okay. Actually, I don’t, but it’s all right. But you do have both these influences in you, though.

Sarah
Yeah. I think food wise, I’m just maybe closer to the Hakka side because I never knew my grandfather.

Jimmy
Okay.

Sarah
So although you know, at Chinese New Year we would go for the extended family gatherings, there would be a lot of family members in kebaya. There’d be, you know, curry on the table for the buffet and stuff. For my closer family, I think it was very shaped by my grandmother and my yi po, who are both Hakka women. Yeah, so I think those are the cultural touchpoints that mean a lot more to me.

Jimmy
Okay.

Sarah
Yeah.

Jimmy
All right. Okay, that makes a lot of sense then. You are so talented. I mean, you are a host on TV, you develop recipes, you’re a documentary filmmaker. When are we going to see your first cookbook?

Sarah
Oh, man, hopefully soon. I’ve been saying that for years. I think I’m a perfectionist, which is something I’m trying to combat. Instead of just doing one, I have all these recipes that I’ve written up, but I just can’t seem to put them together in the perfect way. So hopefully next year will be the year that I can get a first draft together.

Jimmy
So is there a theme if you had to do one?

Sarah
I think having so many ideas is the problem, and I don’t know which one should be first.

Jimmy
Okay.

Sarah
So one I wanted to do was about Singapore.

Jimmy
Of course. Yeah. 

Sarah
But I think so many people have done really great books on traditional foods of Singapore, you know? We have encyclopedic versions of cookbooks, you know, How to Cook Everything Singaporean. Is that the name of the book? It’s an amazing book.

Jimmy
Who’s the author?

Sarah
Denise Fletcher.

Jimmy
Okay.

Sarah
It’s published by Epigram.

Jimmy
Okay.

Sarah
You probably have it in NLB.

Jimmy
Oh, so it’s like an encyclopedia.

Sarah
Yeah, and it has a lot of dishes inside. I’ve never cooked from it, but I have it at home just as a collection.

Jimmy
Yeah.

Sarah
But it’s great. It’s great to see someone cover all the dishes because I think people have a very narrow idea of the Singaporean food that should be presented, like laksa. You know what I mean? But she does all kinds of things like coffee pork ribs, like the kind of zichar classics, and she includes a lot of Eurasian dishes, ’cause she’s Eurasian, Indian dishes, Malay dishes, so yeah. It’s a really good book.

Jimmy
Okay, we have this encyclopedia. Denise Fletcher has done that. So what will you do?

Sarah
If I were to write a book on Singapore, I would really love to talk about Singapore as it is now, and not the idea of Singapore as a place of Chinese, Malay and Indian and maybe Eurasian cuisine only. I think Singapore is so diverse, of course diverse with the ethnic groups that I just mentioned, but also we have Philippine cuisine. We have Burmese food, Thai food, and Vietnamese food. We have so many.

Jimmy
You have avocado toast.

Sarah
Exactly. We have avocado toast. We have flat whites, you know.

Jimmy
Yes, exactly.

Sarah
And, I would love to kind of talk about the different kinds of enclaves in Singapore. I would love to write a book about Singapore as it is now. You know, Peninsula Plaza is Little Burma.

Jimmy
Oh, I love it, right.

Sarah
Yeah, that sort of thing. I don’t think that gets a lot of airtime in books about Singapore because we have this idea of Singapore cuisine as this almost unchanging thing. You know, laksa, curry chicken, chicken rice. Of course, I love these dishes, but in reality, what people are eating day-to-day is changing all the time because we’re so exposed to cuisines. Can you really argue that mala, for example, is not part of the Singapore culinary canon?

Jimmy
It looks like the national dish at the moment.

Sarah
Exactly. It’s everywhere. And then if we’re going to say, “No, Singapore cuisine is this perfect thing that, that has existed and we’re never going to change it,” if we had that attitude 50 to 100 years ago, we wouldn’t have dishes like laksa, we wouldn’t have dishes like mee siam, we wouldn’t have dishes like chicken rice, because these are all inventions themselves. So I would like to write a book about the continuing evolution of Singapore food and cuisines, but I don’t know. So that’s one idea.

Jimmy
Give me one more idea.

Sarah
Another idea would be, this is something I’m very passionate about, cooking as a mental health practice. It’s actually the main reason I decided to do a master’s in psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health. Cooking is great because it gives you something to eat, but I also think the act of cooking is really important for mental health. I think when you’re connected to your food, the way you consume it is so different. You know, if you take anybody and you ask them to make themselves a meal with intention, you know, cook something for themselves that they really feel like eating or something that means something to them and eat that versus order delivery, sit down in front of TV and eat, how they feel after that, those different meals, I guarantee you it will be different. So, that’s another book I would love to write. So it’s between these two at the moment. Next year will be the year. Now, for 2025, I’m like, “Okay, fine. Just relax. Don’t need to decide.” But in 2026, I will make this decision.

Jimmy
We will hold you to it.

Sarah
Okay, thank you.

Jimmy
We will check in on you one year from now and say, “Sarah, how have you done?”

Sarah
Yeah. I will have it ready by then.

Jimmy
We will be your accountability partner. So what are you busy doing now? So you’re doing your master’s. Are you doing anything at all?

Sarah
I’m nearly done with my master’s.

Jimmy
King’s College, everyone.

Sarah
King’s College London, yeah. Not King’s College Cambridge. I must say.

Jimmy
Okay.

Sarah
Yeah. King’s College London.

Jimmy
Very nice info.

Sarah
I right now am in this weird transition period. I’m finishing up my master’s. I think because the last few months I’ve been really focused on that, I haven’t had much time to work on my content, but I’ve had a lot of ideas, so I have an extremely long list of notes that I kept while I was working on my thesis, of things I want to film and content ideas. So now I have to tackle the list, which is kind of overwhelming. So that’s what I’m going to be busy with from now until the end of the year.

Jimmy
I must say because you do so many things. You write, you’re a filmmaker. If you move away from the cooking related stuff, you know, what is your passion? Is it filmmaking? Is it writing? Is it being a famous host on TV?

Sarah
I think my passion is really helping people to live better. I think that it’s very hard to say that in a way that doesn’t sound, a bit maybe condescending. I don’t think I know better than other people, but I want to figure it out together. And I think my content and everything, yeah, recipes are the main bit of it. But like I said, I think cooking is not just about food. It’s about being in touch with yourself. The act of eating, you know, it can make people so happy. So all these little aspects of food I think really infuse our lives, and we overlook it. We don’t really recognise how much food can affect our moods, how much it can give our lives meaning, how much it can connect us with other people. And so, these are the things that I really want to be a reminder for. I want to remind people to take time to cook, take time to eat, take time to be with themselves, take time to be with other people. And if I can even just make like a handful of people’s lives a little bit better, I would feel very happy about that.

Jimmy
And would this bit sort of tie into your master’s in any way? Like, would you be able to take your master’s and do something in that regard?

Sarah
I think so. I mean, I’ve always cared about this, so I felt like I need to know what I’m talking about, which is why I went to do my master’s. I don’t want to be like a charlatan, so…

Jimmy
Right.

Sarah
Yeah, so now that I think –

Jimmy
Only educated by ChatGPT.

Sarah
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that’s really the problem with a lot of the world today is that everyone thinks that they’re an expert.

Jimmy
Yeah, after 10 minutes of Googling and ChatGPT, you’re an expert.

Sarah
Yeah. So I wanted to equip myself with knowledge, but I don’t want to be the type of person that’s telling you, “I know better. Listen to me. You know, I have the cure.” That’s not what it is. I want to figure it out together, but yeah, the master’s was definitely because I’m very passionate and interested in mental wellness.

Jimmy
Okay. I think that, you know, that’s obviously going to be very important. We’re coming to the end of the very exciting and very interesting and very educational talk. We typically end this by sort of asking people to complete a sentence. Family recipes are…? How would you complete that sentence?

Sarah
Family recipes are something to hold onto.

Jimmy
Okay, and why?

Sarah
I think family recipes are something to hold onto because… You know that saying you don’t know what you’ve lost till it’s gone? So many of us grow up with certain dishes or maybe even just a way of eating a dish, that we don’t really pay attention to because it seems normal to you, and only when maybe the person in your family is gone do you realise how much you miss it. And I don’t think tradition should be held onto for tradition’s sake, but I think everybody has this connection with how food is eaten, and it’s shaped by family. And I think people should make more of an effort to preserve those recipes, those dishes, those ways of eating. And I think they’ll be very grateful that they did. Yeah, I don’t come from a family of cooks, I don’t really have much to hold onto, but I know other people, whose grandparents, their moms, their dads are amazing cooks. Don’t take it for granted. 

Jimmy
It doesn’t mean you’re an amazing cook, right? 

Sarah
That’s true, actually. 

Jimmy
It’s just that it’s dealt with, right? And then you want to recreate that childhood memory of that food you ate, and it’s just gone. You don’t know how to make it.

Sarah
Exactly. For me, the things I miss most, from my childhood, some of them are Filipino dishes that my jie jie, my helper, cooked. I mean, we’re still close, so I can ask her any time what the dishes were, which is good, but if I didn’t have that relationship with her, I wouldn’t even know what those dishes were. I wouldn’t even know how to Google it because I wouldn’t know what it’s called. So these are the things sometimes we just take for granted. We don’t really make an effort to make a note of it. And it doesn’t have to be for any grand purpose. You don’t have to be writing a cookbook. You don’t have to be making content. It could just be something simple for you to cook for yourself.

Jimmy
Comfort food.

Sarah
Comfort food, and the ability to do that, I think everyone should have that.

Jimmy
I agree. And now you’ve made me feel very guilty, and now I have to go and do the same thing.

Sarah
Hmm.

Jimmy
Thank you Sarah, for also joining us on the BiblioAsia+ podcast. Please don’t miss watching Sarah make abacus seeds on YouTube in From Book to Cook. All links and information can be found in the show notes or on the BiblioAsia website at biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg. 

It was such a pleasure having you. It was such a pleasure talking to you. Someday I will invite myself to your home for abacus seeds.

Sarah
Please.

Jimmy
Thank you very much for coming.

Sarah
Thank you.

[Music playing] 

Jimmy
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast and the BiblioAsia newsletter. Thanks for joining us on BiblioAsia+.

许赛晤 Koh Sai Ngo, Bei ma you jia yao 北马有佳肴 [North Malaysian delights] (Kuala Lumpur: Seashore Publishing (M) Sdn Bhd, 2013).

Ping Chin Woon, Hakka Soul: Memories, Migrations, and Meals (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008).

This episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by Nookcha Films. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Sarah for coming on the show.

Produced by the National Library Singapore, the BiblioAsia Podcast tells stories about Singapore history.