As someone who has lived away from China, my home country, for more than two decades, I often find myself travelling into the depths of my memory, trying to savour moments growing up that I took for granted.

I remember walks in the park with my paternal grandmother — where we shared silence for most of the way — and often wonder what she was thinking about. Only many years later did I learn of the hardships she endured, the losses she was grieving, while parenting and cooking us delicious meals. There is always a sensory memory somewhere in my reminiscence of the good old days, that carefree childhood, a simpler life. Whether it be the sound of cicadas in the trees in the still, sticky midsummer air; the smell of a muddy lotus pond while digging for earthworms by her side while she was fishing for tilapia; the smell of candyfloss on the side of the road outside where she played mah-jong with her friends. There was always a taste or smell of food somewhere in all my little memory pockets, each of them containing a recipe that I am constantly trying to recreate...