The first time I tried recreating my mother’s chicken rice abroad, I measured everything too carefully.
I weighed the rice. I searched for the “right” chicken. I compared different bottles of soy sauce, convinced that one small adjustment would bring me back to the flavours I remembered from home.
But when I finally sat down to eat, something was missing.
The rice was fragrant. The chicken was tender. The chilli had the right amount of heat. Yet I kept comparing it to a version that existed only in my memory — one shaped by childhood, familiar kitchens, and years of eating without thinking.
It took me a while to understand that I was chasing something impossible.
Food memories are rarely made from ingredients alone. They come from the people around the table, the sounds in the background, the weather outside, and the feeling of being somewhere you belong.
Living abroad changes the way we cook. We learn to substitute. We adjust. We make do with what is available. Sometimes pandan leaves are frozen instead of fresh. Sometimes the spice level changes because the chillies are different. Sometimes a family recipe becomes something slightly new because the kitchen itself has changed.
For a long time, I saw these differences as failures.
Now, I see them as proof that food is alive.
A dish does not stop belonging to us simply because it has travelled. Like the people who carry it across borders, recipes adapt. They absorb new places while holding onto old memories.
I have found comfort in meals that were never quite “correct.” A curry made with a different brand of spices. A soup missing an ingredient from home. A breakfast prepared in a foreign apartment where the sunlight falls differently from the kitchen I grew up in.
I found the same sense of comfort when discovering places like Expat Eat, where everyday meals in Singapore reminded me that belonging can sometimes begin with simply finding a table that feels familiar.
Those meals stayed with me because they were made with care and intention.
Sometimes, the most meaningful dishes are not the ones that perfectly recreate the past. They are the ones that acknowledge where we are now.
Food has always been a conversation between memory and change. Every adjustment tells a story — of a new country, a new season of life, and the effort to create familiarity somewhere unfamiliar.
Perhaps home was never hidden in the exact flavour we were searching for.
Perhaps it was always in the act of making something, sharing it, and sitting down together.
A meal does not need to be perfect to feel like home. Sometimes, the imperfect ones are the meals we remember most.
