A Tiger in the Kitchen by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tang

This book is about a journey, one woman's quest to reconnect with her family and her culture by way of traditional Singaporean food. I am taking my husband to Singapore to eat at the famous street food vendors for his 50th birthday next year, so I have a keener interest than most in the tales contained within this book, but it is well worth the read without that back drop.
Tan's debut memoir describes her connection between taste buds and memory. Two events in her life conspired to motivate her to connect with the food of her childhood--her parents' unexpected divorce and losing her job at the Wall Street Journal. Turning lemons into lemonade, the author took advantage of her newfound freedom to return home to Singapore, dedicating a year to culinary adventure. She hoped to reacquaint herself with both her family’s recipes and her family itself. Written in the tradition of a culinary memoir, the book is a recipe in itself—a dash of conjuring the ancient stories of one's past, conjoined with a sprinkling of culinary narrative. The result is a treat filled with Singaporean tradition, including the surprisingly significant role food plays in Singapore. Tan argues that stories themselves are a kind of sustenance, and that the oral tradition, like food, begins in the mouth and ends in the stomach--I am not sure I buy that hook, line, and sinker, but it is an interesting thought. She notes that her journey to Singapore was an attempt to retrace her grandmother's footsteps in the kitchen, but she includes her broader family in her search, and all of them yield information and traditions that go far beyond the recipes.
“Cooking wasn't a science; it wasn't meant to be perfect,” she writes. “It was simply a way to feed the people you loved.” For Tan, cooking functions as a connection to her family members, allowing her to serve all their stories in the proper portions. Recipes are included at the end of the book, and a restaurant guide is recommended within the pages.
A delightful take on the relationship between food, family and tradition--even if a trip to Singapore is not in your immediate future.