My grandmother’s recipes were never recorded in a way that someone other than my grandmother could follow.

The quantities are listed in a dizzying mix of units: imperial (pounds and ounces), Chinese (taels and cattys) and metric (millilitres and grams). More often, they are listed vaguely as “a thumb-sized piece” or “a handful”. The strangest quantity I came across was “10 cents of chillies from Serangoon Garden Market”!

But the most intimidating quantity is specified as chukop rasa or “to taste”. This makes any recipe impossible to reproduce because unless you know what taste you are aiming for, you cannot use taste as your guide.

Mama passed away in 2015. I will never eat Mama’s food again because my mother’s taste, my aunt’s taste and my taste are not the same.

Butter beef.

In my mind, I am eight years old; it is Tuesday after school and I am running from Uncle Roland’s car through the front door to the back of the house to the kitchen. I hear the rhythmic bell-like tinkling of the rice cooker lid with fragrant rice bubbling within.

Mama is there with her curly, bright white hair framing the smile on her round face and her sarong tied around her waist. I hug her and she bats me away saying, “Peloh! Don’t hug me! I’m all hot from cooking.”

I sit down at the dining table with a glass of iced water. Lunch is butter beef and white rice. The beef is presented in a light blue enamel dish, in a sauce of black and yellow swirls.

As far as we can tell, this dish was my grandmother’s invention. Nobody remembers eating this at anyone else’s house. I’ve never seen it on the menu of any restaurant in Singapore. It is a kids’ dish: strong, simple flavours, something for Mama’s grandchildren.

Butter beef must have been born in Singapore. Butter is a Western thing. Malay cooking often uses palm sugar, not white sugar. It’s not an English recipe, because it uses soy sauce. I like to believe that this recipe was Mama’s creation.

After Mama died, butter beef disappeared. My aunt tried to cook it a couple of times, but it just didn’t turn out the same. We always thought of it as a simple everyday dish. We didn’t even bother to write the recipe down.

When I was about 10 years old, I asked my grandmother to show me how the beef was prepared. She mixed the ingredients with her crooked arthritic fingers, then tilted the bowl to show me what she was doing. It has been three decades since Mama last cooked this dish for me, and all I have to guide me is this memory of a bowl and my grandmother’s hands.

It took years to recreate the recipe, to rediscover the missing details. Baking soda in the marinade to tenderise the beef. Very low heat so the butter doesn’t burn. But most importantly, when I eat this dish, it has to taste of childhood: of the end of the school day, of hot afternoons in Singapore and my grandmother’s kitchen.

Chukop rasa.