We applaud the chutzpah of local publishing houses that continue to champion local cookbooks. The latest success story, Irene’s Peranakan Recipes from 2006, was a nostalgic collection of an unheralded wife’s family recipes. This year, the book’s publisher, Epigram Books, hopes to repeat the magic with the beautifully designed Madam Choy’s Cantonese Recipes. The author, Choy Wai Yuen, is an 85-year-old home-maker whose repertoire has been the backbone of a family’s culinary memories for three generations. With simple, easy-to-follow instructions and lots of handy tips, she dishes out more than 90 homely Canto-classics, from lotus root soup, roast pork ribs, crab omelette and chicken congee to braised chicken feet, and pig trotters in black vinegar. In other words, it’s comfort food the likes of which you won’t find Jamie or Delia writing about. And it’s all the better for it. 
Available at leading bookshops for $19.