Cookbook earns HK singer's new legion of fans

Teo Pau Lin Straits Times Singapore

It was just a matter of time before Sandy Lam wrote a cookbook. To fans in the region, the 38-year-old Hong Konger is the gilded, honey-toned voice behind numerous chart-topping ballads and sell-out concerts.

"Music is...a way to communicate with other people. But food has even more impact because it ties people and families together," says Sandy Lam

But inside her petite 1.59 meter frame is a diehard foodie.

The English version of her first cookbook, My Shanghai, has just hit bookstores here. The Chinese edition will be out later this month.

There is plenty of evidence that the 20-year veteran of the stage is also a goddess of the kitchen.

"I have more than 100 cookbooks at home," she trills over the line from Beijing, where she had just finished a concert performance.

She stocks lemongrass and Japanese udon in her fridge, has taken dimsum-making classes and is a self-professed fan of Singapore's Peranakan food.

"I love cooking. I love good food."

Born and bred in Hong Kong, she had grown up eating Shanghainese food as her parents were both from Shanghai. Her father was a musician and her mother a housewife. She has two younger brothers.

So when Lim Sek, managing director of her Singapore-based management company Music & Movement, suggested last year that she write a cookbook, she agreed immediately.

The cuisine, without question, would be Shanghainese.

"It's wonderful that I'm able to do this at this stage of my life because food, especially the food which I grew up on, is very close to my heart," she says in perfect English.

"Music is, too, because it's a way to communicate with other people. But food has even more impact because it ties people and families together."

It took four months to complete the editorial and photography of her 180-page tome, published by Times Editions.

There are sunny, smiley photographs of Lam, glamorously togged, tucking into dumplings and grocery-shopping at wet markets in Shanghai.

She also pens her childhood memories - the smell of her grandmother's Russian borscht, devouring 25 of her mother's wontons in one sitting - in elegant English.

But beyond her loyal following, she looks set to win over a new legion of fans - foodies.

The first half of the book contains Lam's family recipes, including pork chops and potatoes, drunken chicken and wonton soup - some of which are so simple and easy to follow, they require no more than five ingredients each.

Try them out and you would be sampling what Lam cooks for her husband, Taiwanese music producer Jonathan Li, and six-year-old daughter Xi'er at home in Beijing and Vancouver.

"Yes, they enjoy my food," she says with a laugh. "But then, it could be because I cook it with love. It's really the emotions that count."

The second half of the book contains recipes she learnt from the top culinary names working in Shanghai today.

They include Paul Hsu, whose Ye Shanghai restaurant in Xintiandi is one of the hippest, chinois-chic dining spots in the city, and Japanese chef Susumu Fukui who showcases "new Shanghai" cuisine in the stately La Villa Rouge restaurant.

Lam has spent the past one year out of the limelight, after capping a successful year in 2002.

That year, she released two albums - a Cantonese album, Encore, and a best-of compilation, The Best Of Sandy Lam.

She also bagged two prizes at the Singapore Hit Awards - Most Outstanding Female Artist in the Asia-Pacific and the Honorary Music Award.

Lam, who considers Singapore her "second home", is quite familiar with Singapore food, having spent four months recording here last year.

Her latest as-yet-untitled Mandarin album is due out in September. But you will not find her in any flashy restaurant.

"Hawker centers serve the best food," she says firmly, adding that she loves chicken rice, char kway teow and fried carrot cake. She has visited popular hawker centers here like Newton Circus, Lavender Food Square, Adam Food Centre and East Coast Lagoon Food Village.

Ask which food she cannot live without, and she pauses, before conceding with a laugh: "I cannot live without food, period."

Sandy Lam's My Shanghai, published by Times Editions, is available at major bookstores at S$45 before sales tax.