I am the youngest daughter of Maud Mouthaan, an Indonesian woman born in Semarang, Central Java, and my Chinese father Tan Tjhoen Hok, born in Surabaya, East Java. I have two older sisters.

Our mother learned to cook before the family moved to the Netherlands in 1964. My father naturally accompanied her to the Netherlands but asked her to learn cooking first. Bread and potatoes, he didn't fancy that. And the Indonesian cook who cooked so deliciously and took care of the family couldn't come along, of course.

So our mother learned to cook very well. She was really very precise. How the dish looked, how it should smell, and of course, the taste. We always ate rice, with freshly prepared dishes with homemade spices without packets and jars.

When she became partially paralyzed in 1979, we had to take over the cooking. This meant going to the living room several times with the mortar, cutting board, or spoon to ask our mother if the spices were good in color, taste, and if they were finely ground enough.

Our mother then began typing out her recipes for her daughters. For us, she said, but of course also a bit out of self-interest. She wanted to be able to continue eating as well as when she could still cook herself.

As I grew older, I wanted to evoke the flavors of my childhood home with my parents more and more. So in recent years, I have been cooking more and more Indonesian and Chinese dishes with my mother's recipes.

When I was asked to write the Bible of Indonesian Cuisine, all the puzzle pieces fell into place and I could share my love for this cuisine, but also for my mother's dishes.