This story was first published in The Sunday Times on Jan 15, 2012.

I don't speak Teochew. Zilch.

Ask me what Chinese dialect group I belong to, and I will proudly tell you that I am Teochew. But start speaking to me in the dialect, and I will very bashfully confess, with hand signals if need be, that I can neither understand nor speak a word.

It's a shame I know, but we just don't speak it at home as my mother speaks only English - she is Chinese-Australian.

Truth be told, I am not even sure of the terms for each of the dishes that we Teochews typically eat over the Chinese New Year.

In general, I can name only a few dishes in Teochew - they are the ones I like: orh nee (yam paste), lor bak (braised pork) and lor ark (braised duck), which I finally learnt to make last week from my father's third sister, Elsie.

Lor ark is a staple at our reunion dinner, and thankfully, she is more than willing to share the recipe with me.
Our reunion dinner is huge - about 30 to 40 people, depending on who is in town. There are different tables and several rounds of eating: tables for the aunts and uncles, and others for the kids.

As a child, I was often told not to go into the kitchen at my second uncle's house when the meals were being prepared so as not to get in the way.

But I would sometimes peek into the kitchen, standing by the door to take in the various aromas of earthy spices and robust soups. At other times, I would play in the garden at the back of the house near the kitchen, so that I could pretend that I was part of all the action.

My older sister, Susan, is so excited to hear that I will be learning our Ah Ma's braised duck recipe that she tags along, and so does my mother, who is of Cantonese descent and does not cook any Teochew dishes. The three of us are all pretty clueless as to how to make the Teochew-style braised duck even though we love to eat it.

I learn that the recipe has been passed down from my great-grandmother to my grandmother, to my aunt, and now to me.

What a privilege - I had no idea my family had such old recipes.

My mother, you see, really isn't very conventional when it comes to Asian cooking. From her, I have learnt more Western-style recipes for cakes, scones, oxtail stew and shepherd's pie.

My aunt, on the other hand, who is in her 60s, is from a fairly traditional Teochew household and still makes every dish from scratch.

She says my late grandmother taught her to make lor ark when she was about 12 years old, and she has been making it ever since.

In the old days, they would braise a goose, but she says she has not seen it in wet markets since the late 1960s.
But duck works just as well.

Our family recipe calls for honey and gula melaka instead of rock sugar or white sugar, which many other recipes use. She says using honey makes the sweetness more subtle and also gives the dish just the right amount of balance.

Over the Chinese New Year, my aunt also prepares dishes such as stir-fried leeks with fa cai (black moss) and squid, steamed fish, Teochew raw fish salad, prawns in a tomato gravy, pig's stomach soup and soup with treasures such as fish maw, dried scallops and abalone.

I have been eating her braised duck for as long as I can remember and it is one of my favourite dishes come Chinese New Year.

It is a typical Teochew dish which is also enjoyed all year round, only, since no one in my immediate family knew how to make it, we never ate it outside the festive season.

Rest assured, that will change now that we have the recipe for it.

The cooking lesson turns out to be more of an observation session.My aunt is so quick and adept at slicing the ginger, marinating the duck, and chopping it up after it is cooked that I just, well, let her.

But the one thing I have mastered, is rotating the duck as it sits in the braising liquid. The recipe calls for rotating it every 10 minutes so that each side will be evenly coloured when the dish is ready.

She demonstrates the act the first couple of times with much ease, shoving chopsticks into the cavity and flipping the duck such that it assumes an upright position before gently using a frying spatula to help lay it back into the bubbling liquid, other side up.

The first time I attempt the manoeuvre, she helps me. The second time I do it, I stop half way because the steam is so hot that it burns my hand. But I think I have it down pat after three tries - and no splashing too.

My sister and I discuss the "rotation" technique later that night and conclude that it is probably the way Ah Ma taught her to do it.

But by the time I get down to recreating the dish, I think I might just use a more modern utensil - a pair of tongs.

Then again, perhaps I should preserve at least part of my Teochew heritage, and stick to the chopsticks.