Shanghai and Sandy Lam – one, the iconic city of modern China, the other, one of Asia’s best-loved singers. When they meet, an exhilarating affair begins. This is the gastronomic heart and soul of Shanghai like you’ve never seen it before.

And Sandy is the perfect guide, for the city is redolent with the smells and flavours of her childhood memories. Memories she has sought to recapture through her passion for food and cooking.

Sandy’s childhood in Hong Kong was spent savouring the great traditions of Shanghainese and Cantonese cooking. Memories of her grandma’s pork chops with potatoes, her father’s sweet fermented rice wine with egg, and her mother’s drunken chicken, accompany her through the streets of Shanghai and inform her eyes and taste buds.

We visit with Sandy the city’s best kitchens and food personalities – for it is a search for the new and adventurous as well. Huddled by a roadside stall or swathed in chinois chic luxury, tying her fingers in knots in wonton wrapping or swapping stories with a master chef in his ultra-modern kitchen, Sandy takes them as they come – ever amiable and gastronomically curious.

In the book, she features recipes which have meant something to her – and as she recalls them. We meet her family – the source of much of her culinary reminiscences and passions, and the street cooks, chefs and restaurateurs who together constitute the famed culinary experience of Shanghai today.

My Shanghai is a book of a city’s culinary culture and its meaning to a particular person. Most of all, it’s a book about love, longing and remembering, and the undeniable joys and comforts of a fabulous meal!