The air at the North Bridge Road Market & Food Centre in Singapore is filled with the scent of lemongrass, mangoes, turmeric, fermented prawn paste and curry. The stalls are neatly stacked with everything from red Asian bananas to shrivelled sea cucumbers, frog’s legs, blue ginger and dragon fruit.

Vidhya Nair, a Singaporean of Indian descent, is buying prawns and spices for our cookery class. She already has everything in her nearby studio but is taking us to the market so we can get an idea of what Singaporean cuisine is all about.

“Singaporean cuisine is special because it brings together many Southeast Asian dishes into a single culinary culture,” Nair says. “It is a melting pot of Chinese, Malay and Indian cuisine.”

It also reflects the Lion City’s diverse population: around 75 per cent of the city state’s inhabitants are of Chinese origin, 15 per cent come from Malaysia and just over 7 per cent from India.

Malcolm Lee comes from a Peranakan family and still uses his mother’s and grandmother’s recipes. And he does so successfully and with distinction. His Peranakan restaurant Candlenut has a Michelin star, the first establishment in Singapore to do so for this type of cuisine.

That makes Lee one of the best-known chefs in Singapore, a country so rich in fine dining that it has 42 Michelin-star restaurants. But, he says, Peranakan cuisine is more than just a culinary culture. “It is cultural heritage, identity and family tradition,” he says.