Aurora grew up in Hong Kong, a city she describes as a genuine meeting point of East and West — multilingual, generous, ambitious, and, in her words, always holding onto hope. That sense of place runs through everything she creates, whether she’s at the piano or in the kitchen.

As a mother, Aurora found her own quiet creative outlet in her daughter’s school lunches — turning ordinary bento boxes into small, careful expressions of love during years when there was little time for much else. It’s a detail she returns to often: her daughter has said that every bento reminded her just how much her mother loved her.

Aurora is candid that many of the recipes in the book began as adaptations rather than original creations. Unable to handle meat herself, she reworked her husband’s and daughter’s favourite dishes into vegetarian versions — and, avoiding butter and dairy by personal preference, found that vegetable oil and plant-based milk could do the job just as well. What started as a workaround became a genuine culinary voice of its own.

Underpinning all of it is a phrase she returns to throughout the book: Ichigo Ichie — a Japanese concept meaning “once in a lifetime.” Rooted in the tradition of the tea ceremony, it’s the idea that certain moments, and the people we share them with, will never come again exactly the same way — so they deserve our full presence while they’re here. It’s the spirit Aurora says she brings to every dish she cooks, for family, friends, or strangers alike.

“Something or someone that we can only encounter once in our life — we should cherish it and be fully present in the moment.”