Carol Selva Rajah BA. Dip Ed.

Carol, one of Australia’s most celebrated experts in Asian cuisine firmly believes food cooked from the heart is the best gift one can give to family and friends. An integral part of this belief is that feeding the mind is just as important as feeding the body. Carol is an award winning author of eleven cookbooks on South East Asian cooking. She has had international success as the first Australian woman invited to cook at the prestigious James Beard Foundation in New York, and subsequently on the QE11. She has worked as celebrity chef in hotels in major cities around the world and lectures to students and to interested cooking students and historians. .

Over the years, Carol has contributed to a diverse range of publications including the Australian Gourmet Traveler. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Living Magazine and Kitchen Culture Food and Travel, Singapore. In 2001, she won the coveted Jaguar Gourmet Traveler Award for excellence in Gastronomic Travel for “Day trips to Asia” in Cabramatta which have become a template for other food tours today.  Carol divides her time between Malaysia, Los Angeles, California and Sydney writing, teaching and pairing spicy Asian food with beer. She conducts yearly lectures to culinary historians in the US and is in the process of completing a television program on Malaysia for discovery channel. 

As a chef, Carol has done many charity crab dinners for the Nelune Foundation for cancer support for the last 6 years and enjoys the experience of cooking and meeting different people in their homes. See charity dinners on this site.

Her work on the food and culture of the 15th Century Nonya community in Malacca and Penang has been the basis for an oral history book currently in progress, based on four generations of her family. Carol was educated in Malaysia and Australia and calls the world her home.

Contact:  612 9427 5260
0412 410 021
Carol.s@internode.on.net
Gourmet Asian Cuisine
2009