Malaysian Cooking

A Master Cook reveals her best recipes
This is an interesting and exciting collection of recipes that can easily be reproduced in your kitchen to reflect the wonderful range of aromas and flavours found in the eclectic mix of Indian, Chinese, Malay and Nonya food found in this wonderful country where food takes precedence over everything else. 

Available now at The Cookery Book, Northbridge

Hot off the Grill

HOT OFF THE GRILL  is a little book chock filled with BBQ recipes, Asian style that include sauces  and marinades. Among the recipes you will find a great Satay recipe, ideal chicken grills and lamb chops with a marinade that will touch the very soul of Asian  food.  To order, contact,  Carol.s@ internode.on.net

Dragonsback

On the Dragon’s Backis the story of Carol Selva Rajah’s life as it has unfolded across a mix of cultures, religions and continents. It is also the story of an extended family, of many lives and characters brought together in the great ethnic melting pot of Malaya, caught up in the whirlwind events of history in the dying light of south-east Asian colonialism. It is also the story if women and their lives in Asia and their transition to the west and includes people, food, culture and history, as a ‘fabric’ woven by the craft of storytelling. Included  will be some of the non published recipes from each stage of Carol’s life 

Carol is in search of a publisher so that book, you may say, is in transition as well…..

Heavenly Fragrance

Who has not walked into a kitchen redolent with the mingled perfumes of spices and herbs, and immediately responded to that heady sensation? All cookbooks invariably deal with taste, but this book starts from the premise of fragrance, that most seductive of qualities, and takes the reader on an aromatic journey from enticement to fulfilment in the final dish.

The blending of aromatics - complex, elusive, unforgettable - forms the basis on which this book is constructed, and is the marketing edge that sets it apart from other Asian cookbooks. It is also the primary culinary difference between East and West, the expert fusion of many aromas that can be achieved by anyone, in any kitchen that is stocked with Asian ingredients This book will demonstrate how to create dishes that perfume the kitchen with the promise of things to come, even before the cooking process begins, with its own aromatic alchemy.

Fragrance as the hub of a cookbook is not purely an esoteric choice, but a timely commercial consideration. Consumers increasingly are looking to fragrance to enhance their homes and gardens, and the market is responding. Books on perfumed gardens, for example, are in high demand (significantly, the big commercial developers of hybrid tea roses are also placing renewed efforts on breeding for scent). In the health and beauty industry, aromatherapy is one of the fastest-growing sectors of personal care. In department stores, retail centres and designer boutiques, fragrance is now piped in like music to generate a sense of well-being and to stimulate an ‘appetite’ for shopping.

American consumers make up a major market for lifestyle products, and they will be drawn to a book that includes fragrance or perfume in its title and in its approach. We especially have considered the aspirations of the US consumer who is conscious of good cooking as a status-builder. A beautifully, unforgettably perfumed kitchen that yields exciting (and achievable) dishes is a powerful way to impress. This book will show them how, from first seductive scent to final delectable flavour.

Seafood Sensation

by Carol Selvarajah is a collection of 150 recipes trawled from 19 Asian countries.

To create this book, Carol travelled to many of these countries, talked to Chefs, visited the Culinary Institutes in Calcutta and Mumbai and  talked to Chefs form Hong Kong,Taiwan,Shanghai and Tokyo, collected  friends, like Nora Daza in the Philippines, Kiki Watsa in Mumbai, Chefs at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok and  Didier in Hanoi. She also met home cooks and passionate cooking school teachers who shared their favourite recipes and recipe ideas.

The book represents the flavours, tastes and regional cuisines cooked at home by family cooks and by Chefs in Hotels. At times the recipes were dictated to her, and she was left to reconstruct them, at others they were demonstrated to her as the cook from the Ramanathan Household, Vellasamy.

The recipes were written down then tested in her kitchen many times before appearing in the first Edition of this book “Asian Seafood (Times Editions)”. This copy is a reproduction of the first edition with new 15 recipes.

The information on Seafood and Fish was provided by the various Fisheries Departments in Asia.  The recipe book is well worth keeping if only for the seafood information contained in it.

“The Essential Guide to buying and using Authentic Asian Ingredients”

helps the shopper and the cook identify Asian ingredients and to shop for these in Asian markets.

It includes:
*comprehensive chapters with insightful introductions to each food category
*Clear descriptions, background information and suggested uses for each ingredient
*Illustrations of the more exotic Asian ingredients for easy identification
*Names of Asian ingredients in Asian languages
*Advice on shopping in Asian markets
*Tips on understanding the logic behind the supermarket layout
*An outline of the philosophies behind Asian food
*A list of Asian Supermarkets and shopping centres throughout Australia 

Whether you are familiar with or learning the cuisine this is an indispensable reference book and shopping with it becomes an adventure. Cost A$27.00. New edition arrives in 2008.

“The Food of India”

co-authored by Carol Selva Rajah and Priya Wickramasinghe gives you a real taste of one of the world’s greatest cuisines. The book has a well known and much loved repertoire of dishes as well as a myriad of other exciting recipes.  Indian food is passionately cooked at home although much of India’s food starts on the streets with the coffee wallah and the snack and sweet trader.

Join Carol and Priya from Sydney and London on their journey through the length and breadth of India’s food scenes as they show you the vast array of dishes from traditional Moghul koftas to Hindu dahls.

The photographs give you a unique look at India and the recipes are well planned and written.  Cost A$39.50.  Available at all book stores and at Amazon.com.