Forgotten cookery books

I confess I have missed a few days of late, and also that I have been somewhat uninspired. Today was no exception so I tried my blind lucky dip pick of a book and I came up with this one.

I had more or less completely forgotten this book, and so I started reflecting on forgotten cookery books. I have a few and many years ago now I had a major cleanup and threw a whole heap out. (I shouldn't have.) But I also kept a lot, and this was obviously one of them.

It was published in 1969 and like most of the cookery books of the day has no pictures at all. It has apparently been revised a couple of times and republished fairly recently, but still with no pictures as its author Rosemary Brissenden thinks these are daunting for people. And this is maybe a topic for another time.

My edition is dated 22 December 1970 (which was our fourth wedding anniversary), so no doubt it is an anniversary present from my husband who wrote this nice little inscription: "4 years eating our way around the world. Growing fatter on the love of it. D" He's good at these little things my husband. I should also say that we had also been in Australia for a year and a half by then, and were probably living in our brand new house in suburban Glen Waverley - at what was then the extreme eastern edge of Melbourne, and which is now to the west of the demographic centre.

When I looked into the book and its author I discovered that this was the first western cookery book on the food of South-East Asia, although in the case of the original book, south-east asia only includes the countries of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Indo-China and Burma, as they were then called, were excluded because "they have been influenced more directly than the others by their immediate and powerful neighbours, India and China, respectively." Personally I would disagree with this. Not that I am an authority. It seems to me, for example, that Malaysian food has quite a strong Indian influence, whilst Vietnamese, which is the only one I know much about is very much its own thing with a fairly strong French influence. The Indo-Chinese countries were added in a later edition. Anyway what we have in my original edition, is three countries, which are definitely very distinct from each other. I also doubt that this really was the first western cookery book on the region.

I probably asked for the book, or was bought it, because, by then we would have realised that Australia is really an Asian country and is heavily influenced by the cuisines of South-East Asia. I think it is a little before the huge influx of Vietnamese refugees, so the impact of the vast number of Vietnamese restaurants would not have been felt. Ditto for the Thai restaurants, although these were not so much a result of a refugee influx. I suspect that may have come about because of the increasing amount of tourism to Thailand where Australians fell in love with Thai food. Curiously, there are not so many Indonesian and Malaysian restaurants, even though Bali, is, of course, Australia's favourite holiday destination.

It became a forgotten book, I think, because a lot of the ingredients would have been hard to find out there in suburban Glen Waverley - which, interestingly, has now become a little China apparently, so you can get anything there now. The two recipes on the page I opened the book at included ingredients such as laos powder, lemon grass and coconut milk - all very common now, but not then. Even coriander and cumin were unknown. When I was growing up in post-war London we did not even have garlic. And now I can get just about anything in my local supermarket, and if that fails there is an Asian grocery store in Templestowe, and Box Hill is China central! I must have another look at it because it might not seem so daunting now. I have another book - a Thai cookbook - which was also not much used due to the unavailability of the ingredients. So I should look at that too.

I don't think Rosemary Brissenden herself wrote another cookbook, although she did expand and revise this one. Here she is with the recent reissue - it looks considerably larger than my little Penguin paperback. She is Australian too and became interested in South-East Asian food when she spent some time living as a student with an Indonesian family. A bit like me going to France and discovering a whole new world of taste sensation. She did maintain a lifetime interest in the region and its food though. She lives in Canberra.

It just goes to show that we should travel - preferably when we are young and more open to new things. At least I think most of us are.

The recipe page I opened it at had two recipes for rice - which were not that interesting - well, now that I look at them, I could easily make them now - I suspect not back then. But they do illustrate "the fact that seasonal and cyclic festivals associated with the planting and harvesting of rice are occurring all the time, and that animistic ceremonies and festivals have to be fitted in alongside the more orthodox rituals tend to make life for many South East Asians a perpetual round of feast occasions." And both of the rice recipes were fundamentally for feasts. Australia is now beginning to include some of these festivals in its program of annual events - we have just had the Chinese New Year, and the Indian festival of light - Diwali - is becoming a big thing. And yes those two are Asian, not South-East Asian, but then again, we also currently have a huge South-East Asian Arts Festival going on. So Australia is now, much more consciously becoming part of Asia - or would like to be, if only Asia would let it.

Elizabeth David was a fan and said that any serious cook should have a copy of this book. Well I do. I'm sure she meant that we should use it too and I have not, which makes me a bit ashamed. If I have time I shall browse it and see what I can discover.