A word from Charmaine Solomon

"The best friend a novice cook can have is an author who takes the trouble to tell you not only how but also why you should do this, that or the other, and I found some who did. In a career devoted to food journalism, it has been my aim to do the same."

I know I have been spending a lot of time of late on Charmaine Solomon, but I find that I have never actually done a 'A word from ...' post on her, so feeling a little uninspired today I decided to pay her tribute.

And tribute is indeed due. I have spoken before about how she (and my other tiny little paperback book Cooking the Indian Way were the means by which I learnt to cook, first Indian food, and subsequently Asian food. Madhur Jaffrey came into my life much later and after I had familiarised myself with cooking Indian food.

"Here is a book which doesn't go to extremes, a book anyone can enjoy cooking and eating from."

So does she introduce her most famous book, The Complete Asian Cookbook. And that statement is true. My little paperback book - my first Indian cookbook - was very good, very simple and included just about everything I needed, but Charmaine Solomon took cooking Indian food to another level, without getting complicated and difficult. And at the same time she introduced me to all those other Asian cuisines that I knew nothing about. The book has now been revised and updated to take into account the availability of ingredients that were hard to find back then, and also the availability of gadgets and appliances to help with it all. And she has played no small part in making the availability of all those ingredients possible.

"In the original edition, I included two pages on 'Where to buy Asian ingredients'. Today, this is hardly necessary, because any aficionado of Asian food knows in which corner of the supermarket or delicatessen he or she will find a good selection, and indeed there is often more than one Asian grocer in any suburban shopping centre."

Near us we have a whole suburb - Box Hill - which is virtually completely Asian. If you drive down it's main streets where the shops are, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Hong Kong. Although it's not all Chinese, there is also Vietnamese, Thai, Korean ... It's a little Asia - on our doorstep. It's a pity, I guess that it is not more integrated with Anglo Australian life - it's almost a ghetto - by choice I hasten to say, but then maybe over time the Asians that live there will intermarry, move into other suburbs and become truly Australian. It's a first phase.

Charmaine Solomon herself is a wonderful example of multiculturalism. I'm not sure of where the mix comes from, but basically within her family there is Dutch, Sri-Lankan (where she was born and grew up), Burmese, and now Anglo Australian too. No wonder that she was the ideal candidate to write a book on the food of the whole of Asia. And an encyclopedia too.

"I can pass on to my children and to their children the legacy of a tradition of Asian cuisine, a cuisine whose magic is woven through a host of my childhood memories and years of living in Asian lands."

This multiculturalism and love of family showed itself in another of her books that I possess, Charmaine Solomon's Family Recipes. It's a bit like my own effort to get my children to cook, in that it has a lot of background about her family and how she came to cook. And the recipes are not just Asian.

In the early years of her marriage she moved to Australia with her small family and has lived here ever since. Most of that time was spent in journalism, food journalism and writing cookery books. Now she also has a range of curry pastes that she sells. Which is curious because she is very much an enthusiast for making your own. I wonder what made her venture into this?

"While many new curry pastes, powders and garam masalas have appeared on the shelves, I have yet to find one which comes anywhere near the quality of what you make yourself. I urge you to try the Thai curry pastes int he chapter on Thailand and the garam masala in the Indian chapter. Compare them with commercial products and judge for yourself."

You can buy them from her website - Charmaine's Kitchen or in more specialist food shops. I don't think they have them in the local supermarket, because they are probably not made in large enough quantities. Her website by the way has a front page full of very appetising dishes, and there is a small section of recipes, but very few - not like Delia, or Jamie, or Nigella - or even Stephanie.

She has written a lot of books but I don't have many of them. She also cheats a little bit sometimes like Robert Carrier and includes the same recipe in two different books. But that's fair enough.

Perhaps what I so like about her is the fact that she presents herself as an ordinary person who is largely self-taught. Like me.

"With small children to look after, there was no question of going to classes to learn how to cook. Trial and error in my own kitchen were my teachers. Much that I had picked up from my family as an interested observer and avid taster came in useful. Cooking was my occupational therapy, Nervous about being the only adult in the house while my musician husband was away half the night earning a living, I busied myself creating exciting meals for when he return."

"Good cooking is one of the creative arts. Early on in life was fortunate enough learn from the accomplished and dedicated cooks around me - mother, grandmother's aunts - that it is one of the most rewarding ways to express oneself and give enjoyment to others at the same time. What's more, I found, it's fun!"

I also discovered that there is no real mystery abut being able to cook well - no magic potions or charms, just a healthy interest in good eating and in getting the most pleasure possible from each meal."

And she is talking about a cuisine about which I knew very little when I too embarked on a career of feeding, first a husband, and then a family, and then passing it all on to them.

And like many cooks today she has also done the vegetarian thing - one of her books which I have. Although perhaps the one I have used the least for some reason. Maybe I should revisit it as we do seem to be eating more and more vegetarian food these days. Maybe this and her family book show that she is perhaps becoming more and more Australian rather than purely Asian. Just a thought.

"I cannot banish from my life the free-wheeling creation of a recipe from whatever the marketing has yielded. There's the joy of stirring a pot and smelling the aromas which rise when onions and garlic are gently cooked in oil or butter, and the pleasure of seeing greens turn even greener when short-cooked just enough to make them tooth-tender."

When I started this post I thought I would not find many words from ... but to my surprise I did. You see I had thought of her as one of those practical cookbook writers who concentrates on the recipes themselves, but no, I found she had several things to say of interest. And her Family Recipes book is really personal. I'm afraid I only read the introduction, but a large part of the book is about her family history and the characters that populated it, and also about her obvious love of her own family - musician husband, who contributed one of our family's favourite recipes - Chicken Everest - and her two daughters, two sons and grandchildren too.

"Cooking is a living, developing art. New cooks bring fresh ideas to a cuisine, and experienced cooks find there are better and easier ways of achieving the same results."

"One thing I know. Life's too short to force down a meal you don't really enjoy."