Charmaine Solomon’s The Complete Asian Cookbook

I’m a big fan of acclaimed Australian/Sri-Lankan cookbook author, Charmaine Solomon.

The woman can really cook. And she can write, too, having trained as a journalist many moons ago. To date, she’s published over 30 books.

I’ve cooked a number of dishes from Charmaine’s books over the years and her recipes are always authentic, unfussy and delicious. People lucky enough to be fed the results inevitably ooh and ahh.

It’s not surprising really, because very single recipe I’ve ever tried works. I haven’t found a dud yet and I certainly can’t say that about every cookbook I own.

I was introduced to Charmaine’s cookbooks when I was a teenage by my mum, who had her 1980 Curry Cookbook. It was one of the first cookbooks I ever read for pure pleasure, especially enjoying the comments on individual recipes by Charmaine and Rueben, her husband and co-author.

Much later, I put Charmaine’s The Complete Asian Cookbook on my wedding registry and was delighted to receive it as a wedding present from my ex colleagues at Chunky Move. It was one of those cookbooks I instinctively felt I would refer to time and time again.

I was not wrong. The Complete Asian Cookbook is one of the important Australian cookbooks, right up there with Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion, and Margaret Fulton’s eponymous cookbook which I also often refer to.

It’s not just important from an Australian cookery point of view either – The Complete Asian Cookbook has sold well over one million copies since its first release in 1976 and is the most authoritative Asian cookbook available today.

It’s important because it’s encyclopaedic in its breadth of Asian cooking styles, recipes and ingredients. Over 600 plus pages, Charmaine covers the cuisines of India and Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, Vietnam, The Phillipines, China, Korea and Japan.

In each section, she introduces the country’s cuisine with useful information about how to serve and eat its food, cooking equipment and utensils, common ingredients and must-have pantry items, before detailing some of the country’s most popular and signature dishes. All in all, The Complete Asian Cookbook features over 800 recipes.

Now while it’s an incredibly good and useful book, my version of The Complete Asian Cookbook has started to look a little, well, dated. So I was thrilled to recently learn that Hardie Grant had published a new edition.

This stunning, beautifully designed edition has been comprehensively updated and revised by Charmaine with help from her two daughters, Deborah Solomon and Nina Harris. The updated version also features gorgeous photos of Charmaine’s recipes every couple of pages. Food photography has come a long way over the past few years and photographer Alan Benson has done a bang up job here.

This afternoon a quick browse in the Indian and Pakistan section led me to Charmaine’s Dahi Murgh or Chicken and Yoghurt Curry.

My mother has cooked Charmaine’s Dahi Murgh many times over the years, and I’ve cooked at least a couple of times every year since leaving home. It’s a sensational dish so I decided to cook it for dinner tonight.

My parents returned home today from a 10-day New Zealand cruise holiday and I wanted to cook them something Asian as I knew my dad would be missing his chilli and spice. So I cooked Charmaine’s Dahi Murgh and a red lentil dahl, steamed some rice, made some banana raita (add chopped banana to yoghurt and mix in 1-2 teaspoons honey) and fried some pappodams.