Some Charmaine classics
"I love cooking but I'm bored stiff by the idea of preparing the same kind of food day in, day out. For me, and I hope for you, the excitement of cooking is to be found in creating new dishes, playing variations of old and familiar ones, and in trying recipes from other countries."
Which just about sums up my attitude to cooking too. Particularly the boredom of same old, same old, which was a bit of a thing when my sons were teenagers and I was working. Partly because of their very conservative tastes and so a very limited range of options, and partly the harried mum at the end of a working day thing.
But it didn't last and some 'exciting' things were their favourites - one of them being Charmaine Solomon's Tandoori chicken. And it still is - transformed slightly in all three Dearman households, which is the way with just about every loved recipe is it not?
I think I came to Charmaine Solomon in the 70s - well the book for which she is most famous - The Complete Asian Cookbook - when there were still very few Indian restaurants in Melbourne and I was desperately trying to learn how to reproduce our favourites from British Indian restaurants. In here I found Dhansak, and Biryani, Rogan Josh and many others as well. It wasn't my first Indian cookbook, but it was a very early one and before I discovered Madhur Jaffrey. It was first published in 1976 which is probably about when I bought it and throughout the 70s and 80s I added to my collection of Charmaine's books - I think I now have seven - including the reference book The Encyclopaedia of Asian Food - which I merely dip into every now and then, although there are plenty of recipes in there as well. This original book has been reprinted and revised and has sold over a million copies here and overseas. Although I suspect that Charmaine Solomon is not as well-known overseas - as the UK and America have their own Asian cooking gurus.
The two extra books I am looking at today, because they have been the most heavily used are Indian Cooking for Pleasure - which I suspect is fundamentally the Indian section from her Complete Asian Cookbook and Charmaine Solomon's Thai Cookbook which was published somewhat later, and I don't think is quite as close a copy of her Thai section in the Asian book.
I bought the Indian one, even though I suspected it contained nothing new - but it did - and had the added bonus of being thinner and easier to use. The Thai book was purchased after a couple of trips to Thailand where I fell in love with the food. Like my Indian food dilemma back in the day there was not much in the way of Thai recipes then - the late 80s early 90s perhaps.
Alas we do not eat Thai food today because of the spiciness. Although that said I do occasionally make this dish Chilli chicken with noodles which is so quick and so easy - if you have some green Thai curry paste - and Charmaine has a recipe for this - and it's made completely tasty by the crunchy chilli, garlic and peanut topping. A very quick stir fry.
And speaking of green curry paste, this is one of the great things about Charmaine Solomon's books - her recipes for various spice mixes, and pastes. I still use her garam masala - she has two or three different recipes for this, panch phora and tandoori mix recipes, and have certainly made several others in the past - Masalman curry powder, Ceylon curry powder, Red curry paste, Panang curry paste ... For some time now she has been selling her own branded pastes. I'm not sure where you can easily buy them, but certainly online on her website, thus proving herself to be a canny businesswoman as well. A business that has become a family business as both of her daughters are following in her footsteps.
Her husband Reuben died a few years ago - he was much loved as is shown by the dedication to her Complete Asian Cookbook:
"To Reuben who married me before I learned to cook."
And the love continues with the inclusion of a recipe of his - a family favourite in our house - Chicken Everest - The Jewish Chronicle of which she says:
"This is one of my husband's successful variations on a traditional Indian theme - which accounts for the lack of an Indian name and the presence of soy sauce."
The Jewish Chronicle, where I found the recipe seems to think it has Sephardic origins, but I don't know whether the Solomons thought that. Wherever it comes from it is truly delicious, and, of course, can be applied to a tray bake as well as a roast. My older son who is not a really enthusiastic cook - cooks this still.
The other family favourite is Tandoori chicken - a cheat's tandoori chicken I confess - the one in her Indian Cooking for Pleasure book - she has other more authentic ones. The picture is for North Indian Barbecue-style chicken from her website, which uses her own Tandoori Tikka marinade. There is no picture in the book and I don't seem to have taken pictures at home - but this does look pretty much how it turns out at home here. Maybe ours is a bit yellower, but then she does say you can add a bit of red colouring to the mix. And of course it's not a true tandoori chicken - we have no tandoori oven. But it is pretty good.
It relies on her Tandoori mix - 2 tspns turmeric, 1 tspn paprika, 1/2 tsp chilli powder (optional); 1/2 tsp ground cardamom; 1/2 tsp powdered saffron; 1/4 tsp garlic powder. For her basic tandoori recipe you add 3 teaspoons of this mix to 3/4 cups of yoghurt; 1 1/2 tspns salt, 1 2/2 tspns crushed garlic and 1 1/2 tspns grated ginger. Marinade your chicken - she says 2 spring chickens about 500g each and then roast with ghee in the oven. Or barbecue it.
Over the years I have made many, many recipes from her books - the Indian one in particular is spattered with grease and spice and the Asian Cookbook is falling apart at the seams. I will just add two more recipes that I particularly remember.
Rendang from Indonesia. She actually has two recipes for Rendang both of which I have made. The one on the left below is Rendang daging (Git Hub Gist). You fry the stewed meat to remove some of the sauce and to develop more flavour. The second is Rendang - courtesy of The Coeliac's Revenge.
Another thing that I learnt from Charmaine Solomon is how to make coconut milk if you can't get any. Remember that when I first started using coconut milk back in the 70s it was hard to come by and so she showed us how to make an approximation by soaking desiccated coconut in boiling water. Today, of course, you can buy coconut milk - full fat or not; coconut cream and coconut oil ... in your local supermarket. But the desiccated coconut trick was a lifesaver when it came to cooking Asian food back then. Until, in our household, David decided he didn't like coconut.
Last one - something I make occasionally to go with our favourite Robert Carrier kebabs - a green bean side dish - Sambal buncis (Melbourne Recipe Club) - shown here in her Complete Asian Cookbook with fried bananas - not my thing. It's so quick and easy. Basically you quickly fry some sliced beans, add some sambal oelek and finish off with thinly sliced onion. The heat of the beans ever so slightly tenderises the onions.
I have made so many other Charmaine Solomon recipes - especially back then in the 70s and 80s. Like novel authors I tend to binge on a particular cooking guru for a time, and then leave them be, except perhaps for one of two recipes that become regulars. Novelists have a relatively limited number of books to read, and once read I rarely return to them. There are so many other books to read. And perhaps that's what happens with our past gurus. We hang on to one or two things, and charge on with the latest cookbook favourite. It's the constant human search for the new, the different, the exciting.
This exercise of revisiting some of my earlier gurus is making me realise how many treasures there are still waiting to be discovered - or revisited. And it's also interesting to see how many of my favourites' recipes have not been made and talked about online. I should vow to make something else from each of the gurus that I revisit. The problem with Charmaine is that there are so many. Should I try the rendang on my family perhaps next time they come to dine here? And perhaps try something I haven't tried before at home.
I just opened the Complete Asian Cookbook at random and found myself in Thailand with a choice of mostly chicken recipes. I might try Kai Yang which she calls Garlic chicken, but really seems to be featuring black peppercorns and coriander. Might try that this weekend. There's no chilli and I can tone down the peppercorns. This picture is of Gai Yang from John Chantarasak on the delicous. website and is not the same thing really although there is garlic and coriander. In fact all of the recipes I saw for what is fundamentally a 'make it your own' Thai barbecued chicken were much more complicated. Charmaine's is just chicken grilled with a marinade of 6 cloves garlic, 2 tspns salt, 2 tbspns black peppercorns (crushed), 4 whole plants of coriander, roots and all, chopped and 2 tbspns lemon juice. Maybe served with those beans and some rice. What's not to like?
YEARS GONE BY
September 3rd
2023 - Nothing
2021 - Missing
2020 - Missing
2019 - Nothing
2018 - A word from Julia Child
2016 - Sausage sizzles
The dishes all look delicious... just as long as they have the minimum of hot chillies in them!😱